What We Call Reality: A New Book Shows How the Brain Constructs the World
Ronald Cicurel explains why we never perceive the world itself — only ever what our brain makes of it
Zurich, 7 August 2026. With What We Call Reality (German edition: Was wir die Realität nennen), neuroscientist and author Ronald Cicurel presents a book that poses a simple question with profound implications: do we see the world as it is — or do we only ever see a translation that our brain produces for us? The book is published in French by Éditions Sarina and in German by Waypoint Editions (2026). It speaks to anyone who has ever wondered why two people can experience the very same situation in completely different ways.
A photograph is not the sunset
Everyone knows the feeling: you photograph a sunset, convinced you've captured the moment — only to discover later that the image conveys nothing of the warmth in the air, the sound of the wind, or the emotional imprint you felt at that precise moment. This is exactly the gap Cicurel's book addresses: the difference between what is actually there and what our brain makes of it.
Cicurel calls this process "brain-centric": the brain does not capture the world like a camera. It selects what matters, organises it according to familiar patterns, and assembles it into something that, to us, resembles "reality". Between what actually happens and what we experience, there is therefore always a process of translation — one we typically don't notice, because it unfolds so seamlessly.
The book reveals just how deep this mechanism runs: it explains why an exhausted body perceives the world as more threatening, why people in love see the same landscape as brighter, why dreams feel real, and why, years later, trauma can still make the body react as though the past were present. From this, Cicurel draws a conclusion that is as unsettling as it is liberating: there is no single reality that everyone perceives in the same way — there is only the reality each brain constructs for its own understanding.
Why this concerns everyone
This question is no academic game. It touches on how we use smartphones, social media and algorithms which — as the book shows — intervene at precisely this level: they partly decide what we will see before we even make a conscious choice. It also concerns the way we argue: words like "truth", "love" or "justice" mean something different to each person, because they rest on realities translated in different ways. And it concerns what artificial intelligence can and cannot do: an AI without a body, Cicurel argues, can process language, but it has never translated its own reality — it lacks the bodily experience from which all human perception is built.
The author puts it this way:
"We never perceive the world without preconceptions. Our brain transforms stimuli, experiences and expectations into a reality we can inhabit — and language gives that reality a form we can share with others."
Despite this radical perspective, the book remains grounded in the concrete: it makes no promise of definitive answers to the riddle of consciousness, and it does not explain what reality is "in itself". Instead, it invites readers to observe their own perception with greater calm and curiosity — as something that is constructed, rather than something that is simply there.
About the author
Ronald Cicurel is a neuroscientist who, from 2004 to 2011, took part in founding the Blue Brain Project at EPFL in Lausanne — one of the first attempts to simulate an entire brain on a supercomputer. With What We Call Reality, he presents his sixteenth book; thirteen of his works address, from various angles, questions of reality, knowledge and intelligence. In 2015, together with neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis, he published The Relativistic Brain.