Almost every coder knows the feeling. The project board is packed, the architecture diagram looks like a...
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.
Many people worry that getting older automatically means becoming forgetful, slow, or mentally “dull.” While some changes...
Finals season can make your brain feel like it’s running on fumes. Long nights, endless notes, and...
Burnout rarely arrives overnight. It sneaks in through late releases, endless tickets, and that quiet belief that...
In your 40s and 50s, it’s easy to notice little changes in thinking: walking into a room...
Every team has someone who appears to think on fast forward. They read a ticket once and...
Some days you sit down, open your editor, and your brain locks onto the problem. Other days...
Life doesn’t get less stressful as you get older. Work, money, family, health, and constant information can...
Inflammation has a branding problem. People hear the word and imagine a raging fire that must be...
When you are stuck on a hard problem, it is easy to treat your brain like a...