NeuroNuggets

Why Do You Like What You Like? Have you ever sat at a table and wondered how two people can eat the exact same food and have completely different reactions? One person bites into cilantro and swears it tastes like soap. Another finds it fresh and delicious. Some people can’t live without black coffee, while others wince at the first sip. It feels personal, almost like taste is part of identity. But it all starts with the same thing: taste buds. Taste buds are tiny sensory organs on the tongue that detect the basic flavours: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami. Each one is a little cluster of receptor cells that send signals to the brain when certain molecules land on them. The wiring is the same in everyone, yet the experience is not. So why do our plates look so different? Why do some people love anchovies and others gag at the thought? Part of the answer is genetic. Variations in certain genes can change how strongly we perceive bitterness, sweetness, or certain flavour compounds....

  The People Who Believe They Are Dead There’s a psychiatric condition so strange it almost sounds like a ghost story. People who have it insist that they are dead. Not metaphorically. Not depressed and saying “I feel dead inside.” They mean it literally. This is “ Cotard’s delusion ”, sometimes called walking corpse syndrome. Imagine looking in the mirror and being convinced that what you see is just an empty shell. Some patients believe their organs have rotted away, or that their blood is gone, or that their body is nothing but a corpse they happen to be carrying around. Others say they have already died, and the world they’re living in is some kind of afterlife. The first time I read about it, I couldn’t stop thinking about how terrifying it must feel… To wake up and believe you don’t even exist anymore. Like most delusions, Cotard’s syndrome doesn’t have one simple cause. It often appears in people with severe depression, psychotic disorders, or neurological conditions. ...