There are so few confirmed cases — perhaps 30 in the world – that plausible explanations are hard to come by. Take Orlando Serrell, a 44-year-old from Virginia who was hit on the head by a baseball as a boy, and later found he could do complicated calculations and remember the precise...
Most of us go through life with a selective ear for the news we take in. We hear the good more than the bad, the flattering more than the insulting. And we update our beliefs in a way that reflects that bias.
The effect appears in many guises. We update our self image when told we are...