A plain-language encyclopedia of the brain — history and pioneers, neurons and synapses, brain chemistry and anatomy, senses, memory, emotion, sleep and consciousness, disorders and treatments, brain-computer interfaces and AI. Every entry with a plain-English summary, everyday examples and links to the concepts you need first.
86 billion neurons · one encyclopedia
183 entries across 20 topics and a 73‑term glossary — from the Edwin Smith papyrus and Cajal's neurons to optogenetics, connectomes and brain-computer interfaces. Each written in plain English, with everyday examples and links to the ideas you need first.
Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system — the brain, spinal cord and nerves — and of how its cells and circuits produce everything from a heartbeat to a memory.
No background needed. Everyday language, everyday examples — the place to start.
Builds on the basics. Introduces the real vocabulary and the mechanisms behind it.
The detailed machinery — ions, receptors, circuits and methods. Read the linked concepts first.
Intermediate
Place cells that fire in one spot, grid cells that tile space in triangles: how John O'Keefe and May-Britt and Edvard Moser discovered the brain's positioning system and shared the 2014 Nobel Prize.
Beginner
Neuroscientist, neurologist, neurosurgeon, psychiatrist, neuropsychologist, neuroengineer, data scientist, science writer: the many paths into brain science, what they involve and how to get started.
Intermediate
The brain's central switchboard: a pair of egg-shaped structures that relay and gate almost every sensory signal on its way to the cortex, and help regulate sleep, attention and consciousness.
Intermediate
From air pressure waves to music and speech: the eardrum and ossicles, the cochlea's piano-keyboard of hair cells, sound localisation with microsecond precision, hearing loss and cochlear implants.
Intermediate
Far more than tidiness: intrusive obsessions, compulsions that relieve anxiety but feed the cycle, the cortico-striatal-thalamic loop, and treatment with exposure and response prevention, SSRIs and brain stimulation.
Beginner
James-Lange, Cannon-Bard, two-factor, basic emotion circuits and constructed emotion: a century of theories about where feelings come from, and what brain research says now.
Beginner
James Parkinson's 'shaking palsy', the loss of dopamine neurons, alpha-synuclein and Lewy bodies, motor and non-motor symptoms, and treatments from L-dopa to deep brain stimulation.
Intermediate
Brain scans in the courtroom, fMRI lie detection, the teenage brain in Supreme Court decisions, tumours and responsibility, eyewitness memory — and the limits of using group-level brain science to judge individuals.
Advanced
EPSPs and IPSPs, temporal and spatial summation, shunting inhibition and dendritic spikes: how a single neuron combines thousands of inputs into one decision.
Intermediate
The brain's own opioids, substance P, orexin, neuropeptide Y and more: slower, longer-acting chemical messengers built from short chains of amino acids.
Beginner
A guided walk from the bottom of the brain to the top: brainstem, cerebellum, the deep structures of the forebrain, and the folded cerebral cortex — with what each part is best known for.
Beginner
Hundreds of odour receptor types, the direct road from nose to emotion and memory, five basic tastes, the debunked tongue map — and why flavour is mostly smell.
