Neuroscience

“Worry can become like a bad habit of the mind. The rule of neuroplasticity—that our brain keeps changing based on our repeated activity—says that whatever we do a lot we will get better at. So if we worry a lot, we will get really good at worrying.” In other words, once you start worrying about something, it can be hard to stop.

“I think in 50 or 100 years time we will have discovered the entity that is consciousness,” he told me. “It will be taken for granted that it wasn’t produced by the brain, and it doesn’t die when you die.”

Handwriting, compared to typing, results in more complex brain connectivity patterns, enhancing learning and memory. This study used EEG data from 36 students to compare brain activity while writing by hand and typing.

Handwriting, whether in cursive on a touchscreen or traditional pen and paper, activated extensive brain regions, vital for memory... See more

Learned helplessness, the failure to escape shock induced by uncontrollable aversive events, was discovered half a century ago. Seligman and Maier (1967) theorized that animals learned that outcomes were independent of their responses—that nothing they did mattered – and that this learning undermined trying to escape. The mechanism of learned... See more

Just over a year ago, on a visit to one of the world’s most prestigious research institutes, I challenged researchers there to account for intelligent human behaviour without reference to any aspect of the IP metaphor. They couldn’t do it