Is it Nature or Nurture, congenital or acquired? The answer is actually quite simple: everything is Nature and Nurture. The structure of the brain determines what we can learn and what we learn determines the structure of the brain.
Where am I? Our internal GPS
London taxi drivers know every street in London, as well as all the restaurants, post offices, shops and more. In our brain there is an ingenious GPS. And this GPS is integrated with our life history and emotions. Try doing that with a navigator!
Where are the limits of the body?
Where does your body end? All fairly clear to you, but not to your brain. A tool you hold in your hand is a part of your body, and sometimes a rubber hand can seem like your real hand. How can this be?
The placebo effect doesn’t exist
Depression lifts with placebo pills, joint pain disappears after a placebo operation. Changes in the brain can be observed after the use of a placebo. How do such effects of sham treatment come about? Placebos do have effects. But THE placebo effect does not exist.
Growth and pruning: the brain of a child
A newborn baby cannot speak, it sees almost nothing, and controlled movements of its arms and legs are minimal. After being born he learns through significant changes in the brain. These are a condition for and also a result of this learning process.
The Ego is dead, long live the ego
The Ego does not exist, it is an illusion, a trick of the brain. This claim of neuroscientists may scare you. But is it true? Or does something like an ego exist? And if so, what is it?
Recognising faces
You walk down a street and nearly bump into someone; you look at their face and in a fraction of a second you know who it is. It does not really matter if you see them in profile or full face. And one can do this with thousands of faces; a clever trick of our brains. How do we recognise faces?
Autism is hereditary, but you don’t inherit autism
The probability of having autism is greater for an individual if it runs in their family. This suggests hereditary factors. But what do you actually inherit? What you inherit is a predisposition for a specific development of your brain. This, together with what you experience while growing up, can lead to the development of a mild to severe form of autism.
Let the sunshine in
How would we manage, if we could not visualise three-dimensional objects from flat two-dimensional diagrams? An amazing feat our brain performs. What role does predetermined programming play in this? That is related to how the sun shines on us.
The parable of the murderous brain
In a country with golden sand dunes by the sea, each year saw more murders committed than the year before. Neuroscientists had proven that the murderers brain made him commit the murder. The judges were stuck. How could they solve this problem?