Stories by Andrea Alfano

Reviews and recommendations from Scientific American MIND

Patients are not always warned about the weighty impact of antipsychotics, antidepressants and stimulants

The nerves in our body specialize in sensing particular touches but work together to create our rich tactile experiences

High-level brain areas accumulated far more changes in lipids than the brains of chimpanzees

The first longitudinal study in children supports the theory that parents with unrealistically positive views of their kids foster narcissistic qualities

Scientific American MIND’s online survey of pet owners uncovered some interesting results when people were asked about their interspecies relationships

Richard Pan, a pediatrician and state senator, discusses his bill pushing the elimination of parental belief exemptions from children’s school vaccination requirements

—Instant Egghead

The exhibit displays organisms at the extreme ends of normal evolutionary distributions

People in the Congo rainforests or in Montreal tended to react to the same piece of music in strikingly similar ways. Andrea Alfano reports

The Archangel Ancient Tree Archive plants one thousand “champion” redwoods along the Oregon coast

Borrowing the method organisms use to build mineralized tissues could lead to better performing lithium ion batteries

Scientific American MIND is surveying animal lovers for our May/June report on pets

As Northeasterners hunker down to weather tonight’s potentially record-breaking winter storm, they may also want to brace themselves for even more severe nor’easters in the future

Once thought to be little more than genetic junk, retroviruses lurking within host genomes have acquired new roles that may be involved in brain development, a recent study suggests