A candid and practical guide to the new frontier of brain customization

Dozens of books promise to improve your brain function with a gimmick. Lifestyle changes, microdosing, electromagnetic stimulation: just one weird trick can lightly alter or dramatically deconstruct your brain.

In truth, there is no one-size-fits-all shortcut to the ideal mind. Instead, the way to understand cognitive enhancement is to think like a tailor: measure how you need your brain to change and then find a plan that suits it.

In The Tailored Brain, Emily Willingham explores the promises and limitations of well-known and emerging methods of brain customization, including prescription drugs, diets, and new research on the power of your “social brain.”

Packed with real-life examples and checklists that allow readers to better understand their cognitive needs, this is the definitive guide to a better brain. 

Emily Willingham is a journalist and science writer. She is the author of Phallacy: Life Lessons from the Animal Penis and coauthor of The Informed Parent: A Science-Based Resource for Your Child’s First Four Years. Willingham is a regular contributor to Scientific American. She lives in Marin County, California. 

Christie Aschwanden is author of the New York Times bestseller, Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery and co-host of EMERGING FORM, a podcast about the creative process. Her work regularly appears in the Washington Post, New York Times, Scientific American, and other science and general interest publications. On twitter and instagram she’s @Cragcrest.
 

Emily Willingham photo courtesy of the author; Christie Aschwanden photo courtesy of Siri Carpenter