The Boy Who Felt Too Much: How a renowned neuroscientist and his son changed our view of autism forever

(Paperback)

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THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

'Extraordinary . . . A tale of love, constancy and groundbreaking research.' -RON SUSKIND, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of Life, Animated

Henry Markram is the Elon Musk of neuroscience, the man behind the billion-dollar Blue Brain Project to build a supercomputer model of the brain. He has set the goal of decoding all disturbances of the mind within a generation. This quest is personal for him. The driving force behind his grand ambition has been his son Kai, who suffers from autism. Raising Kai made Henry Markram question all that he thought he knew about neuroscience, and then inspired his groundbreaking research that would upend the conventional wisdom about autism, expressed in his now famous theory of Intense World Syndrome.

When Kai was first diagnosed, his father consulted studies and experts. He knew as much about the human brain as almost anyone but still felt as helpless as any parent confronted with this condition in his child. What's more, the scientific consensus that autism was a deficit of empathy didn't mesh with Markram's experience of his son. He became convinced that the disorder, which has seen a 657 per cent increase in diagnoses over the past decade, was fundamentally misunderstood. Bringing his worldclass research to bear on the problem, he devised a radical new theory of the disorder: People like Kai don't feel too little; they feel too much. Their senses are too delicate for this world.

The theory of Intense World Syndrome could change the way we see autism forever, and it's thanks to Kai, the boy who changed everything.

Reviews

'Lorenz Wagner's book on the remarkable Markrams is, well, remarkable. This is an extraordinary story of noted neuroscientists seeing the world through the eyes of their ASD son, and then helping change the way autism is seen and treated far and wide.
A tale of love, constancy and groundbreaking research.'
- Ron Suskind, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of Life, Animated, A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes and Autism

'A compelling story about one of the world's most brilliant researchers searching to understand his son's autism. A gloriously positive book. Left me with hope for humanity.'
- David Sinclair, PhD, AO is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and author of the New York Times bestseller Why We Age - and Why We Don't Have To

Author Bio

Lorenz Wagner, born in 1970, is one of the most prominent profile writers and journalists in Europe. His report "The Son Code" about Henry and Kai Markram rapidly became one of the most read articles in the Suddeutsche Magazin. Lorenz Wagner has been awarded the prestigious Prix Franco-Allemand du Journalisme (PFAJ), among other prizes. He is bilingual, French and German, lived and studied in France and resides in Germany.