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Cognition and intelligence

Essays and videos offering insights into the self, relationships, cognition and neuroscience

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Yellow slime mould on textured tree bark, showcasing intricate branching patterns.

essayBiology

Memories without brains

Certain slime moulds can make decisions, solve mazes and remember things. What can we learn from the blob?

Matthew Sims

A child in a pink raincoat jumping in a puddle on a city street on a rainy day with terraced houses in the background.

essayPhilosophy of mind

Suffused with causality

Humans have a superpower that makes us uniquely capable of controlling the world: our ability to understand cause and effect

Mariel Goddu

videoCognition and intelligence

A father forgets his child’s name for the first time in this poetic reflection on memory

4 minutes

Photo of two surgeons in blue scrubs and masks focused on a procedure, with one surgeon’s glasses reflecting the surgery.

essayMedicine

When I lost my intuition

For years, I practised medicine with cool certainty, comfortable with life-and-death decisions. Then, one day, I couldn’t

Ronald W Dworkin

Photo of a man in a red shirt praying on a church pew, hands clasped, with a notebook beside him in dim lighting.

essayCognition and intelligence

The power of prayer

Praying is a cognitive practice full of problem-solving resources. You can learn from it even if you don’t want to do it

Eleanor Schille-Hudson

Close-up of a dog with blue and brown eyes, grey and white fur, looking directly at the camera.

videoNeuroscience

Dog vision is a trendy topic, but what can we really know about how they see?

11 minutes

Close-up image of a jumping spider showing its detailed features, including multiple eyes, hairy legs, and fangs. The spider is facing forward with a white background.

essayEvolution

What is intelligent life?

Our human minds hold us back from truly understanding the many brilliant ways that other creatures solve their problems

Abigail Desmond & Michael Haslam

Rainy forest road with yellow railings on either side and autumn trees with colourful leaves lining the road. Wet reflective surface and slight haze from the rain.

essayNeuroscience

How to make a map of smell

We can split light by a prism, sounds by tones, but surely the world of odour is too complex and personal? Strangely, no

Jason Castro

Bees push coloured tabs to access a sugary reward

videoCognition and intelligence

What’s this buzz about bees having culture? Inside a groundbreaking experiment

8 minutes

Close-up of a person’s face in low light, showing their ear with an earring and textured skin.

essayPhilosophy of mind

What colour do you see?

New research is uncovering the hidden differences in how people experience the world. The consequences are unsettling

Gary Lupyan

Three toy cars made from colourful sweets on a wooden table. The car wheels are peppermint discs and chocolate coins.

essayCognition and intelligence

Are you an artistic genius?

Maybe not, but if that’s the threshold you use for creativity in your life, you are coming at the problem all wrong

James C Kaufman

A Panama hat rests on a bed bathed in afternoon light filtering through gauze curtains. There is a slight motion blur

essayConsciousness and altered states

Déjà vu

Have you been here before? The eerie sensation is the shadow of your mind searching inward for clues to its own survival

Anne Cleary

Painting of a twilight scene with a setting sun, a grassy field, trees, and small houses with smoke coming from chimneys. A person stands in the middle of the field.

essayStories and literature

The sonnet machine

A sonnet contains an emotional drama of illusion and deception, crisis and resolution, crafted to make us think and feel

Timothy Hampton

Illustration of an underwater scene with an octopus, coral, and various marine flora in blue and pink tones. Tentacles and sea plants are elaborately detailed.

essayBiology

Octopus time

We humans are forward-facing, gravity-bound plodders. Can the liquid motion of the octopus radicalise our ideas about time?

David Borkenhagen

Close-up of a sea snail with sand grains on its shell and long, bright yellow antennae against a dark background.

essayComputing and artificial intelligence

What has feelings?

As the power of AI grows, we need to have evidence of its sentience. That is why we must return to the minds of animals

Kristin Andrews & Jonathan Birch

A group of four women and a man, all holding their fingers to their temples in concentration, with the man wearing a turban adorned with a star.

essayPhilosophy of mind

Super-cooperators

Clear and direct telepathic communication is unlikely to be developed. But brain-to-brain links still hold great promise

Gary Lupyan & Andy Clark

A robot and a person play a retro video game on a TV. The robot has 13 points, the person has 1, and the screen shows the game with a score of 003.

videoComputing and artificial intelligence

Teaching an AI to beat video games still takes human imagination

5 minutes

Silhouettes of three people walking dogs on a sand dune under a clear sky, creating shadows on the rippled sand.

essayKnowledge

A sliver of reality

Science and mathematics may never fully capture the physical universe. Are there hard limits to human intelligence?

David H Wolpert

Japanese macaques relaxing in a hot spring with a snowy landscape in the background. Several monkeys are at the water’s edge, while others are bathing.

essayEvolution

Connected-up-brains

Bat friends, monkeys sharing, and humans holding hands: the brains of social animals synchronise and expand one another

Sofia Quaglia

A person in a thick, shaggy costume standing on bales of hay outdoors, chained at one foot. Rural landscape with trees and houses in the background.

essayKnowledge

Imaginology

We need a new kind of approach to learning that shifts imagination from the periphery to the foundation of all knowledge

Stephen T Asma

Close-up of a small tadpole with a rounded head and a long, thin tail, shown against a white background.

essayCognition and intelligence

Modular cognition

Powerful tricks from computer science and cybernetics show how evolution ‘hacked’ its way to intelligence from the bottom up

Michael Levin & Rafael Yuste

An older man in a suit and striped tie gestures while speaking in a cosy, book-filled office with a globe and a decorated wall hanging.

videoPhilosophy of mind

Embodied cognition seems intuitive, but philosophy can push it to some strange places

14 minutes

Man with bandaged nose sits in a car and looks at a woman in a hat, with a scenic backdrop at dusk.

essayStories and literature

The art of the plot twist

Some twists infuriate; others are brilliant. But they both use the surprise story as a self-exploding confidence game

Vera Tobin

A girl in a red outfit playfully poses in front of 3D art as though emerging from a giant whale-like creature’s mouth.

essayHuman evolution

Homo imaginatus

Imagination isn’t just a spillover from our problem-solving prowess. It might be the core of what human brains evolved to do

Philip Ball