When you think about the brain, you might imagine a map with neatly labelled regions, one part for vision, one for language, another for movement. This picture is appealing because it gives the sense that our mental life can be cleanly divided into separate boxes. But the reality is far more fascinating, and a little messy.
Scroll through any social media feed and you’ll find people sharing their highs and lows, sometimes openly, sometimes between the lines. For years, researchers have hoped that artificial intelligence (AI) could learn to recognize early signs of depression from our words. The idea is simple and powerful: if language carries emotional fingerprints, algorithms might one day detect distress before it becomes a crisis.
But what if these systems end up hearing some experiences more clearly than others?
Worrying, overthinking, replaying things that happened in the past. Your thoughts keep spinning around – sometimes useful, but they can also trap you in a negative, recurring spiral. Researchers at the Donders Institute are trying to find out how we can break free from such streams of thought. Does mindfulness help? Or is simple distraction enough?
In a previous blog, we discussed the concept of working memory gating: the brain’s mechanism
What if we were able to simultaneously view the brain from two perspectives, one informed by Indigenous wisdom and the other by science? Together, these perspectives offer not only a sharper vision but also a kinder and more inclusive way to understand the brain.
It was only halfway through the twentieth century that autism was given a clear name and definition. Yet doctors at that time already noticed that some autistic children also had epileptic seizures. Today we know that this connection is no coincidence: autism and epilepsy have more in common than once thought.
New research shows that even so-called “aligned” AIs — trained to follow human values and avoid harmful outputs — still reflect stereotypes. Even GPT-4, one of the most advanced models, repeats the very biases it was meant to suppress.
Fictional characters intrigue us not only because of their stories, but also because they reflect deep truths about human nature. In this series, we explore the minds of iconic characters from film and television, analyzing their behavior through the lens of neuroscience and psychology. In this edition, we turn our attention to Homer from The Simpsons.
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.
Split-brain surgery, intended to treat severe epilepsy, has revealed surprising insights about consciousness. Does dividing the brain divide the mind?
Persistent pigeonholes in the brain 
Do colours appear the same to everyone? 
Can I learn from a text by listening to it while I sleep? 
