The exhibition
Working non-stop, the brain is simply made to learn and continually garners new knowledge and skills. Without us even realising, it processes thousands of pieces of information and continually informs us about the world around us. It manages all of our reasoning, our judgements and our decisions, which are not always taken rationally. Organised for life in society, it makes us social beings.
Divided into three parts, this exhibition, whose scientific commissioner is Stanislas Dehaene, Professor at the Collège de France and Director of the INSERM-CEA Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, reports on the latest findings concerning the brain and focuses on learning processes. It also offers numerous tests to experiment with and addresses the neuronal basis of social behaviour.
Practical information
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15 € | 12 € | Our prices
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From age 12
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Trilingual exhibition (French, English, Spanish)
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The Cité is open from Tuesday to Saturday 10.00 am - 6.00 pm and 10.00 am - 7.00 pm on Sunday.
Accessibility
- Accessible to visually impaired visitors
- Accessible to visitors with reduced mobility
- Accessible to deaf and hard of hearing visitors
- Accessible to cognitively impaired visitors
Prepare for your visit
This exhibition area can be accessed by lift (level 1). Small pushchairs are allowed inside the museum.
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© A. Robin / EPPDCSI What's inside our heads?
What makes up the brain? What are the stages in its development? What are its basic components? Which cells does it contain? What relations do they maintain? How do they communicate?
In this first part, learn all about this organ which remains mysterious and dive into the microscopic world so as to discover the structure of the neuron, get to know glial cells and understand how information flows through the brain.
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© EPPDCSI The non-stop brain
In this second part of the exhibition, discover a four-part insight into the wonderful capabilities of the brain: Made for learning, See with your brain, Decide to act and In all consciousness. And test yourself with games based on laboratory experiments.
As you conduct experiments on yourself, you will learn about memory; the plasticity of the brain which allows it to adapt to changing situations; brain mechanisms which come into play when reading; sight and how the brain interprets information; the role of emotions in decision-making; fluctuations in concentration; the ability to multi-task; non-conscious mental processes.
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© A. Iffrig / EPPDCSI The social brain
From birth, our brain is pre-organised for living in society and learns to think about others. Recognising faces, interpreting other people's intentions, cooperating ... throughout life, our interpersonal skills evolve. They are based on the activation of specific neuronal circuits in certain brain areas, and even some molecules such as oxytocin which processes social information and acts on the desire to reach out to our fellow humans
Learn about all these fascinating aspects during a somewhat peculiar filmed lecture…