The communal center of a larger office is an opportunity to recapture all the best parts of its one-room origins. Typically organized around food and social events like all hands meetings, this central gathering space accommodates the more social folks, and gives introverts an easier way to engage with colleagues. By definition, there should only be one heart.

It’s critical that this hub sit in the center of the space (so that it’s not used sparingly) and that it becomes the venue for all company-wide gatherings. “As people eat together and connect in this space, hierarchy drops away. There are no interns or CEOs when you’re sharing a meal or a cup of coffee. There are just people,” she says. “Suddenly, this space is the common ground where communication flows; it becomes a container for real conversations and productive questions. So when you hold your all hands meeting there, it’s infused with that collaborative energy.

Kelly Robinson in Get the Most Out of Your Space - Secrets from The Designer Behind Airbnb and SoundCloud

The challenge in trying in determine what parts of the mind contribute to personal identity is that each neurodegenerative disease can affect many cognitive systems, with the exact constellation of symptoms manifesting differently from one patient to the next.

The single most powerful predictor of identity change was not disruption to memory — but rather disruption to the moral faculty.

We found that disruptions to the moral faculty created a powerful sense that the patient’s identity had been compromised. Virtually no other mental impairment led people to stop seeming like themselves. This included amnesia, personality change, loss of intelligence, emotional disturbances and the ability to perform basic daily tasks.

For those with Alzheimer’s, neither degree nor type of memory impairment impacted perceived identity. All that mattered was whether their moral capacities remained intact.

What makes us recognizable to others resides almost entirely within a relatively narrow band of cognitive functioning. It is only when our grip on the moral universe loosens that our identity slips away with it.

New research by Nina Strohminger, postdoc fellow at the Yale School of Management, and Shaun Nichols, professor of philosophy at the University of Arizona, in a study published in August 2015 in Psychological Science.