The Brain from Top to Bottom Blog – Intermediate Level

The word “consciousness” may refer simply to the state in which you are awake, as opposed to states in which you are not (for example, when you’re asleep, or in a coma, or under general anaesthesia).

In a field like neuroscience, there’s so much knowledge, and it’s changing so constantly, that often, when you read about one discovery, you can best understand its importance in light of another discovery that you hadn’t even heard of before.

This week, I’ll address two different topics from the angle that is so central to my website and my book about the human brain: the various levels at which the human brain and the human mind are organized.

In December 2025, I migrated my website The Brain from Top to Bottom from www.thebrain.mcgill.ca to www.thebrain.lecerveau.ca.

Last September, thanks to doctoral student Anne Monnier, I had the chance to visit the laboratory where she is doing her research, directed by Guillaume Dumas at the CHU Ste-Justine research centre in Montreal.

Your brain accounts for only about 2% of your body weight, but 20 to 25% of all the oxygen and glucose that your body consumes.

The human brain is often described as having two main ways of thinking: one of them fast, automatic and unconscious, the other slower, more flexible and requiring conscious control.

I have just learned the sad news that the great Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal died in March 2024, at the age of 75.

This week I want to encourage you to watch a video entitled “How Your Brain Chooses What To Remember”, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?

For we humans, the most important part of the ecosystem that we live in is definitely the other human beings who live in it.