Cognitive Scientists

The uniquely human nature of language has attracted a lot of scientific interest. Whether the ability is truly uniquely human, and based on specific evolved neural architecture or not is the nature of ongoing debate.

Notable researchers in the field include Elizabeth Bates, Jean Piaget and Michael Tomasello. And at the river's source, linguists Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker

Big Five Coast

One of the most well known methods of quantifying personality is The Big Five - openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Frequently used as the basis for 'personality testing', it aims to give each individual a score on these five variables. It was data from such online tests that allowed Cambridge Analytica to tout their OCEAN scores as method by which they can manipulate behaviour through social media propaganda.

Personality Types

One way of measuring personality is to use the 4 axes of Extroversion/Introversion, Sensing/Intuition, Thinking/Feeling, Judging/Perceiving, this results in 16 possible combinations which have been labelled in a more understandable (or perhaps confusing) manner.

Isle of Psychopathology

Some personality traits are negative, and in some cases produce behaviour which is at odds with prevailing societal norms. Disorders of personality can lead to antisocial behaviour and criminality. Here we find conditions such as Sociopathy, Machiavellianism and Narcissism

Bipolar Mountains

Bipolar Disorder used to be known as 'Manic Depression' indicating the twin poles of the condition Mania and Depression.

Negative Emotions

Almost every emotion is deemed positive or negative. We are taught that negative emotions should be avoided, but in many ways we are subjects of our emotions, rather than their rulers.

Positive Emotions

Almost every emotion is deemed positive or negative. We are taught that negative emotions should be avoided, but in many ways we are subjects of our emotions, rather than their rulers.

Island of Belief

We all have beliefs - things which we feel are true, perhaps with little empirical evidence to back them up. Religions are, of course, the ultimate vehicles of faith - often positing explanations to fundamentally unknowable metaphysical phenomena.

Phineas Gage Lake

Phineas Gage was either an extremely lucky, or extremely unlucky man, depending on how you look at it. An accident in 1848 found Phineas impaled with a railway spike through the skull, destroying much of his left frontal lobe. Miraculously he survived, though he underwent a dramatic personality change influencing the debate around the nature of neurology, psychology and neuroscience.

Explorers of the self

The field of psychotherapy aims to improve the mental wellbeing of an individual through talking and hypnosis. Notable proponents such as Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Wilhelm Reich used these methods to better understand how personality can be moderated by verbal exploration. Previously, consideration of the self was in the hands of the philosophers such as Descartes, Locke and Spinoza.