Neuroverse

Join us for another episode in our Tools for Looking into the Brain series, where we learn about methods used to understand the nervous system from experts in the field. This week we are joined by Dr Paula Pousinha, a neuroscientist and associate professor at Université Côte d’Azur who researches the neurobiological mechanisms that underlie brain ageing and neurodegenerative diseases. Paula tells us how we can use rodent models to understand the neural mechanisms that lead up to Alzheimer's disease, and in particular how neuronal firing and physiological properties gradually change alongside changes in synapses and connectivity. We also discuss bridging the gap between single neurons and cognition, what defines excitability, how similar approaches can be used to tackle several neurodegenerative disorders, and how this knowledge can shape future therapies to treat neurodegenerative disorders.

Dr. Paula Pousinha is a neuroscientist and Associate Professor of Physiology at Université Côte d’Azur in Nice, France. Paula earned a PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Lisbon, then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the lab of Hélène Marie at the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology in France where she investigated how synaptic plasticity and neuronal activity change during ageing and contribute to cognitive decline. Her lab's current research focuses on the synaptic and circuit mechanisms that underlie brain ageing and neurodegenerative diseases, particularly Alzheimer’s disease. 

In today's episode we are celebrating women's day by highlighting a condition that primarily affects women- migraines. We are joined by Dr. Anna Andreou, who leads the Headache Research Laboratory at King's College London and focuses on the neurobiology of primary and secondary headaches, and the development of novel therapies. In this episode, we delve into what makes migraines different to headaches, what are the major causes and the neurobiological mechanisms behind them, and what sort of therapies exist and what novel therapies are being developed currently? Tune in if you would like to learn more!

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Today we celebrate Neuroverse being 4! In this episode Carolina and Clara asked each other random questions ranging from neuroscience to personal. Tune in for a more uncut episode and learn more about your hosts!

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Welcome to the first episode of 2026!

In usual Neuroverse tradition the first episode is a "Philosophy of..." - touch!

Touch provides a very interesting array of information to the body that is at times completely novel but can also overlap with the other senses. Physical touch has an interesting bidirectionally to it, enabling both autonomy and an intricate link to our sense of self, something not seen as clearly with our other senses. Tune in to this episode to hear about what makes touch unique, and how it plays a powerful role in mind-body awareness and shaping our social worlds.

We hope you enjoy the episode! Please feel free to share with your friends and family, it means a lot to us🤍

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Enjoy our last episode of 2025! In Neuroverse fashion, the last episode of the year is "Off the Record". In this episode we chat and reminisce about our favourite episodes from the past year, what inspired us, what episodes left a lasting impression and our plans for 2026.

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In today's episode, we are joined by Dr. Matthew Harvey, a medical doctor turned neuroscientist, currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Francis Crick Institute who studies cortical dynamics during behaviour. Matt tells us about his doctoral research on cortical flexibility in a neurodevelopmental disorder mouse model (a neurexin 1-alpha knockout), and how he applied wide-field calcium imaging to explore cortex-wide dynamics during learning and flexible decision-making. We also discuss the complex and shared genetic bases of neurodevelopmental disorders and the future of translational research that is bridging the gap between clinical and preclinical research on neurodevelopmental disorders.

Matthew Harvey trained as a medical doctor before making the jump to academia and carrying out a PhD in neuroscience at King's College London, in the lab of Adil Khan, where he investigated cortex wide neural activity during learning and flexible decision making in mouse models of neurodevelopmental disorders. He is currently researching impulsivity & cognitive control in Flor Iacaruso's lab at the Francis Crick Institute.

In today's episode Clara and Carolina are joined by Professor Dave McLean for another episode on Tools for Looking into the Brain. Dave is a Group Leader at the University of Edinburgh and researches the neural circuitry behind locomotion. He talks to us about the use of zebrafish as a model organism for understanding the neural circuits in charge of locomotion and movement, and how motor behaviours- both innate and learned- emerge as the nervous system matures. His lab combines advanced imaging, electrophysiology, and behavioural analysis to map the organization and recruitment of specific neuron types, providing fundamental insights into how vertebrate motor control is built and how it adapts with learning.

