Ultimately, it's 1980s new wave music and culture that saves Tougaw as a teenager, promising a world beyond the chaos of his family or the stifling conformity of his high school.

A high school guidance counselor took one look at Tougaw’s dyed hair and makeup and told him he’d never make it to UCLA, dropping him from his college prep courses.

Focusing on literary responses to neuroscience, Tougaw argues that literature can play with and experiment with the big questions that elude empirical studies: What is the relation between brain and self?

He examines these questions at work in neuronovels, brain memoirs, and graphic narratives, by writers like Oliver Sacks, Temple Grandin, Siri Hustvedt, Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay, Christopher Haddon, Maud Casey, Jonathan Lethem, and Ellen Forney.

He also discusses the work of philosophers Alva Noë, Catherine Malabou, David Chalmers, and Patricia Churchland as well as the research of neuroscientists Joseph Ledoux, Michael Gazzaniga, Antonio Damasio, Sebastian Seung, and Stanislas Dehaene.