Consciousness is the smallest player in the operations of the brain.

My lab and academic work fill my day from about 9 am to 7 p.m. Then I zoom out the lens to work on my other writing.

When we're in a human body, we don't care about universal collapse - instead, we care only about a meeting of the eyes, a glimpse of bare flesh, the caressing tones of a loved voice, joy, love, light, the orientation of a house plant, the shade of a paint stroke, the arrangement of hair.

Everybody knows the power of deadlines - and we all hate them. But their effectiveness is undeniable.

At least 15 percent of human females possess a genetic mutation that gives them an extra (fourth) type of color photoreceptor - and this allows them to discriminate between colors that look identical to the majority of us with a mere three types of color photoreceptors.

We don't really understand most of what's happening in the cosmos. Is there any afterlife? Who knows.

One of the most impressive features of brains - and especially human brains - is the flexibility to learn almost any kind of task that comes its way.