Earlier this year I embarked on a daft quest to defy social norms, experiment with a new diet… and stop eating “real” food. Why on earth would you do that? Cooking bores me. Eating isn’t particularly interesting either, or washing up. If someone devised a cybernetic upgrade or Faustian contract which did away with the […]
A single, curious, process may underlie addiction, brain training and much of our ability to learn. How do we learn new skills? How do we recover brain function after debilitating injuries? To adapt to our surroundings, explore, discover and grow is what makes us human. What allows us to do all this? It sounds more like a question for a philosopher than a scientist1, but neuroscience […]
Close your eyes and imagine yourself in a forest clearing, surrounded by towering trees. A patch of brilliant blue sky is visible through the leafy boughs above; the floor is a carpet of golden leaves. You can hear birdsong and the faint gurgle of a stream in the distance. The air is crisp and clean, and you feel a […]
For a while now I have been reading books on neuroscience. Though I am prone to brief obsessions with subjects of curiosity, my interest in the workings of the nervous system, and in particular the brain, has lasted longer than most. How do we think? A fundamental question to both philosophers and drunks alike, with […]