the level of the whole human being

IN ONE SENSE there’s a clear boundary around the brain. Reach into a cracked-open skull, peel away some membranes, and you can wrap your hands all the way around one. And in school diagrams, it’s clear where the brain stops and the rest of the body begins. The brain is that pillowy ball of pink, sometimes with a tiny tail at the bottom, sometimes not, floating in the middle of the head. In one sense, there’s a clear boundary around the brain. That boundary is an illusion.

prosthetic memory

A pink balloon pops in front of your face -- pop -- and on a fragment of slate with a piece of chalk you write SEPTEMBER 15. A PINK BALLOON POPPED.

bracing the vine

schematic for a german pillbox

A human being is like a growing vine. By providing a latticework around which a growing vine is encouraged to wrap itself, a structure may constrain the pathways of the vine, limiting it to certain directions, curving it where it needs curving, straightening it where it needs straightening.

i made it all the way to the top

replacement parts for the brain

If your plastic doll lost one of her legs in a playground accident, you could pop it back into her hip socket. Even if her leg were badly mangled by a lawnmower or melted off with a blowtorch, you could order a replacement from a toy warehouse in China. Snap the new leg on -- she’s as good as she ever was.

hijacking jennifer aniston

Few hand-held objects can compete with the allure of the smartphone. Has there been a more enticing hand-toy in the history of the planet? The greenest, most gleaming emerald in the world wouldn’t hold anyone’s attention for more than a minute or two these days, and a compact mirror will eventually bore even the vainest among us. Smartphones, on the other hand, we see every day, and we never tire of looking at them. We marvel at the beauty of smartphones.

making meditation more accessible

The idea that meditation can positively impact one's mood and quality of life finds support, albeit limited, in the scientific literature. And since mood and quality of life can suffer greatly after significant damage to the brain, meditation is a potentially useful treatment in brain injury rehabilitation. But because of the particular learning styles and cognitive impairments that characterize the brain-injured patient, it needs to be made more accessible before it can become a practical and effective mode of treatment.