What the sensation of uncontrollable itch and the phantom limbs of amputees can tell us about how the brain works.

The life and work of a Manhattan psychoanalyst.

On LeBron James’s photographic memory.

In experiments on pig organs, scientists at Yale made a discovery that could someday challenge our understanding of what it means to die.

Discovering why we hurt.

Around 60 people in the world share a condition called “highly superior autobiographical memory.” They remember absolutely everything.

Life with chronic migraines.

One woman’s hunt for possibility after an Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

Susie Mc­Kinnon cannot hold a grudge. She is unfamiliar with the feeling of regret and oblivious to aging. She has no core memories. And yet she knows who she is.

Phil Kennedy set out to build the ultimate brain-computer interface. In the process, he almost lost his mind.

“When I woke up hours later, I really believed I had been in those mountains hiking — that it was not a dream. And I really had lost my voice. I had lost my words. I was unable to say, ‘I am trapped in my brain’ or, ‘My memories are mixing with imagination.’”

A day after swimming in an Arkansas water park, Kali Harding was diagnosed with a brain-eating amoeba that kills 99% of the people infects. This is the story of how she survived.

Can neuroscience take the pain out of painful memories?

Getting clean with a three-day trip.

Previously: The Longform Guide to Addiction.

Do jellyfish have minds?

Why we love repetition in music.

A profile of cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter, who has spent the last 30 years trying to replicate the human mind.

What neuroscience is learning from code-breakers and thieves.

“In the computer age, it is not hard to imagine how a computing machine might construct, store and spit out the information that ‘I am alive, I am a person, I have memories, the wind is cold, the grass is green,’ and so on. But how does a brain become aware of those propositions? “

Why your phone may (or may not) be killing you.

What fragmented reading experiences do to neural circuitry. (It’s not good.)

The not-so-underground culture of neuroenhancing drug use, and where it’s headed.