The Itch
What the sensation of uncontrollable itch and the phantom limbs of amputees can tell us about how the brain works.
Neuroscience
The Final Five Percent
When a brain injury leads to a personality change and then prison time, a neuroscientist wonders if his brother could have been saved.
The Genius Neuroscientist Who Might Hold the Key to True AI
Karl Friston’s free energy principle might be the most all-encompassing idea since Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection.
The Pentagon’s Push to Program Soldiers’ Brains
The military wants future super-soldiers to control robots with their thoughts.
The Neuroscience of Pain
Discovering why we hurt.
The Brain That Couldn't Remember
When the most famous amnesiac in history died, the battle for custody of his brain began.
Consciousness Began When the Gods Stopped Speaking
On the unexpected longevity of a very strange theory.
A Dying Young Woman’s Hope in Cryonics and a Future
Kim Suozzi, who died at 23, chose to have her brain preserved for future revival. It’s not as far-fetched a prospect as you’d think.
Aneurysm
The intricacies of a delicate operation.
How One Brain Came Back From Unconsciousness
Chronicling 1,541 days with a car accident survivor.
Life Lines
Lonnie Sue Johnson is an artist who can’t retain a memory for longer than a minute or two.
The First Year
A baby’s brain needs love to develop.
Phineas Gage, Neuroscience’s Most Famous Patient
The railroad foreman’s brain was pierced by a tamping iron. He lived to tell the tale.
Remember This
Inside the minds of two people, one with the world’s best memory and one with the world’s worst.
The Man Who Would Teach Machines to Think
A profile of cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter, who has spent the last 30 years trying to replicate the human mind.
Safecracking the Brain
What neuroscience is learning from code-breakers and thieves.
How The Light Gets Out
“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? “
Detachment
On the scientific research of Romanian orphans.
Amnesia and the Self That Remains When Memory Is Lost
On living without memories.
Beautiful Brains
On the minds of teenagers.
The Brain on Trial
Eagleman, a neuroscientist, describes how groundbreaking advances in the science of brain have changed our understanding of volition in criminal acts, and may erode the underpinnings of our justice system.
The Possibilian
On a neuroscientist’s personal mission to solve the mystery of how the brain processes time.
By Analogy
An interview with Douglas Hofstadter, who after winning the Pulitzer for Gödel, Escher, Bach retreated into the lab and published only sparingly in technical journals, on what it would mean if a program could generate humor and/or masterful compositions.
The Brain That Changed Everything
The brain of Henry Molaison gave science most of what it knows about memory. Dr. Jacopo Annese believes there’s even more to learn.
As Good as Dead
Is there really such a thing as brain death?