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In today’s episode we are joined by Dr Francesca Greenstreet to discuss how habits are made and novel research on how habit-forming may not require reward-based learning. We also talk about making the switch from being an experimental neuroscientist to a computational neuroscientist, and Francesca's latest research on how the brain executes reinforcement learning when there is a large action space.

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Welcome to our special summer rerelease series! Carolina and Clara take a trip down memory lane with a special series dedicated to their older episodes, including ones you may have missed!

This week Carolina and Clara discuss enzymes and enzyme-directed evolution. Enzymes are these incredible biological catalysts present in the natural world. However, with recent research carried out by Frances Arnold, and many others, enzymes have been directed to bind with non-organic matter! 

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This week we bring to you another episode of Tools for Looking into the Brain, our mini series in collaboration with Scientifica, where we discuss all sorts of neuroscience methods and the reality of academia. In this episode, we are joined by Dr Silvana Valtcheva, a group leader at the Max Planck Institute in Cologne, who researches the neural basis of maternal bahevaiour. We talk about her research journey, from investigating synaptic plasticity to understanding the complexities of postpartum behaviour in living animals, and discuss how to transition across the stages of academia, and where meaning and motivation fit in to science.

Silvana Valtcheva is a principal investigator at the Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research in Cologne Germany. She previously earned a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and a Master’s degree in Neuroscience before pursuing a PhD in activity-dependent synaptic plasticity, the role of astrocytes, and developmental changes in the control of plasticity with Prof. Laurent Venance in Paris. Following this, Silvana joined the lab of Prof. Robert Froemke in New York City as a postdoctoral fellow, where she investigated the neural pathways and synaptic mechanisms important for the detection of offspring vocalisations in maternal mice. Since 2022, the Valtcheva lab has been investigating the neural circuits and plasticity mechanisms shaping sensory perception and hormonal release in the postpartum brain to drive behaviour. 

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This week we're revisiting our episode on the entropic brain, where we discuss entropy, chaos, and disorder in the context of brain activity. In an attempt to reduce the amount of disorder, our brains may stick to a structured framework of activity, limiting its capacity to be creative and generate new ideas or connections. How does this influence our perception of reality? And how can we overcome this natural "negentropic" tendency? Listen to find out!

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In today's episode Carolina and Clara probe at what causality means, both in a philosophical sense and a scientific one. We talk about how neuroscience can probe at causality, the fine line between correlation and causation, how hypotheses are and should be derived, validation and falsification, and more!

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Welcome to our special summer rerelease series! Carolina and Clara take a trip down memory lane with a special series dedicated to their older episodes, including ones you may have missed!

Have you ever wondered how the breath and the mind are connected? In this episode, Carolina and Clara explore the neuroscience of breathing: how the rhythm of breathing influences brain-wide activity, providing a scaffold for the transfer of information across the brain, and how breathing influences our attentional and interoceptive states, which ultimately define our experience of being. 

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In this episode (our 100th!) we talk to Dr Raffaele Sarnataro, a postdoctoral researcher in Gero Miesenböck's group at the Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour in Oxford University, who is investigating the neurobiological basis of sleep using fruit flies (Drosophila Melanogaster) as a model organism. Raffaele shares with us his latest research on a novel role for mitochondria, in a small specialised population of neurons in the fly brain, to regulate the need for sleep. He also dives into the classical theories of why we sleep, whether the purpose of sleep is universal and evolutionarily conserved, how metabolism is related to sleep across organisms, and how sleep is related to body versus brain. Listen to find out more about the often overlooked mystery of sleep.

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In today's episode Carolina and Clara are joined by Dr Jennifer Wills Lamacq to discuss how adolescents and children are socialised, affected by social media, and how governmental policies affect the landscape of children's social development.

This episode was inspired by the Netflix series "Adolescents" which brought to light crucial issues to be discussed regarding the impact schools and social media has on a child's upbringing. We discussed safe practices to educate children in the online world, how children are being socialised in school, the importance of independence outside the home and children-friendly policies.

Listen to find out more!

