Science writer Jennifer Ouellette explores the emerging science of the self, a body of research that examines not just who we are, but also … if we are.   “Ouellette ultimately concludes that the self is an emergent property of the billions of neurons of our brain all interacting with one another. What’s emergence? ‘A system in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,’ writes Ouellette. ‘A traffic jam is emergent,’ she explains. ‘You have all these cars interacting. If it gets dense enough, enough interactions, you’re going to get a traffic jam. But that traffic jam is real.’ It is more than the sum of all its cars. Something similar goes for the self.”