Cafe Neuroscience

Pain helps us survive, and yet some people are born without the ability to feel pain, how?

Scientists have figured out how our brains process thoughts and the explanation will blow your mind.

Being able to sense time helps us do everything from waking and sleeping to knowing precisely when to catch a ball that's hurtling towards us. And we owe all these abilities to an interconnected system of timekeepers in our brains. But how do they work? Marco A. Sotomayor details how human bodies naturally tell time.

After uncovering three giant neurons, scientists could be one step closer to pinpointing where consciousness lives in the brain.

A new study has found cockroaches can sense the Earth's magnetic field, an ability called magnetoreception. Could humans have this sense, too?

Your eyes aren't always telling the truth.

Written by Annik Carson, Gregory Brown, Rachel Salt and Mitchell Moffit

To human eyes, the world at night is a formless canvas of grey. Many nocturnal animals, on the other hand, experience a rich and varied world, bursting with details, shapes, and colors.

Your eyes and brain are pretty amazing!

When it comes to what you bite, chew and swallow, your choices have a direct and long-lasting effect on the most powerful organ in your body: your brain.

What Happens When Your Brain Is Split In Two - And You Survive?

It starts with a tickle in your throat that becomes a cough. Your muscles begin to ache, you grow irritable, and you lose your appetite. It's official: you've got the flu. It's logical to assume that this miserable medley of symptoms is the result of the infection coursing through your body - but is that really the case? Marco A. Sotomayor explains what's actually making you feel sick.

How do schools of fish swim in harmony? How do the tiny cells in your brain give rise to the complex thoughts, memories, and consciousness that are you?

In this video Dustin talks about persistence of vision.

You might have felt it -- the feeling that you've experienced something before, but, in reality, the experience is brand new. There are over 40 theories that attempt to explain the phenomenon of deja vu. Michael Molina explains how neuroimaging and cognitive psychology have narrowed down the theories that could explain that feeling you're having...again.

What is the specious present? And how do our brains perceive time?

It's 4am, and the big test is in 8 hours. You've been studying for days, but you still don't feel ready. Should you drink another cup of coffee and spend the next few hours cramming? Or should you go to sleep? Shai Marcu defends the latter option, showing how sleep restructures your brain in a way that's crucial for how our memory works.

Why is it so hard to remember someone's name?

His talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. "The earth is flat". "Home computers are useless". "Humanity is condemned to be starved". "Women are born inferior". Throughout the years, pioneering scientific discoveries overturn established theories, vibrant societies transcend dominant perceptions, bold individuals expand physical and intellectual limits proving everything wrong: This is the way in which we seek to improve our lives and to deepen the understanding of the world around us. At TEDxLimassol we are searching for the next refute in small and large things: In the universe and subatomic particles. In our societies and in our bodies. In our behavior, attitudes and perceptions. In our mental, physical and personal capabilities. Proving everything wrong is always the right thing to do.

Have you ever wished you could record your dreams and watch them later? It may be possible sooner than you think...

*Yaaawwwwwn* Did just reading the word make you feel like yawning yourself? Known as contagious yawning, the reasons behind this phenomenon have been attributed to both the physiological and psychological. It's been observed in children as young as four and even in dogs! Claudia Aguirre visits the many intriguing theories that might explain contagious yawning.