Ever gotten the chills while listening to music? Research suggests that these chills occur when music breaks our expectations. While goosebumps once served survival functions for our ancestors, today they reveal the emotional impact music can have on us.
From the moment you are born, you live in one body. This body grounds your perspective: you see, hear, and feel the world from this single point of view. Yet this also means you are stuck inside it. You can never truly know what it is like to be someone else. Or can you? With a few clever tricks, your brain can be persuaded that you have stepped into another body. This is the body-swap illusion.
Love takes on many shapes and forms; it can move mountains, remain unrequited, or last a lifetime. It has the power to make us feel like the happiest person in the world, but also the saddest. Arguably the most powerful emotion of all, love can largely be explained by what happens in our brains. But can it really be reduced to biochemical signals?
Why we dream has been a mystery for centuries. Neuroscientists in California have come up with a possible answer: Dreams might be a way for the brain to protect itself.