It’s no secret to Scientific American readers that we feel a special obligation to support the next generation of science enthusiasts, whom we hope to inspire both with our science coverage and our education initiatives, including the Scientific American Science in Action Award, powered by the Google Science Fair...
One of the most robust findings in social psychology is the beauty-is-good stereotype: physically attractive people are perceived and treated more positively than physically unattractive people [1]...
The movement of proteins involved in neurodegenerative diseases could serve as a target for future therapies
Imagined practice may activate the same neural circuits as real experience
The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine goes to John O'Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain—an inner GPS...
Nobel prizewinners May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser have spent a career together near the Arctic circle exploring how our brains determine a place, such as a room, street or landscape
The discoveries that the brain has defined systems that track an animal’s whereabouts so it knows where it is (and where it was) as it makes its way about the world were honored on Oct...
John O'Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser share the prize for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain. Steve Mirsky reports
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A single blow to the head may increase the risk of subsequently developing a disorder
Books and recommendations from Scientific American MIND
The extraordinary abilities of savants have inspired a brain-stimulation technique for enabling creative insight
Neuroimaging reveals how the brain’s reward and memory pathways prime inquiring minds for knowledge
A signature science program of the Obama administration’s second term—one intended to develop technologies and a base of knowledge to solve long-standing mysteries of how the brain works—has finally reached cruising altitude...
Is chimpanzee violence a product of nature or nurture? Genes or environment? Two weeks ago Nature published a report, "Lethal aggression in Pan is better explained by adaptive strategies than human impacts," in which 30 primatologists came down on the side of nature...
Chaser, a Border Collie from South Carolina, knows the names of over 1,000 different objects. Does anyone find themselves looking at their tail-wagging friend and wondering, "Well, what do you know?" When it comes to whether dogs can understand words, Chaser—the subject of not one, but two scientific publications—can attest that the answer is: Yes...
Dolphins can sense magnetism, suggesting that they track Earth’s magnetic field to navigate through the water
At 32, a year beyond a postdoctoral fellowship, Danielle Bassett could only express unreserved astonishment when she learned that she was one of 21 winners of a 2014 MacArthur Fellowship...
This question was not proposed by a mad scientist bent on world doggie domination. The idea to see whether dogs follow life-sized videos is actually entirely sensible.
Are you an introvert? It depends on which book you read. Here’s a sampling of the various conceptualizations of introversion in pop culture [1]: Preference for quiet, minimally stimulating environments: Quiet by Susan Cain Preference for concentration and solitude: The Introvert’s Way by Sophia Dembling Rechargeable battery: The Introvert Advantage by Marti Olsen Laney Thoughtful-introspective: [...]..
