Zoom-In on Champalimaud: Justyna Kociolek

If you were a kid in the 80s, or are a fan of retro video games, then you must know Frogger. The game can be quite a challenge. To win, you must first survive a stream of heavy traffic, only to then narrowly escape oblivion by zig-zagging across speeding wooden logs. How does the brain know what to focus on within all this mess? 

Thanks to technological advances, neuroscientists can now collect mouth-watering amounts of data, simultaneously recording the activity of hundreds of neurons in real-time. But what's the use of having this "big neuro data" if we can't make sense of it?

Today, the general view about the role emotions play in our lives has radically evolved, and the importance of emotions throughout the animal kingdom has finally been recognised. Charles Darwin already intuited 150 years ago when he wrote that emotions are “a universal means of communication” across the animal kingdom. As for us humans, we now know that emotions literally shape every aspect of our lives, including things as unique to our species as rationality and morality.

Who hasn't felt the temptation to fling a lengthy manual into the bin, or just drive on instead of asking for directions? After all, following instructions is often tiresome, and we can just figure it out on our own… Or can we? A study published today (May 19th) in the scientific journal Nature Human Behaviour challenges prevalent theories about our capacity to solve complex problems and how certain mental disorders influence it.