I know it’s Monday morning, but here’s a fascinating story about a cocktail party. It turns out that neuroscientists have spent the past 50 years trying to work out how our brains are so good at tuning in to one particular conversation in the midst of loads of other noise – for example, at a crowded cocktail party.
This is more complicated than it sounds – but technology that tracks the brain’s activity to the nearest millisecond is bringing new insights. Our authors from Trinity College Dublin have studied what happens in the split second we turn our attention from one conversation to another. It turns out our clever old brain is able to monitor both simultaneously, long before we consciously decide who is the more interesting person to listen to.
New adaptations of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility will no doubt feature some busy social gatherings – but do we really need more Jane Austen on our screens? Here are five other 18th‑century authors ripe for a TV treatment.
And the latest article in our illuminating UK-Danish health series explains how a traditional Nordic diet of rye bread, herring and berries (and not too many cocktails, presumably) can help you live longer.
