Failure as a Mirror There is a particular way in which the brain has been understood that science has discovered almost by accident. It was by looking at the brain that had failed. Every lesion, syndrome, and neurodegenerative disease functioned — and still functions — as an unexpected window into discovering a function that existed before the failure. It is almost paradoxical: we only fully understand what a region does when it stops working.

🧠 Inside the Brain There is something almost paradoxical about the human brain: it is the organ that allows us to understand the world and, at the same time, the very organ we are trying to understand. Everything we call the “self” passes through it. In other words: what sustains our identity is also, paradoxically, profoundly vulnerable. And perhaps this is yet another reminder of how the brain is, at the same time, sophisticated, vulnerable and biologically singular.