Conscious experiences involve subjective qualities, such as colours, sounds, smells and emotions. In this Perspective, we argue that these qualities can be understood in terms of their similarity to other experiences. This account highlights the role memory conscious experience, even for simple percepts. How an experience feels depends on implicit relationships between different perceptual repr...

L earning and memory depend on the brain’s plasticity, its ability to rewire itself. Lippi et al. reveal that two microRNAs (miRNAs) help the brain maintain this fl exibility by dismantling unneeded synapses between neurons (1). When a rat memorizes the route through a maze or a singer learns the lyrics to a song, the neural changes in their brains typically include growth or modifi cation of d...