Keeping one step ahead of our brains is easier said than done

CAROLINE WILLIAMS wanted to outsmart her brain. Research over the last decade shows that the brain is ‘plastic’: it physically adapts as we learn new things.

However, if this is the case, Williams asks, can she reorient her brain to reduce her anxiety and enhance her navigation skills and attention span? In Override, Williams, a science journalist, meets the experts and tries brain interventions to discover whether neuroscience can help us to make real changes to our fallible brains.

When Williams was 19, her father was killed in a car crash. At least since then, Williams has had an anxious temperament where she is always primed to see threats. A cognitive bias is an assumption we aren’t aware of and Williams has a negative cognitive bias.