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In this episode, Carolina and Clara dive into the question of cognitive ontology. From philosophers like Plato, to psychologists like Thomas Reid, and phrenologists like Franz Gall, many have set out to define how we think and how we should categorise the functions that make up human cognition. While some functions such as sensory processing or memory are intuitively well-defined, others such as empathy or hierarchical processing remain more cryptic. With the emergence of modern neuroscience, the story only gets more complicated, as brain activity of different areas does not neatly fit with our set of cognitive functions- while some areas are specialised for functions, like the amygdala being involved in emotional processing, most areas are actually multifunctional. How can we integrate our neuroscientific knowledge of how the brain functions into our psychological understanding of our mind? Listen to find out more!

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In today's episode Clara and Carolina are joined by Professor Iain Couzin, the director of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the German Research Foundation (DFG) Excellence Cluster. His work aims to reveal the principles that underlie evolved collective behavior, using a wide range of biological systems, from insect swarms to schooling fish, primate groups and humans.

In this episode, we discuss the variety of collective behaviours seen across species and probe at some of the key questions in the field including: to what extent can computational models portray the dynamics of collective decision making? What is the purpose of collective behaviours? Do the same rules guide collective behaviours across species? Listen to learn more!

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This week we bring to you another episode of Tools for Looking into the Brain, our mini series in collaboration with Scientifica, where we discuss all sorts of neuroscience methods and the reality of academia. In this episode we are joined by Dr Ana Dorrego-Rivas, a neuroscientist and postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Developmental Neurobiology (King's College London). Ana shares with us her research journey so far and what led her to pursue research into the development of the olfactory bulb, and the role of interactions between different subcellular compartments (axons and dendrites). Ana also shares her experience of learning new things, applying for fellowships, and seeking opportunities as a postdoc. We also talk about how PhDs compare to postdocs, where publications fit in, and making the transition from postdoc to PI.

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In today's episode we delve into auto-immune disorders. What are they and how can they be treated? We also discuss why auto-immune disorders are so much more prevalent in women than men, with 80% of cases affecting women, and how lifestyle factors can trigger their onset. We also cover some of the amazing new research carried out to treat the dysregulated immune system.

In this newest episode of our Tools for Looking into the Brain series, we are joined by Dr Elisa Galliano, a neuroscientist, lecturer, and principal investigator at the University of Cambridge, to discuss the process of starting your own lab, with all of its trials and tribulations. We talk about how Elisa landed a PI position, how she managed to start up her lab amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, what being a PI entails (beyond running a lab), and how to navigate the complex world of academia to find stability for the long-term.

In today's episode Carolina and Clara discuss antibiotic resistance, the danger it poses, how it happens and the new therapies being researched to overcome antibiotic resistance!

To celebrate 3 years since our first Neuroverse episode aired, we are talking about one of the most fascinating and mysterious topics- Love! Join us as we delve into the roots of human love, discuss why love evolved, what its purpose is, and how the development of both our brains and our social systems are intricately connected to the way we love. Happy Valentine's week <3

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In today's episode, Carolina & Clara dive into the philosophy of smell/olfaction. The olfactory system and smell experience is unique to other sensory systems in many ways, including being primarily chemical, much more intimate and absorptive, and arguably the least conscious. Can we reduce smells to chemical odours? How does language limit our perception of smell? What is the core function of human olfaction? And how does smell influence mental health? We explore these questions and more!

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Enjoy our last episode of 2024! Carolina and Clara chat and reminisce about their favourite episodes from the past year, the most enlightening and exciting moments on the podcast, and their hopes for 2025.

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Today's episode is the second part of our two-part conversation with Ashlan Reid and Mari Sosa, two neuroscience postdoctoral fellows, who share their experiences finding and fostering community within academia. In this episode, they share their experiences being part of an international community of life science early career researchers, through an organisation called Leading Edge. The Leading Edge Fellows program provides women and non-binary postdocs with an opportunity to meet and connect with others, and training opportunities for mentorship and career development. They talk about how Leading Edge has helped them on their scientific journeys, and what makes it a supportive and positively constructive community. Finally, they discuss the most valuable skills for gaining independent positions within academia, and the importance of giving and gaining mentorship.

Ashlan Reid is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Tony Zador's lab at Cold Spring Harbor, which focuses on understanding the neural circuits in sensory systems, where she researches the development of cortical connections in the auditory cortex. Mari Sosa is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Lisa Giacomo's lab at Stanford University, which focuses on untangling the neural circuitry that encodes spatial information, where she studies mechanisms of learning in the hippocampus.

