Consciousness

Portable sensors and artificial intelligence are helping researchers decode animal communication—and begin to talk back to nonhumans

New research findings, combined with philosophy, suggest free will is real but may not operate in the ways people expect

Neural circuits that label experiences as “good” or “bad” and the emotional meaninglessness of facial expressions are some standouts among 2022’s mind and brain breakthroughs

Van Gogh and Ramón y Cajal, like you’ve never seen them before, in the annual Art of Neuroscience Competition

Is it possible for an artificial intelligence to be sentient?

Eventually, the most ethical option might be to divert all resources toward building very happy machines

Neuroscientists may have discovered the brain regions that give rise to our identity

Fear of mortality might underlie physicists’ fondness for the anthropic principle, multiverses, superdeterminism and other shaky ideas

Theories that try to explain these big metaphysical mysteries fall short, making agnosticism the only sensible stance

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Suggestibility may explain why people “feel” vicarious pain or sensation in a fake hand

Both of two essential brain networks that switch roles—one is on when the other is off—shut down in unresponsive individuals