Neuroscience

Shifting fields takes courage, but if a tenured professor can’t take the leap to address the ecological emergency, who can, asks Adam Aron

Shane O’Mara is both fascinated and disappointed by a bold attempt to provide an ‘overarching framework’ for how the brain works

Book of the week: Jane O’Grady is impressed but not wholly convinced by an attempt to solve one of the most celebrated philosophical challenges

Steven Rose is unconvinced by an ambitious attempt to explain consciousness

The neuroscientist discusses how she was born into research, her fascination with the human heart, and the joys of drawing graphs

Book of the week: Steven Rose praises a bold new attempt to explain the origins and nature of consciousness

Book of the week: We all like to make-believe, says Dale Salwak, who wishes the author had not revealed so many secrets

Do we learn incorrect and harmful lessons from our hard-wired love of narrative? asks Gail Marshall

Human beings’ need for religion goes far beyond the management of emotions, says Ursula King

This unusual and intellectually invigorating book should be an essential starting point for feeling our way ahead in this field, says Shane O’Mara

Scientists wouldn’t cause unnecessary suffering to humans or animals, so why are they so careless with numbers, asks biostatistician

Analysis from THE’s data team suggests big differences among disciplines in the amount of scholarship that fails to garner a citation 

Do we invent most of what we think in the moment? Tristan Bekinschtein struggles to wrap his head around a thesis arguing that we have no desires, motives or fears

University says Thomas Jessell violated university policies and values

Lab bench discoveries made during the 1800s were felt in the playhouse, says Matthew Broome

The Saudi philosopher, neuroscientist and founder of the Al-Rodhan prize seeks inspiration from Immanuel Kant and classical architecture

Claudia Pama launches campaign calling on research bodies to introduce proper sick pay provision

Matthew Reisz meets the scholars for whom one discipline is not enough

Scheme to bolster ties between West and Middle East and Asia backed by 122 researchers, including 29 Nobel laureates

Higher education needs to tap far more effectively into the essential human ability to reimagine the world, claim authors

An unsettling study of patients in comas reveals that consciousness endures, says Shane O’Mara

Book of the week: Richard Joyner on how insomnia damages our well-being – and how to get a good night’s rest

What brings joy? This week, as part of our week of articles on #HEhappiness, academics from five disciplines address this most difficult of questions

Are humans just a ‘pack of neurons’? Steven Rose is frustrated by a poorly argued challenge to the materialist consensus in neuroscience

Publisher argues Topics platform will provide ‘breadth, depth and currency of knowledge’, and remove the need to leave its website

A neuroscientist and explorer who became ‘a great champion of inclusion and belonging’ has died

Pioneering neuroscientist who analysed the brain of Albert Einstein remembered

We talk to the neuroscientist and sex researcher about prudish attitudes, personal threats and what goes on in a sex research lab

Shane O’Mara on a profound and humorous exploration of human consciousness

Recognising the dominant role of intelligence in academic performance is key to ending the underperformance of poor and minority students, says Richard J. Haier

Analysis of more than 700,000 biomedical texts reveals growing use of jargon

Steven Rose enjoys a philosopher’s deep dive with some uniquely intelligent company

Look at the data. The truth is out there, but all must face what they find, says Shane O’Mara

Tristan Bekinschtein lauds a Nobel laureate’s fusion of art interpretation and analysis with the internal mechanisms by which we see works of art

Are our mental faculties really too unevolved to keep us afloat in an ocean of digital distraction? asks Shane O’Mara

The grouping of subjects such as neuroscience and psychiatry with cheaper disciplines will lead to what critics say is a failure to fairly fund mental health research

Book of the week: There’s a strong political current running through a bold study skewering myths, says Louise Whiteley

But transferring to an institution in another country generally has less of a ‘positive impact’, finds paper

A neuroscientist and philosopher who offered many sharp insights into how our brains generate perceptions of the world has died

Simon Underdown on the novel notion that four walls were key to our development as a species

Luna Centifanti on the important role that emotions play in our ability to assimilate knowledge

Book of the week: Ethics aside, no useful information is to be gained from ‘coercive questioning’, says Steven Rose

Researchers must tell a good tale about their work without skewing the science, Cait MacPhee says

A study of fear and how to cope with it is admirably unafraid to take sides, finds Tristan A. Bekinschtein

From emotions to waiting tables, our physical frame deserves more credit, finds Joanna Bryson

Bibliometric analysis concludes lower-quality thresholds in 2014 are more likely explanation for doubling of top-rated research

Dalmeet Singh Chawla rounds up the recent discussion about single figure publications

Daydreaming relies on memory and our past helps us imagine future possibilities, finds Luna Centifanti

A manual for ambitious executives is dangerously close to spreading neuromyths, says Steven Rose

A detailed study of perception is a valuable primer on the subject, finds Tristan Bekinschtein

Simon Underdown extols a study that looks beyond stones and bones to understand how the past shaped the brain

A lack of disciplinary expertise in digital cultures undermines this study, finds Tara Brabazon

Tristan Bekinschtein would prefer to see all the evidence considered when determining what makes us the way we are

Tristan Bekinschtein welcomes a work showing that research into who we are can be based on science

When is a disease not a disease? asks Rose Anne Kenny

Is utilitarianism the best way to resolve disputes in the global village? Natalie Gold investigates

Alan Collins considers the ‘reminiscence effect’

Patient H. M.’s personal tragedy was humanity’s gain, says Morgan Barense

Tristan Bekinschtein recommends a challenge to our notions of consciousness and cognition