This episode is part of our series "Tools for Looking into the Brain" which is supported by Scientifica, a leading producer of electrophysiology and imaging equipment. In this series we explore research techniques used in neuroscience, including classical and state-of-the-art techniques. You can find our previous episodes from the series on our page- #64, #71, #75, #81, and #88.

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In this episode, Carolina and Clara are joined by two postdoctoral fellows to discuss their research journeys, from undergraduate to postdoctoral experiences. They discuss the challenges they have faced, and share advice on how to stay motivated and inquisitive in academia in the face of technical or personal hurdles.

Ashlan Reid is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Tony Zador's lab at Cold Spring Harbor, which focuses on understanding the neural circuits in sensory systems, where she researches the development of cortical connections in the auditory cortex.

Mari Sosa is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Lisa Giacomo's lab at Stanford University, which focuses on untangling the neural circuitry that encodes spatial information, where she studies mechanisms of learning in the hippocampus.

Together, Ashlan and Mari share not only the lessons they've learnt through their extensive research experience, but also the variety of tools that they've used in their research, including two-photon calcium imaging and voltage sensitive dyes. This episode is the first of our two-part conversation, so stay tuned to listen to part two soon!

This episode is part of our series "Tools for Looking into the Brain" which is supported by Scientifica, a leading producer of electrophysiology and imaging equipment. In this series we explore research techniques used in neuroscience, including classical and state-of-the-art techniques. You can find our previous episodes from the series on our page- #64, #71, #75, and #81.

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Carolina and Clara discuss with Saron RNA, how to study it, visualise it and how it is the ultimate mediator of life. Saron Tekie carried out her a Bsc in biomedical sciences at the University of Birmingham followed by a Msc in Cancer and Molecular Biology. Saron is now carrying out a PhD in evolutionary genetics in UCL in Gemma Murry lab. Saron also did a project with Konstantin Reder on collagen and RNA.

In today's episode, we are joined by Sophie Scott, a professor in cognitive neuroscience and head of the speech communications group at University College London. Her research focuses on the neural basis of vocal communication- how our brains process information in speech and control the production of our voice- as well as the expression of emotion in the voice, especially laughter. In the episode, we discuss human-specific features of laughter and smiling, the importance of laughter in play, the social role of laughter, laughing contagion, and sociocultural influences that shape how we use laughter in everyday life. Listen to find out more about this often overlooked but essential form of communication, and how laughter and human may be a key distinguishing feature of human societies.

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Join Carolina and Clara in today’s episode where we discuss economic decision-making in mice with Dr Ann Duan, a group leader in the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre.

The goal of Ann’s lab is to understand how animals make flexible decisions under risk, social influence, and the neural circuit mechanisms underlying these choices.

Today’s episode was made possible thanks to the support of the Sainsbury Wellcome Public Engagement fund. We would like to thank Sainsbury Welcome Centre (SWC) for the generous grant supporting Science Communication initiatives like these. ⁠⁠https://www.sainsburywellcome.org/web/⁠⁠

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In this week's episode we are joined by Isabelle Zane, a PhD student at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge who is investigating the link between genetic mutations and protein function in the Lehner & Parts labs. We discuss a novel technology- deep mutational scanning- which is used to screen how single gene mutations influence the structure and/or function of proteins, thereby testing the relationship between genotype and phenotype. We also discuss methods used to study protein dynamics, including nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, X-ray crystallography, and more! Listen to find out more about the fascinating ways in which we can interrogate the relationship between DNA and the proteins they encode.

You can find Isabelle's cartoon creations about life and people in the lab on her twitter @isabellease

Join Carolina and Clara in today's episode on transcriptomics to translation with Inga Van den Bossche. Inga carried out her undergrad and masters degree in materials science and engineering at Imperial college London and is now a doctoral student since 2022 in Professor Molly Stevens lab at Oxford, researching cellular interfaces and innovative biomaterials for regenerative medicine. We focus on the need for modular precision medicine and how spatial transcriptomics adds a layer of enlightenment to the field.

