Do you like music? One would be hard-pressed to find someone who does not enjoy any type of music. Musicality is a trait that we share with birds and some other mammals such […]
Telling fact from fiction: a rationalist’s job
We are bombarded with misleading or even downright false ‘facts’ all the time. These can range from a sensationalist headline, the claims of quacks and charlatans, or even to more serious absurdities proposed […]
Oh Math!
Mathematics used to be the subject from school days where we LEARN how to sum, we MEMORIZE the multiplication table, we ADAPT to the calculator, we are CHALLENGED by real life problems, we […]
I am writing from a distant Future
Dear reader: I am writing from a distant Future. A time where words like school, teacher and education have acquired new meanings. Schools are not limited to walls, neighborhoods or cities anymore. Teachers […]
A makeshift classroom: education’s in the air!
Right now, I’m in a room full of people, most of whom I’ve never spoken to. But there’s one thing I know we have in common: we have spent the majority of our […]
Are you up to an enhancement?
Current exponential technological advances have sparked extensive debates regarding human enhancements, and where the limit lies between what is and not human, what is and not ethical. But what exactly is human enhancement? […]
Debugging five Brain Myths
This is part of a series of short clips addressing common brain myths. The clips were made for the Ar event “How the brain got its wrinkles, and other stories”.
The big and the small: variations on a theme
I was a neuron once Two baby giants met last evening, 23rd of November, to play Pong against each other at the Champalimaud Foundation (Figure 1). By waving colored cards at a camera’s eye, […]
Interview with Albino Oliveira-Maia
Albino Oliveira-Maia studied Medicine at the University of Porto and obtained his PhD at Duke University Medical Center in the USA. He is currently a resident in psychiatry and mental health at Centro Hospitalar […]
Engineering the brain with light and DNA
The brain is an amazing structure that mediates all of our cognitive skills: our senses, perceptions, our emotions and feelings, our movements, what we think, what we decide and what we do. In […]