What if science could show us a prescription for how to get wiser, faster…without the waiting to age or required trials and tribulations?

HOW TO BE WISE
The Science of Smart Decisions
by Dilip Jeste, MD & Scott Lafee
Hachette Books, January 2019

The Neurobiology of Wisdom: How Science Can Help You Become Wiser, Faster by Dilip Jeste, MD and Scott Lafee investigates and explains wisdom as divined through the prism of hard science and is buttressed by compelling case histories and personal stories. What humans call wisdom is, in fact, a collection of very specific characteristics and behaviors fundamentally defined by biology and as such open to purposeful change through science and medicine. This book focuses on exploring and answering several vital questions: Is it hard-wired into our brains, possessing a biological basis – tangible and localized within specific regions of our complex neurocircuity? Does it have an evolutionary basis and value? Is it unique to humans or can animals be wise as well? And finally, can humans through science consciously and purposefully manipulate wisdom to make ourselves wise beyond our years?

Dilip Jeste, MD, is a physician and neuroscientist whose decades of research have made him a preeminent authority on the relationship between wisdom and biology. Scott LaFee is an award-winning science journalist and editor and worked for the San Diego Union-Tribune for more than two decades. Nominated five times for the Pulitzer Prize in reporting and explanatory writing, he is the current director of media relations at UC San Diego Health.