The Idea of the BrainLonglisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize This is the story of our quest to understand the most mysterious object in the universe: the human brain. Today we tend to picture it as a computer. Earlier scientists thought about it in their own technological terms: as a telephone switchboard, or a clock, or all manner of fantastic mechanical or hydraulic devices. Could the right metaphor unlock its deepest secrets once and for all? Galloping through