Stories by Nikhil Swaminathan

A new study shows how people get inside one anothers' heads

Deb Roy wants to make robots smarter by getting them to imitate his kid

Cancer-causing agent in "organic" soaps, Digital patients, Deadly wheat fungus and more...

The answer may provide clues to get to the bottom of speech deficiencies in humans

Olivier Ameisen had tried everything to dry out--then he heard about baclofen

A new material, which makes like a sea cucumber, shifting from rigid to soft, could have medically valuable applications

The Pentagon punts Google off its turf, the Wiimote is co-opted for scientific purposes, and more ...

Visual decoder allows researchers to translate brain wave activity into images

New research shows that young girls may learn language more completely than their male peers

New study says tiny snippets of RNA co-evolved with vertebrates, likely accounting for the new organisms' complexity

Study analyzing more than 200 years of data finds that couples consisting of third cousins have the highest reproductive success

Could plaque buildup in the brain be the cause rather than the result of the debilitating neurogenerative disorder?

Two research efforts have determined DNA recombination mechanisms that underlie population diversity, how it happens and where in the genetic code it occurs

Researchers find that when a language splits off from another, its vocabulary undergoes immediate changes, rather than a slow and steady evolution

A new theory proposes that blood may do more than nourish neurons

Using standard inheritance theory, scientists have searched for the genes underlying autism with little success. Michael Wigler thinks he knows why - and how the disorder persists over generations
Supplement: Working around the Mendelians: A Q&A with Michael Wigler

Reviews and recommendations from the February/March 2008 issue of Scientific American MIND

New research suggests that triggering new nerve cell production in adult brains could stave off short-term forgetfulness

New research indicates what happens in the brain when we're faced with a dilemma

An M.I.T. scientist believes that if blood flow actually impacts neuronal behavior, the fMRI would be an even more powerful tool for diagnosing disorders such as Alzheimer's and schizophrenia

Two new studies connect structural variations to 1 percent of autism cases, a finding that may help unlock the enigmatic disorder's genetic footprint