In this blog series, we’ve been discussing consciousness and how it relates to various cognitive functions, such as attention, emotions, and self-regulation. While “consciousness” can be defined in ...

Consciousness has long been treated as philosophy’s most stubborn mystery, yet a growing body of neuroscience is now tying ...

People have long pondered what consciousness actually is. Consciousness seems very different from other biological functions—like some sort of nonmaterial essence within our heads. Thoughts and ...

What does it mean to be conscious? People have been thinking and writing about this question for millennia. Yet many things about the conscious mind remain a mystery, including how to measure and ...

Ever since we published our very first issue 123 years ago—yes, we’re old—Popular Mechanics has endeavored to help you understand all kinds of technological marvels, from the tools in your shed, to ...

Consciousness is the ultimate question of existence. Nothing is more essential than our experience. Yet we have no consensus, and perhaps no clue, about what it actually is. The trouble, in part, is ...

Christof Koch, PhD, is a physicist who has made a career out of empirically studying consciousness. When Koch began to study consciousness 35 years ago, people thought it couldn’t be done by ...

HOW WOULD YOU REACT TO THE THOUGHT that the very chair you’re sitting in is made up of tiny particles that harness some type of rudimentary experience? Actually, how would you feel if we told you that ...

More than 400 years ago Galileo showed that many everyday phenomena—such as a ball rolling down an incline or a chandelier gently swinging from a church ceiling—obey precise mathematical laws. For ...