Welcome to our special summer rerelease series! Carolina and Clara take a trip down memory lane with a special series dedicated to their older episodes, including ones you may have missed!

In today’s episode Carolina and Clara discuss biomimetic and bioinspired materials, and the challenges of understanding the biological structure of natural materials to then create additional intelligent biologically-inspired materials. But what about not only mimicking nature? What about creating ‘living’ materials that have a bi-directional flow of information? Stay tuned to find out how scientists have been able to use nature as an inspiration to address problems, including controlling heart muscle cells with light, enabling smart drug delivery systems, creating stronger and safer building materials that can withstand natural disasters, and more!

In today's episode we are joined by Ryen O’Meara, a Chemical Engineer graduate student in Caltech. Ryen joined Nobel Laureate Francis Arnold's lab with the aim to engineer enzymes that degrade emerging environmental contaminants, and merge sustainability and protein engineering. We discuss with Ryen the environmentally concerning Silicon-Carbon bonds in everyday products (such as lubricants and shampoos) and how he has engineered an enzyme to break these Silicon-Carbon bonds!

Welcome to our special summer rerelease series! Carolina and Clara take a trip down memory lane with a special series dedicated to their older episodes, including ones you may have missed!

In this episode, we discussed the fascinating world of fungi, and in particular, mycelium or mycorrhizal networks- a form of fungi that have an incredible capacity to connect plants and transport nutrients and signals. How do mycelia contribute to plant intelligence? Join Carolina and Clara as they compare mycelium and neural networks, plant and human intelligence, taking inspiration from the work of Paul Stamets, Suzanne Simard, and others. 

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In today's episode, we are joined by Dr. Sam Cooke, a group leader and senior lecturer at King's College London who researches the mechanisms that underlie learning and memory in the brain. We discuss his research journey that led him to become fascinated in the processes of learning and memory, as well as the tools he uses to record neural activity- in vivo electrophysiology- and what those squiggly lines really mean.

This episode is part of our series "Tools for Looking into the Brain" which is supported by Scientifica, a leading producer of electrophysiology and imaging equipment. In this series we explore research techniques used in neuroscience, including classical and state-of-the-art techniques. You can find our previous episodes from the series on our page- #64, #71, and #75

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Welcome to our special summer rerelease series! Carolina and Clara take a trip down memory lane with a special series dedicated to their older episodes, including ones you may have missed!

Today we are reviving the oxygen debate - is oxygen a friend or foe? Was it truly evolutionarily advantageous for us to learn to respire using oxygen or should another element have been responsible for that task? Is oxygen the reason why complex mammals evolved higher-order thinking, or is it the reason for the appearance of neurodegenerative diseases? Tune in to today's episode where Carolina argues against the utility of oxygen while Clara argues for.

In today's episode Carolina and Clara discuss the latest research on brain computer interfaces (BCI), and how they aid patients with motor related deficits such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), paralysis, and locked-in syndrome. Different types of BCI vary in how invasive they are and the different sorts of motor functions they can aid, from communicating, writing, moving and more. How much autonomy do these patients feel when they communicate or move with the aid from these BCIs? We explore the world of BCI in this episode.

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This week we are joined by Elodie Freymann, an evolutionary anthropologist, primatologist, artist and storyteller to discuss the evolution of self-medication. Elodie recently completed a PhD in evolutionary anthropology at the University of Oxford, and shares with us her work studying self-medication in chimpanzees of the Budongo Forest in Uganda. She tells us about what it is like to work in the field, the complexities of chimpanzee behaviour and knowledge, the relationship between animals and humans living in the rainforest, and the importance of ethics in pharmacognosy (natural pharmacology). Listen to find out more about the fascinating field of zoopharmacognosy!

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In today's episode Carolina and Clara are joined by Dr Rachel Jackson to discuss different techniques to interrogate synaptic function. Neurotransmitter release is a crucial function of the neuron that enables the transfer of information in the brain. When this gets disrupted pathologies can arise, such as in neurodegenerative disorders. We discuss Rachel's research investigating the protein arrangements and their subsequent dynamics and how they affect the structure & function of the synapse through a myriad of biochemical techniques.

