The article describes a cognitive bias known as 'the curse of knowledge,' in which deep expertise and strong conviction about an issue actually make someone worse at persuading others. This happens because experts struggle to imagine what it's like not to know what they know, distorting how they communicate with less-informed audiences. The piece draws on findings from behavioral economics and neuroscience to explain the phenomenon and offers an alternative approach to persuasion.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-11-02
At the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, surgeon Ahmed Toma and Francis Crick Institute scientist Mihaly Kollo tested a hair-thin Neuropixels probe in a patient undergoing shunt surgery for normal pressure hydrocephalus. The probe, capable of recording activity from hundreds of neurons simultaneously, picked up brain responses as researchers played repeated word pairs to the patient. Neuropixels have been used in animal research since 2017 but are now being trialled in human surgical settings.
nature.com
· 2026-11-02
A team led by Harvard neuroscientist Sam Gershman is attempting to reproduce James McConnell's 1960s claim that trained flatworms could pass learned behavior to other worms through cannibalism. Research assistant Zachary Kelso has spent months collecting wild planarians from rivers and lakes across the US because worms bought from biological supply companies failed to respond to conditioning in the lab.
wired.com
· 2026-10-31
A pre-print study from University of California, Berkeley neuroscientists found that human and macaque brains appear to cycle between 'conscious epochs' and 'suppressed micro-epochs' at a rate of about 15 times per second. Using anaglyph glasses to show different faces to each eye while monitoring neural activity, researchers observed subjects' brains actively shift to perceive a newly introduced face rather than struggling with both overlapping images at once.
futurism.com
· 2026-10-29
A Myriad educational article walks through building a simulated creature called a 'spark' using minimal neural circuits—starting with one light-sensing neuron wired to one motor neuron, then expanding to two eyes and two flippers. The demonstrations show that even these simple wiring setups produce surprisingly complex, sometimes counterintuitive movement patterns, such as a spark that appears to avoid light rather than seek it.
aatishb.com
· 2026-10-27
A study led by researcher Wing found that experienced birdwatchers show higher levels of organisation and coherence in certain brain regions compared with novices of the same age. These regions overlapped with areas more active during bird identification tasks. Brain organisation typically declines with age and is tied to reduced cognitive function, but experts appeared to retain more of it.
bbc.com
· 2026-10-23
Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital found that a phospholipase enzyme called Pla2g2f rises with age in mouse hippocampal cells and is associated with lower brain inflammation and healthier neuron connections. Mice engineered to lack the gene showed increased inflammation and neuron degradation with age, while mice with excess amounts had less inflammation and performed better on spatial memory tests. The findings, published October 15 in Nature Neuroscience, also drew on human and cell-based data.
nature.com
· 2026-10-16
Researchers Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel received the 2026 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their work on optogenetics, a technique that uses light to control individual neurons. Their discoveries, rooted in microbiology research on algae, enable precise mapping and study of living brains, advancing understanding of neurological functions and diseases.
wired.com
· 2026-10-07
Scientists led by Michal Irani at the Weizmann Institute built an AI 'brain decoder' that analyzes fMRI scans to reconstruct images a person is viewing. The system was trained on high-resolution public brain scan data from eight subjects and uses a diffusion model to generate visual recreations of what the person saw, with the work presented at two recent conferences.
futurism.com
· 2026-10-07
Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their pioneering work in optogenetics, a technique that enables precise control of neural activity. Their research has opened new avenues for studying neurological and psychiatric conditions.
wsj.com
· 2026-10-05
The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was granted to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel for their groundbreaking work in optogenetics, a technique that uses light to control neurons. Hegemann and Nagel identified a light-sensitive protein in algae in the early 2000s, which Deisseroth and colleagues later used to activate neurons with light pulses.
nature.com
· 2026-10-05
The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for developing optogenetics, a technique that allows researchers to control neurons using light. The foundational research behind the method dates back to the early 2000s, and the field previously received the Brain Prize in 2013, which also recognized three other scientists not included in this year's Nobel.
nature.com
· 2026-10-05
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