Cognition refers to mental processes involved in perception, thinking, learning and decision-making. Cognitive neuroscience explores the neural mechanisms underlying these functions.
Every year, thousands of individuals lose the use of their limbs due to stroke, spinal cord injury, or neurodegenerative disease. When both speech and movement fall silent, communication becomes a matter of survival. This raises a central question: can brain activity be harnessed to restore a voice to those who have lost theirs? Brain-computer interfaces…
In 2004, in a quiet room in Iceland, a 13-year-old boy sat across from Garry Kasparov, then the world’s top-ranked chess player. The Russian grandmaster, undefeated for over two decades, now faced a calm-eyed stranger. For 30 moves, the young Magnus Carlsen held his ground. He didn’t defeat Kasparov that day, but he unsettled him….
Why is it that, despite being fully aware of what is right, we so often fall back into the same patterns? Every day, we resolve to change a habit or abandon another, only for our brain to quietly override our conscious decisions. Night after night, the same scenario plays out: our hand reaches for the…
In a New York neurology ward, patients suffering from global aphasia, a severe language disorder where both comprehension and verbal expression are profoundly impaired, are watching a televised presidential speech. Due to extensive damage in the left hemisphere of their brains, these patients cannot grasp the words or their sequence. The content of the speech…
Have you ever experienced a sudden intuition, a creative spark that seems to emerge from nowhere? That inexplicable sense of “knowing” something without being able to articulate why? These fleeting yet powerful moments often defy the mechanical explanations we’ve come to associate with brain function. What if the key to understanding the complexity of our…
A child solving equations faster than an adult can read them, a teenager captivated by quantum physics before mastering algebra, or a musician able to improvise a Baroque fugue after a single listen, all seem cut from the same exceptional cloth. They all share one trait: an unusually high IQ. But should they all be…
Time slips away, elusive. The task at hand patiently waits, yet we find countless ways to avoid it. A coffee break, a trivial video, compulsively checking emails, an illusion of movement that masks inaction. But why do we delay so many things, sometimes at the expense of our own peace of mind? Is procrastination merely…
Our thoughts and decisions appear to follow a logical thread, a well-defined trajectory dictated by the brain’s stable organization. For decades, neuroscience has sought to map this organization, identifying specialized networks that activate depending on the task at hand. When we make a decision, whether by scanning a set of visual elements or analyzing a…
For decades, scientists have been investigating the effects of fasting on physical health. It is now well established that calorie restriction and various forms of fasting can lead to weight loss, improve insulin sensitivity, reduce inflammation, and even extend lifespan. By stimulating autophagy, a cellular recycling and repair process, fasting appears to play a crucial…
In April 1955, Albert Einstein passed away at the age of 76, leaving behind a profound legacy that revolutionized our understanding of the universe. His theory of general relativity fundamentally reshaped the laws of physics, and his pioneering ideas continue to guide the exploration of space and time. However, beyond his groundbreaking equations and insights,…