Every minute of every day, waking or sleeping, your brain is being programmed. Who or what is doing the programming, and how a complex mass of proteins and chemicals can control your behaviour, is the subject of this ground-breaking work. Drawing on a lifetime of work and research into thinking systems, Charles Ross and Shirley Redpath present a series of radical theories about how the cluster of neurons that make up a brain develops into the accumulation of understanding and consciousness that each one of us has come to identify as our unique selves. Using clear, everyday language, they guide the reader through the labyrinth of research and behavioural observations to find answers to some of the questions that have puzzled scientists and philosophers for thousands of years: what is memory and how is it formed? How is it that neurons constantly die and are replaced, yet the memories that reside in them remain with us throughout our lives? What is the physical process that moves us from the state of being asleep to being awake and aware of the world around us? Can the experience of one generation be physically passed on to its immediate successors? This is a useful and thought-provoking journey into its biological systems for everyone who wishes to make the most of their brain.