The case concerned the immune system. More precisely: its character. For decades, people had assumed that the finer sort of remembering belonged solely to the adaptive branch, that immaculately groomed specialist corps with antibodies, T cells, and the entire bureaucratic apparatus of targeted defence. The innate immune system, by contrast, was th...

The case that landed on my desk was of a particularly refined sort. It concerned a medical AI that shone in examinations like a neatly turned-out medical student on the verge of a gold medal. Diagnoses? Impeccable. Answers? Elegant. Technical language? Almost indecently well groomed. And yet the whole business smelt of deception. For excellence on ...

You know him. This supposed gentleman in tails, standing somewhere deep inside the brain with a silver baton, commanding everything: Now feel. Now remember. Now concentrate. Now do try to stumble with a little more dignity. A touching notion. Sadly, about as wrong as the claim that one can understand a sonata merely by monitoring the second violin.

It was a case of insulin resistance. A distressingly unwieldy term for a rather impertinent bit of behaviour: insulin knocks politely at the cell’s door and says, “Would you be so kind as to let the sugar in?” and the cell replies with aristocratic lethargy, “Regrettably, not today.” 🚪🍬

It concerned memories. More precisely: memories that were no longer being stored properly. No dramatic disappearance, no grand finale, rather a quiet crumbling away. The sort of dismally unobtrusive thing biology is especially fond of arranging.

London wore a cloak of the finest drizzle, one of those days when the city decides not to vulgarise its soul with sunshine. I sat in my rooms on Baker Street, far from the pedestrian world of footprints and cigarette ash, studying the elegant folds of a human brain. A glass model, naturally. The original was precisely where it belonged: inside my s...