Vincenzo Lodigiani
Place a finger on the back of your skull, at a point roughly level with the tops of your ears. Here, deep beneath the hair, skin and bone, near a fluid-filled cavity in the root of your brain, lies a small bundle of pigmented cells the colour of lapis lazuli. This is the locus coeruleus – Latin for “blue dot”. It measures just a few millimetres, but its diminutive size belies its power over your thoughts.
Research has revealed that the structure is instrumental in coordinating our mental processing. Sometimes labelled the brain’s “master switch”, it is perhaps better imagined as…
