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262 illustrations
Biologists have long marveled at one of nature's most radical transformations. Inside a chrysalis, the caterpillar doesn't simply sprout wings. It dissolves. Digestive enzymes break...
In 1967, psychologist Martin Seligman made a startling discovery at the University of Pennsylvania. During his research on behavioral conditioning, he found that animals subjected...
In his *Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass*, Douglass describes a pivotal moment from his childhood in slavery. His slaveholder's wife, Sophia Auld, had...
In C.S. Lewis's *The Last Battle*, the dwarfs sit in a bright, sunlit field, yet they are convinced they are trapped in a dark, filthy...
For most of the twentieth century, neuroscience operated under a grim assumption: the adult brain could not grow new cells. What you had was all...
In 2016, Japanese cell biologist Yoshinori Ohsumi received the Nobel Prize for discovering how autophagy works — the process by which our cells identify damaged,...
In the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence, just down the hallway from the famous *David*, stand four unfinished sculptures by Michelangelo known as the *Prisoners* or...
For most of the twentieth century, neuroscience taught a discouraging idea: the adult brain was fixed. Whatever pathways you had laid down by early adulthood...
For most of the twentieth century, neuroscientists believed the adult brain was fixed — hardwired like a circuit board, unchangeable after childhood. If certain pathways...
Michelangelo Buonarroti approached sculpture differently than most artists of his era. While others saw a raw block of Carrara marble as blank material waiting to...
In the 1990s, neuroscientist Jeffrey Schwartz at UCLA made a remarkable discovery. Working with patients trapped in the relentless cycle of obsessive-compulsive disorder, he found...
For decades, neuroscience operated under a grim assumption: the adult brain was fixed, hardwired, unable to change. Whatever neural pathways had been carved by habit,...
In the 1990s, neuroscientist Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz at UCLA made a remarkable discovery while working with patients trapped by obsessive-compulsive disorder. Their brains had worn...
Inside every caterpillar, something astonishing waits. During metamorphosis, the caterpillar releases digestive enzymes that dissolve nearly all its tissues into biological soup. To an outside...
In 1941, Henri Matisse underwent surgery for abdominal cancer that left him largely confined to a wheelchair and, eventually, to his bed. The man who...
Orthopedic surgeons call it adhesive capsulitis — most of us know it as frozen shoulder. The capsule of connective tissue surrounding the shoulder joint slowly...
In C.S. Lewis's *The Great Divorce*, a ghost arrives at the outskirts of heaven with a small red lizard perched on his shoulder. The creature...
Orthopedic surgeons have a name for one of the most frustrating conditions they treat: adhesive capsulitis, commonly known as frozen shoulder. Over weeks and months,...
In embryology, one of the most remarkable designs in nature is the hatching of a chick. For twenty-one days, the developing bird grows inside its...
In neurology, few moments are as breathtaking as when a deep brain stimulation device is switched on for the first time. A patient with advanced...
In emergency medicine, few moments are more urgent than an ischemic stroke. A blood clot lodges in an artery feeding the brain, and within minutes,...
In emergency medicine, few conditions are as urgent as compartment syndrome. When severe trauma causes swelling inside one of the body's tight muscle compartments —...