Using light and a little genetic engineering -- optogenetics -- Gero Miesenboeck has developed a way to control how living nerve cells work, and advanced understanding of how the brain controls behavior.

Brain research is something typically done in a hospital or lab, taking a look at a patient experiencing some sort of brain irregularity. Tan Le demonstrates how we can take a different approach to better understand the way the brain works in everyday situations.

Ed Boyden is a professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at the MIT Media Lab and the MIT McGovern Institute.

Stefano Mancuso is a founder of the study of plant neurobiology, which explores signaling and communication at all levels of biological organization, from genetics to molecules, cells and ecological communities.

An illuminating, if not slightly chilling, exploration of what makes a psychopath.

Pawan Sinha researches how our brains interpret what our eyes see -- and uses that research to give blind children the gift of sight.

Aditi Shankardass is pioneering the use of EEG technology to give children with developmental disorders their most accurate diagnosis.

Henry Markram is director of Blue Brain, a supercomputing project that can model components of the mammalian brain to precise cellular detail -- and simulate their activity in 3D. Soon he'll simulate a whole rat brain in real time.

A fantastic set of primers (with incredibly fun animations) all about what goes on in the brain.

Rebecca Saxe studies how we think about other people's thoughts. At the Saxelab at MIT, she uses fMRI to identify what happens in our brains when we consider the motives, passions and beliefs of others.

Trauma and PTSD rewire your brain -- especially your memory -- and can unearth destructive emotional responses when stirred. Could we eliminate these triggers without erasing the memories themselves? Enter neurologist Amy Milton's mind-blowing, memory-editing clinical research poised to defuse the damaging effects of painful remembered experienc...

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 déjà vu. Michael Molina explains how neuroimaging and cognitive psychology have narrowed down the theories that could explain that feeling you're having...

How does one experience synesthesia -- the neurological trait that combines two or more senses? Synesthetes may taste the number 9 or attach a color to each day of the week. Richard E. Cytowic explains the fascinating world of entangled senses and why we may all have just a touch of synesthesia. [Directed by TED-Ed, narrated by Richard E. Cytowic].

The workings of the human body? An absolute marvel. And yet, kind of bizarre. The facts in these talks point to both conclusions.

Do we experience the world as it really is? Find out with these talks that explain why we see the world the way we do.

Imagine the brain could reboot, updating its damaged cells with new, improved units. That may sound like science fiction — but it's a potential reality scientists are investigating right now. Ralitsa Petrova details the science behind neurogenesis and explains how we might harness it to reverse diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. [Directe...

In a 1990's study, participants recalled getting lost in a shopping mall as children. Some shared these memories in vivid detail, but there was one problem: none of these people had actually gotten lost in a mall. They produced these false memories after psychologists told them they'd gotten lost and parents confirmed it. So what's going on? Dan...

TED Fellow and chemosensory researcher Paule Joseph unveils the hidden power of a sense that's too often overlooked: smell. She delves into the science behind smell — from how it evokes memory and emotion to its potential for early disease detection — and advocates for the creation of a baseline test for taste and smell that could open the door ...

Two thirds of the population believes a myth that has been propagated for over a century: that we use only 10% of our brains. Hardly! Our neuron-dense brains have evolved to use the least amount of energy while carrying the most information possible -- a feat that requires the entire brain. Richard E. Cytowic debunks this neurological myth (and ...

Dina Zielinski brings biological data to life, from decoding mutations in cancer to encoding data in DNA.

Gregory Petsko is a biochemist who studies the proteins of the body and their biochemical function. Working with Dagmar Ringe, he's doing pioneering work in the way we look at proteins and what they do.

It's obvious that knowing more than one language can make certain things easier -- like traveling or watching movies without subtitles. But are there other advantages to having a bilingual (or multilingual) brain? Educator Mia Nacamulli details the three types of bilingual brains and shows how knowing more than one language keeps your brain heal...

The 3 pounds of jelly in our skulls allow us to reflect on our own consciousness -- and to make counterintuitive, irrational decisions. These talks explore why.

Siddharthan Chandran explores how to heal damage from degenerative disorders such as MS and motor neuron disease (ALS).

We don't often think of touch as being a vital part of movement, but touch is one part of a network that oversees all the sensations arising from the surface and interior of our bodies. Touch, pain, temperature, and our spatial awareness are regulated by this system. So, how exactly do our brains process these sensations? And what happens when s...

Beau Lotto seeks to pull aside the curtain of why we see what we do in order to create the possibility and agency in deciding what to perceive next.

Imagine, for a second, a duck teaching a French class. A ping-pong match in orbit around a black hole. A dolphin balancing a pineapple. You probably haven't actually seen any of these things. But you could imagine them instantly. How does your brain produce an image of something you've never seen? Andrey Vyshedskiy details the neuroscience of im...

The average 20-year-old knows between 27,000 and 52,000 different words. Spoken out loud, most of these words last less than a second. With every word, the brain has a quick decision to make: which of those thousands of options matches the signal? And about 98% of the time, the brain chooses the correct word. How is this possible? Gareth Gaskell...

Imagine a neuroscientist who has only ever seen black and white things, but she is an expert in color vision and knows everything about its physics and biology. If, one day, she sees color, does she learn anything new? Is there anything about perceiving color that wasn't captured in her knowledge? Eleanor Nelsen explains what this thought experi...

At his lab at Stanford School of Medicine, Tony Wyss-Coray studies aging -- and potential cures for it.