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Neurotypica — On how the brain actually works

• [article] Stupid Questions — 1 Jan 2026
  Nature is just nurture over time, and nurture is far more obviously in charge; nothing changes if free will <em>isn’t</em> real; and the same is true of consciousness. They’re just complicated debates with no real outcomes.
• [article] Beyond System 1 and System 2 — 13 Jun 2025
  System 1 vs System 2 is a useful shorthand, but our minds aren’t two-speed engines—they’re multi-process coalitions of specialised agents working in parallel and in series.
• [article] Not brain regions, brain networks — 14 Feb 2025
  Brain networks are groups of brain regions that work together. There are only a handful of interesting ones, but you can actually use them to understand human behaviour.
• [article] Mini-brains inside the brain — 7 Feb 2025
  If you look closely, you’ll see that our ability to speak just hides the fact that other processes are running the show. Find a way to cut the language regions out, and you see other little consciousnesses start to take over.
• [article] Anticipation beats reward — 31 Jan 2025
  Basically, reward and ancipation both use the same system, but differently. Anticipation seems to come in through the senses and get sent throughout the brain, but pleasure seems to come in from more evaluatey bits—maybe to help us learn what’s rewarding.
• [article] Brain structures and behaviour — 8 Nov 2024
  The brain is an <em>integrator</em>. It takes in information from all over the body, and puts it together to decide how you should act. This messy integration acts as a bottleneck, forcing the brain to streamline as much as possible. Rarely does it try to ‘think’.
• [article] Nervous Energy — 25 Oct 2024
  The nervous system teaches us the most important lesson about human behaviour: the main thing our body does is transform the world into adaptive responses, and the nervous system is at the very core of it. But beyond that, it’s mostly just a mess.
• [article] How neurons influence behaviour — 30 Aug 2024
  Neurons link into ‘pathways’ that map perceptions to actions. But, neural pathways don’t just link one thing to one other thing—each pathway is involved at many things at once. So to change one, you have to also contend with all the rest.
• [article] Speaking in tongues — 23 Aug 2024
  Glossolalia has a unique pattern of neural activity, distinct from psychopathologies and even other trance-like states. So, the feeling underneath is special, but the actual speaking itself seems learned. It makes you wonder where that feeling comes from.
• [article] How does the brain 'think'? Pt. III — 26 Jul 2024
  The brain almost certainly has many processes that contribute to any decision. Here we have one that cares about what it sees, and maybe another process that decides what to do about what it sees.
• [article] How does the brain 'think'? Pt. II — 19 Jul 2024
  The brain probably enhances colour information, inhibits word information, or some combination to solve the Stroop task. I found inhibition, but really, this is more of a catalogue of how hard brain science really is.
• [article] How does the brain 'think'? Pt. I — 12 Jul 2024
  It’s not exactly clear how often humans really ‘think’. Most of what we do is automatic—habitual responding to a predictable world. But there are a few puzzling examples of thinking, and we don’t really know how they work.
• [article] Memory and imagination both use the same architecture — 28 Jun 2024
  Memory takes the form of neural maps in the brain, tying our experiences and perceptions together. These maps are the same maps we use to process the world, and imagine the future. Mapping memories to old memories is the way to think about it, not storing memories in a bank.
• [article] Purple doesn't exist — 18 Apr 2024
  We see short light waves as blue, medium as green, and long as red. When the brain senses short (blue) and long (red) but not medium (green), it ‘makes up’ a colour to fill in the blank.
• [article] Overengineering 'calm down' — 21 Mar 2024
  Pop-psych theories on stress often use complex jargon to describe fundamentally simple concepts. They act less to inform, and more to reassure us, fascinate us, and absolve us of responsibility.