How do thoughts, emotions, memory and perception emerge? In this section, we unpack the latest discoveries in brain and neuroscience, offering new perspectives on how the mind works and how we experience the world.
Remembering with certainty… and still being wrong. False memories reveal a disturbing truth: memory doesn’t store the past, it rebuilds it. A word, an image, a glimpse of a familiar face in a crowd; sometimes, that’s all it takes for a memory to resurface. It emerges with the clarity and conviction of a moment truly…
Our most ordinary actions are anything but random. They reveal a brain mechanism both discreet and decisive. 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…
How can you feel pain in a limb that no longer exists? Phantom pain reveals a disturbing truth: the body we feel is created by the brain. Mr. L., 56, lost his left leg in a motorcycle accident. Just days after the amputation, he began experiencing intense, localized pain in his left foot, a foot…
What if words never told the whole story? The brain constantly picks up what lies beneath, intentions, emotions, and what’s left unsaid. 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…
Absurd images, memory palaces, strange associations… Memory techniques reveal something surprising: to remember, the brain needs imagination. What if our memory wasn’t as limited as we believe? Remembering every name, every face, or even the smallest details of a book read years ago isn’t a fantasy reserved for geniuses. In a world where we increasingly…
Reading feels automatic until it disappears. Pure alexia shows that understanding a word is far more complex than it seems. Professor M. lived surrounded by books, in a house lined with ancient volumes and dictionaries. Reading and teaching were his life, language was his home, as familiar to him as the walls he lived in….
A few letters are enough to create meaning, images, emotions. But this apparent simplicity hides an extraordinary neural feat. Reading is one of the most fascinating feats of the human brain, a mysterious intersection of culture and biology that astonishes with both its apparent simplicity and the astonishing complexity it conceals. We move our eyes…
We think we use words to think. Yet much of the mind operates in silence, far beyond language. We often assume that thinking means talking to ourselves silently. But is that truly the case?Imagine a world without words. Could we still reason, anticipate, and solve problems? Some argue that without language, complex thought would be…
Recognizing a face feels instant. Yet this ability relies on a fragile brain mechanism that can break down. He saw the eyes, the noses, the mouths. He could draw them with almost clinical precision, each line accurate, every curve exact. And yet, what he sketched held no meaning. He didn’t recognize what he had just…
A cold light in the dark and sleep slips away. Screens don’t just distract us; they actively deceive the brain. Midnight. In the stillness of a darkened room, the cold glow of a smartphone draws the gaze of a tired eye. As eyelids grow heavy, fingers continue their silent dance across the screen, responding to…