Picture this: you are hiking through a field and you come across a fence cutting right across...
Oscar Forrester
Very Big Brain is written by Oscar Forrester, a researcher and writer with a long-standing fascination with how the brain works. Oscar spent several years working in hospital IT, including on infection control systems, and grew up in a household shaped by medicine — his father was a physician and his mother a registered nurse. He is not a clinician himself, and nothing on this site should be taken as medical advice. What he brings instead is a rigorous, source-first approach to research, honed over two decades of writing (he’s authored numerous published books, primarily on software development), and a genuine curiosity about the science of cognition. Mr. Forrester strives to present complex topics in a clear and engaging manner, making it easy for you to understand and apply the knowledge to your daily life.
The psychology of cognitive bias has become one of the most popular topics in popular science, with...
A fund manager posts three consecutive quarters of strong returns and attracts a flood of new investment,...
Most people understand, in a general way, that stress is bad for you. It raises your blood...
When something goes wrong, the human mind does not always reach for the simplest explanation. It reaches...
A seasoned emergency room physician sees a patient with chest pain and makes a rapid triage decision...
Music is the only thing most people voluntarily introduce into their cognitive environment while expecting it to...
Auguste Rodin reportedly could not think well unless his hands were moving, either sculpting, drawing, or simply...
There is a reason the best surgeons prefer spotless operating theaters, the best chess players notice clutter...
In 1960, a children’s book editor made a bet with Dr. Seuss that he could not write...