Thanks to @PenguinUKbooks and @NetGalley for providing me with a proof copy in advance of publication. 📚

Connections is a deep dive into human emotions, what mental health reveals about us and how "the broken can illuminate the unbroken". It's one of the more brilliant examples that I've read of literary non-fiction, how Deisseroth uses his language poetically to convey his points. It covers some of the more timeless questions about humankind, looking into often misunderstood disorders and it can even transform how we understand ourselves.

If anyone has a penchant for psychology and interpersonal relationships, you're going to love this book!

Connections: A Story of Human Feeling is a groundbreaking tour of the human mind, in which a renowned psychiatrist and neuroscientist explores the biological and evolutionary origins of human emotions through poignant, and at times shocking, clinical stories. Karl Deisseroth has spent his life pursuing truths about the human mind, both as a practicing clinical psychiatrist and as a researcher who created the revolutionary field of optogenetics, which allows us to decipher the brain's inner workings using light. In Projections, he combines his groundbreaking access to the brain's inner circuitry with a deep empathy for his patients to examine what mental illness reveals about the mind and the origin of human feelings--how the broken can illuminate the unbroken. An internationally acclaimed professor of bioengineering and psychiatry at Stanford, Deisseroth's true passion is clinical psychiatry, and it is the stories of his patients that form the backbone of Projections. Through these case studies, he tells the larger story of how we can understand the physical and biological origins of human emotion in the brain.

As such, he describes vividly how humans experience feelings both in the simple and ancient circuits of our brains and in the poignant moments of suffering in our daily lives. The stories of Deisseroth's patients are rich with humanity and shine an unprecedented light on the self and the ways in which it breaks down. A young woman with an eating disorder reveals how the mind can rebel against the brain's most primitive drives of hunger and thirst; while an older gentleman, smothered into silence by depression and dementia, illuminates how humans evolved to feel joy and its absence; and a lonely Uyghur woman far from home teaches the importance of rich social bonds. An illuminating and essential work, Projections transforms the way we understand the brain as a biological and as an emotional object. This a fascinating, accessible and lyrical book packed with intriguing information about how our feelings arise and the aspects that make up our emotions. It illuminates said emotions and mental illness through vivid and engaging case studies in order to hammer points home. Highly recommended.

I found this book heavy going to be completely honest. I had hoped for a more approachable read - like the similarly titled "Lost Connections" by Johann Hari which is a book that I absolutely love and find inspirational.
This book contains a lot of neuroscience and is written in a very literary way with a lot of beautifully crafted description. I think it simply wasn't my kind of thing: I like reading about science but prefer things to be written in a much plainer, more straightforward style. It's a shame as I feel like there is a lot on offer in this book but it sadly wasn't for me.