ScienceThe BestieBeginner
How Your Brain Works course icon

How Your Brain Works

Like Duolingo, but for How Your Brain Works. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.

For the part of you with thirty open tabs that never became anything.

12 bite-size levelsAbout 5 minutes each

Free during early access · No credit card · iPhone & Android

Nelly the Neuron
How Your Brain Works
with Nelly the Neuron
12
Levels
2
Sections
5
Min/day
What you'll learn

Key ideas in How Your Brain Works

  • The brain uses prior knowledge to fill in gaps when sensory data is unclear
  • External stimuli must be converted into electrical signals for the brain to process them
  • Perception is a 'best guess' constructed from memory and expectation
  • The brain itself lives in darkness and only 'sees' electrical patterns
  • The brain prioritizes speed and survival over perfect accuracy in low-light conditions
  • Meaning is assigned by the brain, not contained within the physical energy itself
  • The brain's role as a predictive engine rather than a passive camera
  • The transformation of raw energy into neural signals and meaning
  • Illusions occur when the brain's predictive shortcuts clash with reality
  • The brain constantly filters out 'noise' to prevent processing overload
  • The brain applies 'rules' (like shadows or perspective) that usually work but can be fooled
  • Attention acts as a gatekeeper for what enters conscious awareness
  • The brain continues to monitor background data even when we aren't 'paying attention' to it
  • The brain uses environmental context to label vague physical sensations
  • Why optical illusions occur
  • Changing the 'story' or context changes how the brain interprets internal signals
Why not just Google it

You've tried the other tabs

Wikipedia

Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.

YouTube

You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.

ChatGPT

One answer, then back to scrolling.

Online courses

Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.

Tomo gives How Your Brain Works the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.

Try a question

Here's what playing it feels like

A real question from this course. Take your best guess.

The Brain's Best Guess

In what form does your brain receive information about the outside world?

Get it right to open this lesson and 11 more in the app.

Course map

Where How Your Brain Works takes you

Discover how your brain predicts your world, builds your habits, and manages your moods in this quick guide to your own gray matter.

  1. 1

    The Operating System

    • How Your Brain Builds Your World
    • The Rewiring Habit
  2. 2

    The Hardware

    • The Chemical Messengers
    • The Survival Switch

2 sections · 4 units · 12 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.

How it's taught

You pick the voice

This course
The Bestie

How Your Brain Works is taught in the The Bestie style: your friend who just gets it. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.

Start free

Start How Your Brain Works today.

Download Tomo, search How Your Brain Works, and play your first lesson in under a minute.