By the time a baby is born, its brain is equipped with billions of intricately crafted neurons wired together through trillions of interconnections to form a compact and breathtakingly efficient supercomputer. Join pioneering experimental neurobiologist William Harris for an extraordinary journey to the very edge of creation, from the moment of an egg’s fertilization through the most significant steps of a human brain’s development in the womb—and even a little beyond.

As Harris explains the process of how the brain is built, he describes many of the discoveries foundational to our current understanding of brain development. He tells a remarkable evolutionary story that begins billions of years ago in the Proterozoic eon, when multicellular animals first emerged from single-cell organisms. He reveals how the growth of a fetal brain over nine months reflects the brain’s evolution through the ages and how comparative animal studies have been crucial to understanding what makes a human brain human. Harris also describes how scientific breakthroughs are helping us to decode many traits that only reveal themselves later in life.

Harris’s new book, Zero to Birth (Princeton University Press), is available for purchase.

Book Sale Information

• Purchase your copy of Zero to Birth by William Harris here.
• SPECIAL NOTE: Politics and Prose is offering a 10% discount to Smithsonian Associates ticket-holders. To claim your discount, enter the code SPECIAL10 (no space between letters and numbers) in the “Coupon discount” section on Politics and Prose's check-out page.

Patron Information

• If you register multiple individuals, you will be asked to supply individual names and email addresses so they can receive a Zoom link email. Please note that if there is a change in program schedule or a cancellation, we will notify you via email, and it will be your responsibility to notify other registrants in your group.
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