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Understanding How the Brain Constructs Our Perception of Reality

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Reading Time: 6 minutes As Professor Alexandru Babeș explains, the human brain contains nearly 100 billion neurons (a number comparable to all the stars in our galaxy) and at least as many glial cells that play an essential role in brain function. On average, each neuron connects with (and receives information from) about 10,000 other neurons, resulting in approximately 10 to the power of 15 synapses (as the contacts between two neurons are called), that is, a quadrillion synapse. Our brain is an incredibly complicated mechanism, so Emily Dickinson’s poem, …

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Tracing the Reach of Storytelling

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Reading Time: 8 minutes In every story told, there lies meaning-making and believe-making. We catch imagery in words and worlds because we alter or construct our reality, shaping how we perceive and interact with everything around us. Storytelling began with simple forms. In his study of narrative development, Arthur Ransome identified two primary types in the dawn of storytelling: the ‘Warning Example’ and the ‘Embroidered Exploit.’  But in the beginning storytelling was not an affair of pen and ink. It began with the Warning Examples naturally told by …

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