The UNESCO Courier - Volume 2022, Issue 1, 2022

Traces of healed trepanning [an ancient practice of drilling a hole in the skull] scars show that our ancestors knew that our brains are essential for our survival even in prehistoric times. In many countries, death is now determined by the irreversible cessation of brain activity. Brain activity is the basis of our cognitive state and is unique to each individual – but its principles are shared. By analysing the activity of the brain, we are therefore able to gather information that is inherent to us all – beyond differences in gender, nationality, language, or religion.

In 2016, the United States Department of State reported that personnel at the US Embassy in Havana, Cuba, were attacked by a neuroweapon that caused traumatic brain injury. After intensive investigations produced no evidence of any type of direct energy weapon, the reported brain injury, which takes various forms, is now called the “Havana Syndrome”.

In 2021, Chile’s Senate unanimously approved a bill to amend the constitution to protect brain rights or “neurorights”. The Chamber of Deputies reviewed and approved the amendment in September that year. It is now expected that the bill will be signed into law by the country’s president.

The revolution in neuroscience that is happening today is taking place away from African laboratories. This is all the more regrettable given that Africa is well-placed to participate in global neuroscience research. The continent has the world’s greatest genetic diversity – which is crucial to the understanding of the processes governing human health and disease – and significant medicinal plant resources.

In the early 1990s, physicians at the Strasbourg University Hospital in France reported the strange case of a 51-year-old man who experienced unusual epileptic seizures. More than a third of the seizures, it seemed, occurred when he lied for business reasons.

When children start attending school, they are eager to learn, to explore, and curious about their surroundings. But as they progress through school, this motivation tends to erode, and can even turn into frustration. One of the major challenges facing teachers is how to maintain, or generate, this interest beyond early childhood.

As early as in the seventh century, what we now call autism had already been recorded in China. During the Sui Dynasty (581-618), Chao Yuanfang, an imperial physician, wrote in Zhubing Yuanhou Lun (On the Etiology of Diseases), of the so-called hun se (muddle-headed), yu chi (language delay) phenotype, saying it was “clinically manifested in a child’s lack of speech and neurodevelopmental retardation”.

Skies filled with inky clouds, forest-dwellers captured in the intimacy of their daily lives, mountains emerging from the vegetation. The Amazon that Sebastião Salgado shows us is not one of clichés – all luxuriance and vivid colours, with variations of bright green foliage, purple earth, and rivers irrigating the forest. On the contrary, Salgado’s images portray a world in chiaroscuro, grandiose, complex. Fragile too.

Go into almost any high-street clothing store today and you’ll find items proudly labelled “organic”, “vegan” and “recycled”. This would have been a rare sight even five years ago. But behind the declared desire to make fashion sustainable and more eco-responsible, the actions taken to make this happen remain limited in scope.

The widespread use of new technologies, the affordability of digital film equipment, and the rise of online platforms are enabling a new generation of African filmmakers to emerge. The UNESCO report, The African Film Industry: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities for Growth, released on 5 October 2021, reflects the vitality of African cinema, driven by digital technologies.