#neuroscience

#neuroscience

In a recent talk in Zurich, German psychoanalyst Konstantin Roessler surveyed the current state of dream research. Tracing some of the earlier scientific studies on dreams, he made a renewed case for the importance of dreams. Even formerly skeptical neuroscientists have now begun to see the meaning, purpose, and value of dreams for everyday life and overall psychic health. Dreams as Meaningless "Content"

For most of my life, I thought of myself as a fixed entity: This is me. These are my traits. This is who I am. I assumed I was essentially that same person who loved sugary cereal at age 8, fried chicken at 12, and tequila at 21, and who still loves those things now, even if my stomach disagrees. But this is an illusion. Neuroscience, physics, and Buddhism all agree: There is nothing fixed about us-not even close.

call a Republican.

One day during his first term, Donald Trump summoned a top aide to discuss a new idea. Trump called me down to the Oval Office,' John Bolton, national security adviser in 2018, told the Guardian. He said a prominent businessman had just suggested the US buy Greenland ' The US president's friend Ronald Lauder, heir to the Estee Lauder cosmetics fortune, is now making deals in the island. Guardian investigations correspondent Tom Burgis explored the reasons behind Trump and Lauder's fixation with Greenland. Read more

In response to threats by US President Donald Trump to somehow acquire Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat), US scientists have drafted what they call a statement in solidarity with the island, open to any US-based researchers who have conducted research there. "A lot of people in the US - not just scientists - are very upset about the rhetoric directed towards Greenland. But scientists who work there feel it very personally," says paleoclimatologist Yarrow Axford, who is one of the creators of the initiative.

With the use of a bootstrap experimental setup consisting of a large polystyrene ball, a curved computer monitor, and a small straw that dispenses sugar water, Tóth managed to teach a rat how to play the classic 1994 video game Doom II. The rat's movements translated into rotations of the ball, which were then translated into movement inside the iconic first-person shooter. The sugar water served as a treat whenever the rat completed a milestone, like walking down a corridor.

The brain's main task is to minimize the gap between expectation and reality. This gap is what the Free Energy Principle defines as free energy. When the brain encounters unpredictable input, its stress level rises. And it's crucial to understand: this isn't about you as a person or a "user", it's about your brain. It's not something we consciously control, but it's something we can use.

"[My train of thought] let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds letting the water lift it and sink it until-you know the little tug-the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one's line."

Neuroscience and sports psychology (for example, acceptance and commitment therapy) show that anxiety, perfectionism, and fear of mistakes shrink cognitive flexibility and creativity. The more we obsess over results, the more our attention collapses into the future. This focus makes us less present with what is happening now. As mental performance coach Graham Betchart puts it: "Stress is the absence of presence."

Seneca, the ancient Stoic philosopher, wrote in Letters to Lucilius that it's not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. The film "Fight Club" delivered the modern remix centuries later when Tyler Durden-played with feral brilliance by Brad Pitt-growled: The things you own end up owning you. One was writing in imperial Rome. The other was railing against the Ikea-ification of the modern soul. Yet both saw the same truth: Desire, when unquestioned, becomes bondage.

Fundamentally, they are based on gathering an extraordinary amount of linguistic data (much of it codified on the internet), finding correlations between words (more accurately, sub-words called "tokens"), and then predicting what output should follow given a particular prompt as input. For all the alleged complexity of generative AI, at their core they really are models of language.

In philosophy, physicalism is the idea that everything can be explained in physical terms. Whether through atoms, electrons, quarks, fields, or other physical processes, physicalism holds that every phenomenon ultimately depends on the physical world. In the philosophy of mind, this means that everything about the mind can, in principle, be explained by the physical processes of the brain. We don't yet know all the details, but physicalism maintains that a complete explanation is possible.

A large meta-analysis pooling data from 129 independent tests across 67 published studies with over 17,700 participants found that self-affirmation produces significant, albeit modest, improvements in multiple aspects of well-being. These include stronger self-perception, enhanced general and social well-being, and reduced psychological barriers like anxiety and negative mood (Zhang, Chen, and Wang, 2025). And, these benefits are not fleeting; follow-up tests showed that long-term effects, especially in reducing psychological obstacles, were sometimes even stronger than immediate outcomes.

From Einstein's spacetime theory to the brain's internal clock, they examine whether time is an external property of the universe or a mental construct. By connecting physics and neuroscience, they unpack the idea that how we experience time may differ entirely from how it actually works. We created this video for Brain Briefs, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they're on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking.

Have you noticed how even well-planned organizational changes can leave teams feeling scattered, resistant, or quietly overwhelmed? Our research with more than 1,000 workplaces has found that 'poor change management' is consistently the most frequent cause of burnout in workplaces right now. The problem isn't a lack of project plans. Organizations have those in abundance. The gap is neurological. Too much focus on timelines and deliverables while overlooking what uncertainty does to people's brains.

Seeing an attractive face activates the brain's reward and social circuits releasing the feelgood hormone dopamine, writes Laura Elin Pigott, a senior lecturer in neurosciences and neurorehabilitation at London South Bank University. This hormone is also released when we happen to live up to a specific beauty standard, making this feel biologically gratifying. All is not lost though our perceptions can be retrained, apparently. The science makes it clear: our brains respond to what they're fed.

When we're under a lot of stress, our brains do something fascinating and often harmful to our relationships: They shift into scarcity mode. Often, people think of a scarcity mindset only as something related to our finances and resources: We don't have enough money, food, or time. But scarcity mindset, or the general belief that there isn't enough, impacts people in every area: their skills, their worth, their general capacity in life.

On TikTok, creator @olivia.unplugged called everyone out with a single post shared on Sept. 3, in which she discussed the downsides of multitasking. As an alternative to the chaos, she offered the 90-minute rule, which aims to boost your focus and productivity. "We've talked about the Pomodoro method," she said in the clip, which has over 155,000 likes. "But I raise you one: The 90-minute rule."

It was just enough time to break the spell of "sweet revenge" - a psychological phenomenon that, Kimmel argued, works very much like any other drug. When people are harboring a grievance, no matter its validity, Kimmel said, "It's a very real pain. And your brain really, really doesn't want pain - and so it instantly scrambles to rebalance that pain with pleasure."

As a journalist who covers AI, I hear from countless people who seem utterly convinced that ChatGPT, Claude, or some other chatbot has achieved "sentience." Or "consciousness." Or-my personal favorite-"a mind of its own." The Turing test was aced a while back, yes, but unlike rote intelligence, these things are not so easily pinned down. Large language models will claim to think for themselves, even describe inner torments or profess undying loves, but such statements don't imply interiority.

When you name what you're feeling you're not just talking. You're helping your brain shift gears. Research shows that labeling emotions reduces activity in the amygdala, the part of your brain that sounds the alarm. At the same time, it activates the prefrontal cortex, the part that helps you think clearly and make good decisions (Lieberman and colleagues, 2007). Naming your emotions helps you move from panic to power.

"We behave differently when we're anxious or when we're experiencing fear, versus when we are feeling courageous. And mice do the same," explained Alexandra Klein, postdoctoral researcher at UCSF, during a lab tour, adding that there are multiple experiments conducted in the lab to analyze a mouse's behavior - all this to understand human brain functions better and potentially cure diseases. The tour even showcased a real mouse brain in a test tube.