In today's episode Carolina & Clara discuss the dynamics of strategy-learning of deep neural networks with Aaditya Singh. Aditya is carrying out a PhD on “Learning dynamics of various strategies and circuits in deep neural networks” in Prof. Andrew Saxe’s and Dr Felix Hill at UCL in the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit. Aaditya completed his bachelor’s and Masters at MIT on Computer science and Neuroscience. Aaditya then worked in DeepMind and Meta before starting his PhD.

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In today's episode, Carolina & Clara discuss the neuroscience and psychology behind interoception, the process that guides our sense of self and is often termed our "sixth sense". How does our perception of our internal bodily states drive our emotions and cognitive state? We discuss the place for interoception in our sense of being. We also discuss what happens when we lack interoceptive abilities, a condition known as alexithymia, and in what ways interoception has been scientifically probed in humans to help us better understand the brain regions and processes underlying it.

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For our third episode in our "Tools for Looking into the Brain" series, we are joined by Dr. Adil Khan, a neuroscientist and group leader at King's College London, to explore reading and writing patterns into the brain. We discuss the principles of two major tools used to examine and manipulate neural activity, namely two-photon microscopy and optogenetics, and explore how they have been applied to answering questions about the neural basis of flexible cognition and behaviour in the Khan lab.

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In today's episode, we are joined by Professor Tiago Branco, a Principal Investigator and Group Leader at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at UCL. The Branco lab studies how instinctive decisions are computed from sensory information, and from representations of the world built from experience. In this episode, we discuss what different sorts of approaches (top-down vs bottom-up) you can employ to study the neural basis of behaviour, and how computational models of behaviours can be created and used based on experimental data. Drawing on Professor Branco's extensive experience in the field of neuroscience, we delve into his research past and how it led him to pursue his current focus. We also explore how ethologically relevant naturalistic behaviours can be studied in a lab, and the paradigms that are utilised for this purpose in the context of instinctive defensive behaviours and responses to imminent threat.

You can find out more about the Branco Lab here: https://www.sainsburywellcome.org/web/groups/branco-lab

Today's episode is about fungi & lichen! We are joined by George Mears, a PhD student at Royal Holloway and Kew Gardens. Having carried out research on the evolutionary impact of the lichen lifestyle on the fungal genome during his Masters, George is currently in the LIDo iCASE PhD program, working under Professor Robin Williams to continue biological research into plant-derived products. In this episode, we discuss the ancient symbiotic relationships between plants and fungi and how lichens have impacted fungi evolution and vice versa.

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In today’s episode we are celebrating women’s day by discussing the current state of women’s reproductive healthcare and research, how much progress has been made and what still needs to be done. We are joined by Professor Sohier Elneil, a UCL Professor and Consultant specialising in Urogynaecology and Uroneurology.  

Professor Elneil completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge in the physiology and pharmacology of sensory bladder dysfunction in women and now runs the neuromodulation programme for bladder and pelvic floor dysfunction at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. As well as actively teaching at University College London, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. 

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Welcome back to Neuroverse, this week we bring to you the second episode in our mini-series "Tools for Looking into the Brain", where we explore the diversity of experimental methods used to study the brain's structure and function. In this episode, we discuss the basic principles of fluorescence microscopy and how it can help us understand the brain. We explore how we can make cells of the brain fluorescent in the first place, and the different types of microscopes that are used to visualise and image this fluorescence, from widefield to confocal to 2-photon microscopes! We also discussed the advantages of each microscopy technique, and explored some examples of research studies that have taken advantage of them.

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Happy Valentines day! We hope today you celebrate love in all its shapes and forms.

It is also our Neuroverse 2 year anniversary! What better way to celebrate than to dive deep into Love's effect on the brain, from the neurobiology to the philosophy (Neuroverse style). We discuss how the initial phases of falling in Love activates the same biological pathways as acute stress, causing the classical symptoms of sleeplessness, shortness of breath and longing, as well as how long-term leave and heart-break is manifested in the brain. We also postulate about the epistemology of Love and if Plato was right about the idea of soulmates, based on the myth that Zeus separated four-armed and legged humans, cursed to forever search for their second halves. Or was it Fernando Pessoa that got its right when he said "We never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It’s our own concept—our own selves—that we love."

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