“What is it like to be a bat?” famously asked Thomas Nagel in 1974 in The Philosophical Review. It may sound like a silly question, but it has profound implications. We quite literally make sense of the world through our touch, sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Our sense of space in particular is governed in … Read More
Many think it’s impossible to improve your memory. But scientific research shows that many techniques do have an impact on how well we remember things. Unfortunately, lots of people use the wrong methods. For example, highlighting has virtually zero effect on information retention. “It seems like if I have highlighted something (…) then I should … Read More
When I was in uni, we had to attend a series of workshops designed to improve our career prospects. We were supposed to learn how to create a resume, how to use job boards, and lots of other useful skills. At the beginning of the very first session, the instructor gave us a long personality … Read More
Fake news has become a hot topic. But the deliberate disinformation of the general public via traditional outlets or social media goes beyond the news: there is also an alarming rise in “fake science.” The brain and the mind feel extremely familiar. We do spend lots of our time inside our heads. That’s why it’s … Read More
The role of emotions has been debated over the years, with some claiming that they are “bad for our peace of mind” (Skinner, 1948), and others arguing that they are important for our “physical or social survival” (Keltner & Gross, 1999). Emotions can be defined as states induced by the occurrence, termination, or omission of … Read More
The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a laboratory method that allows researchers to produce a significant amount of specific DNA using trace amounts of source DNA, which can be obtained from a variety of organisms and tissues (Garibyan & Avashia, 2013). When discovered in the 1980s, the technique – which can produce billions of copies … Read More
In 1977, Dr. Raymond Damadian performed the first magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan on a live human patient (Edelman, 2014). MRI is a non-invasive medical imaging technique producing detailed pictures of anatomical structures and physiological processes inside the body (McRobbie et al., 2017). MRI scans are considered safer than CT scans and PET scans as … Read More
Pyramidal neurons are the primary type of cells in the cerebral cortex; they are made of a cell body called soma, a single axon, an apical dendrite, multiple basal dendrites, and dendritic spines (Megias et al., 2001). Dendritic spines are small neuronal protrusions rising from a neuron’s dendrites; they typically receive excitatory input from one … Read More
The cerebral cortex can be divided into three main parts: the sensory areas, the motor areas, and the association areas. The association cortex is a complex distributed network, receiving information from the primary and secondary sensory and motor areas, as well as the brainstem and the thalamus, processing it, and sending it across multiple pathways … Read More
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder causing a range of psychological symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, disordered thinking, and abnormal motor behaviour, and which is considered by many as a neurodevelopmental disorder (Murray & Lewis, 1987; Weinberger, 2003). It affects 0.5–1% of the worldwide population, with a common onset in late adolescence to early adulthood (Perälä … Read More