"Two new books argue that the human brain's haphazard evolution has left us at the prey of irrational behaviors and self-defeating instincts."

The brain does not simply gather and stockpile information as a computer’s hard drive does. Facts are stored first in the hippocampus, a structure deep in the brain about the size and shape of a fat man’s curled pinkie finger. But the information does not rest there. Every time we recall it, our brain writes it down again, and during this re-storage, it is also reprocessed. In time, the fact is gradually transferred to the cerebral cortex and is separated from the context in which it was originally learned. For example, you know that the capital of California is Sacramento, but you probably don’t remember how you learned it.

The brain does not simply gather and stockpile information as a computer's hard drive does. Facts are stored first in the hippocampus, a structure deep in the brain about the size and shape of a fat man's curled pinkie finger. But the information does not rest there. Every time we recall it, our brain writes it down again, and during this re-storage, it is also reprocessed. In time, the fact is gradually transferred to the cerebral cortex and is separated from the context in which it was originally learned. For example, you know that the capital of California is Sacramento, but you probably don't remember how you learned it.

We believe that memory provides us with a faithful record of past events. But in fact, it is well established that memory is reconstructive, and not reproductive, in nature. In retrieval, a memory is pieced together from fragments, but during the reconstruction errors creep in due to our own biases and expectations.

Happiness is in our hands if only we could make the right decisions in life. Decisions often rely on making accurate predictions of how we will feel in the future. Unfortunately for us psychologists have shown that there are five major biases in the way we predict our future emotional states.

One of the most important tools used by neuroscientists to understand how the brain creates its sense of reality is the visual illusion. Historically, visual artists as well as illusionists have used visual illusions to develop deep insights into the inner workings of the visual system. Long before scientists were studying the properties of neurons, artists had devised a series of techniques to “trick” the brain into thinking that a flat canvas was three-dimensional, or that a series of brushstrokes was actually a still life.

We all seem convinced we're right about politics, religion or science these days. What makes us so sure of ourselves?

Reduplicative paramnesia is the delusional belief that a place or location has been duplicated, existing in two or more places simultaneously, or that it has been 'relocated' to another site. It is one of the delusional misidentification syndromes and, although rare, is most commonly associated with acquired brain injury, particularly simultaneous damage to the right cerebral hemisphere and to both frontal lobes.

The real cause of 'mad' behavior is often overlooked by patients and therapists.

Despite popular representations to the contrary, creative people are rarely insane. [2] But creativity and madness may be connected in other ways; we find suggestions of schizotypy in the biographies of many artists, and schizophrenia and related conditions seem to be disproportionately represented in talented and creative families. [3] There are attractions, therefore, in the idea that creativity depends on the controlled deployment of capacities that are uncontrolled in psychosis: an idea explored by psychoanalytically inclined writers such as Ernst Kris and Hanna Segal. [4]