Neuroscience

Together, wanting and liking encourage us to pursue rewards. But these sensations can also stand alone, creating situations where you might know that you enjoy something but don’t want to go after it, or where you might have a strong desire for something that you don’t get much pleasure from.

the default network consists of regions that, in the absence of exteroceptive [externally oriented] attention or narrowly focused mental effort, support self-directed concerns, immersion in one’s inner life (e.g., daydreaming) or imagining the inner life of others (Theory of Mind)

Research has shown a staggering number of health benefits associated with dispositional optimism, from improvements in cardiovascular health, to how quickly wounds heal, to slower disease progression.

one of the latest big theories in neuroscience says that humans are fundamentally creatures of prediction, and not only is creativity not at odds with that, but it actually goes hand in hand with improving our predictive power. Life itself, in this view, is one big process of creatively optimizing prediction as a survival strategy in a universe... 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