Astronauts on a routine repair mission for the Hubble Space Telescope find themselves coping with more than they bargained for in the pulse-pounding opening sequence of Alfonso Cuaron's Oscar-winning film, Gravity...
Teenage drivers who have a high sensitivity to stress actually have lower rates of car accidents than their more mellow friends. Christie Nicholson reports
—Emer McHugh, Ireland
The brains of cetaceans--dolphins and whales--differ from those of other mammals in a number of ways, but one of the most striking differences is the size of the hippocampus. As a general rule, the larger the size of a mammal’s brain, the smaller the fraction of it that the hippocampus occupies, so dolphins and whales [...]..
Take a visual journey through seven prizewinning illusions
Soothing music helps patients heal after an operation
There are deep, surprising connections between words and the brain’s sense of motion through space
Personality and IQ have traditionally been viewed as distinct domains of human functioning. However, research over the past three decades suggests that IQ is a personality trait.
I’m signed up for this social network analytic tool called “ThinkUp,” and one of the things it does is to remind you what you were talking about a year ago on the same day...
Exposure to bright light in the morning appears linked to reduced appetite and lower body weight, regardless of sleep patterns. Sophie Bushwick reports
Even after his death, the famous amnesic H. M. is revolutionizing our understanding of how memory works and how we maintain it as we age
Managing editor Sandra Upson introduces the May/June 2014 issue of Scientific American MIND
Greetings from Boston where the 21st annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society is underway. Saturday and Sunday were packed with symposia, lectures and more than 400 posters...
Scientists find a way chemicals may contribute to Parkinson’s
Support is growing for a decades-old physics idea suggesting that localized episodes of disordered brain activity help keep the overall system in healthy balance
BROOKLYN--It wasn’t hard to name Lil Wayne. He actually volunteered to take the rapper’s moniker. On April 2, Frank Grasso, director of the Biomemetic and Cognitive Robotics Lab at Brooklyn College, showed me around his lab spaces--from where they build mobile robots to where they keep their axolotls and fiddler crabs to the crown jewel: [...]..
Scientists can use the map to figure out how developmental disorders like autism first begin
Sometimes I work with children and adults who can't put words to their feelings and thoughts. It's not that they don't want to - it's more that they don't know how.
Editor’s note: Brain Basics from Scientific American Mind is a series of short video primers on the brain and how we feel, think and act.
