Stories by Christof Koch

An imagined conversation explores perspectives on the brain and consciousness

What happens in the brain when you see—really “see”—a friend's smile or scowl

Could a thin, enigmatic layer of nerve cells be a key component of the networks generating conscious experience?

What is consciousness? A neuroscientist's new book argues that it arises when information is broadcast throughout the brain

Panpsychism, the ancient doctrine that consciousness is universal, offers some lessons in how to think about subjective experience today

A new study finds a possible brain signature of consciousness in infants as young as five months

An encounter with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the scientific study of meditation

An electromagnetic gadget to measure the level of consciousness

Each concept—each person or thing in our everyday experience—may have a set of corresponding neurons assigned to it

Silicon “eyes” to help people with deteriorating vision are around the corner

What can we learn about consciousness from anesthetized patients?

New research sheds light--literally--on recall mechanisms

To the great surprise of many, psilocybin, a potent psychedelic, reduces brain activity

Physics and neurobiology can help us understand whether we choose our own destiny

Psychology and functional brain imaging disentangle two closely related processes, attention and consciousness

Functional MRI can peer inside your brain and watch you watching a YouTube clip

Cognitive psychology is mapping the capabilities we are unaware we possess

Asking people and computers what's wrong with manipulated photos may tell if there is "anybody home"

Using optical and genetic techniques, neuroscientists have identified an "on/off" switch for aggression in the brain

Join Scientific American's contest to show why conscious humans best unconscious computers and win a recently authored book by renowned neuroscientist Christof Koch

How will we know when we've built a sentient computer? By making it solve a simple puzzle

Some protozoa infect the brain of their host, shaping its behavior in ways most suited to the pathogen, even if it leads to the suicide of the host

An advanced brain-machine interface enables patients to control individual nerve cells deep inside their own brains

The ways in which brains differ from one another show up in the ways their owners perceive the world