Mind

Hacks 62-69 The story of the brain is a story of embodiment, of how much the brain takes for granted the world we're in and the body that carries it about. For instance, we assume a certain level of stability in the world. We make assumption...

Lengthy delays in sensory feedback and in the commands that are sent to your muscles mean that what you see now happened a few moments ago and what you're doing now you planned back then. To get around the problem caused by these delays in neural...

The identity of the receptor indicates which part of your skin has been touched. But how do you know exactly where that bit of your body is so you can swat the fly? As we move our bodies around in space we have to remap and take account of our cha...

Our brains are constantly updated with information about the position of our bodies. Rather than relying entirely on one form of sensory feedback, our bodies use both visual and tactile feedback in concert to allow us to work out where our limbs ...

Most of us can identify a ticklish area on our body that, when touched by someone else, makes us laugh. Even chimpanzees, when tickled under their arms, respond with a sound equivalent to laughter; rats, too, squeal with pleasure when tickled. Ti...

We've got one pathway for consciously perceiving the worldrecognizing what's whatand another for getting involvedusing our bodies to interact with the world out there. The most basic aspects of the visual world are processed altogether...

How do we understand and act upon objects around us? We might perceive the shape and colors of a cup of coffee, recognize what it is, and then decide that the most appropriate movement would be to lift it by the handle toward our mouth. However, ...

But why is this so? And do you always prefer the same hand, or does it vary with what you are doing? Does the way people vary their hand preference differ between right- and left-handers? The world is a right-handed one, as will be obviou...

There's a grain of truth in all the best myths, and this is true for the left-brain/right-brain myth. Our cortex is divided into left and right hemispheres, and they do seem to process information differently, but exactly how they do this isn't l...