It was Friday evening, November 7th, and the entrance hall of the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown didn’t look like itself. Where one would normally expect calm and quiet, the space pulsed with energy, the clinking of pots, the low hum of conversation, the scent of coriander, roasted pumpkin, and the promise of so much more.

We explore how imagination can heal – like playing Tetris after trauma to weaken intrusive images in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – and how it can misfire in the hallucinations of Parkinson’s disease or bereavement, when a “phantom spouse” may still be seen or felt, or in Functional Neurological Disorder, where expectations and emotions can produce real physical symptoms, even paralysis. Zeman shares the unforgettable case of “Toby” to show the power of suggestion at work.

Historically, scientists studying the brain, like neuroscientists and psychologists, worked separately from those studying the body, such as endocrinologists and physiologists. Research on how the nervous system interacts with the body has been growing, but “it kind of stops there, rarely making it past the neck to reach the brain again”, as Carlos Ribeiro puts it. Neuroscientists, meanwhile, often focus on higher brain functions without considering how body signals might influence them.