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June 12, 2014Guest Blog
What Does Mindfulness Meditation Do to Your Brain?: As you read this, wiggle your toes. Feel the way they push against your shoes, and the weight of your feet on the floor. Really think about what your feet feel like right now - their heaviness...; Tom Ireland

September 3, 2009Mind
Can fearful memories be erased?: In the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind , Joel and Clementine's relationship ends so sourly that the couple elects to have their mutual memories swept away via a non-surgical procedure called "targeted memory erasure." No such tool actually exists...; Lynne Peeples

September 1, 2010Mind
You Must Remember This: What Makes Something Memorable?: What stays with us, and what we forget, depends in part on how well our neurons keep time; Christof Koch; September / October 2010; 10.1038/scientificamericanmind0910-16; Originally published as "Consciousness Redux: You Must Remember This" in September / October 2010

February 1, 2006Mind
The Devil You Know: JR Minkel; February 2006; 10.1038/scientificamerican0206-29b

May 18, 2010Mind
Panic Attacks as a Problem of pH: Study casts new light on the brain mechanisms behind recurrent bouts of intense anxiety; Richard Maddock

March 26, 2013Mind
Emotional Needs in Teens May Spur the Growth of New Brain Cells: Until recent decades, the brain was viewed as static. The accepted scientific view was that after early childhood few changes occurred in the connections between neurons and no new brain cells appeared...; Jon Lieff

July 17, 2015Mind
Why Nobody Intervened in the July 4 Metro Murder: Criticism of witnesses’ inaction reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the neuroscience of how the brain responds to sudden threats; R. Douglas Fields

April 1, 2007
Addicted to Food?: What drives people, against their better judgment, to eat more food than they need? Scientists look to the brain for answers; Oliver Grimm

June 26, 2012Mind
How the Brain Views Race: Research on the link between implicit race preference and brain activity could be used to prevent unintended consequences of race bias; Mo Costandi and Nature magazine

August 17, 2011Mind
How the Brain Remembers 9/11: When the first plane hit, I was literally shaken out of the shower. What was that? I remember the precise look on my roommate's face when I walked into the living room of the tiny tenement-style apartment we shared on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, about a mile from the World Trade Center: a mix of bewilderment, disbelief, and only a touch of the sarcastic smirk he typically wore...; Greg Boustead

January 16, 2015Cross-Check
What Is “Ironic Science”?: I was scanning my Twitter feed recently, pretending to look for “news” while really searching, as usual, for items that praise, condemn or merely allude to me—I mean, let’s face it, all of us social-media addicts are narcissists–when the bells in my amygdala started clanging...; John Horgan

July 12, 2009Mind
Why the #$%! Do We Swear? For Pain Relief: Dropping the F-bomb or other expletives may not only be an expression of agony, but also a means to alleviate it; Frederik Joelving

October 24, 2016Neuroscience
Liar, Liar: How the Brain Adapts to Telling Tall Tales: Neural responses decline after repeated acts of dishonesty, research suggests; Simon Makin

November 1, 2009Mind
Why the #! Do We Swear?: Expletives may not only be an expression of agony but also a means to alleviate it; Frederik Joelving; November / December 2009; 10.1038/scientificamericanmind1109-16b

January 22, 2011Mind
Meditation Correlated with Structural Changes in the Brain: A study published this week finds that an eight-week meditation course leads to structural changes in the brain. Christie Nicholson reports

June 1, 1994Mind
Emotion, Memory and the Brain: The neural routes underlying the formation of memories about primitive emotional experiences, such as fear, have been traced; Joseph E. LeDoux; June 1994; 10.1038/scientificamerican0694-50

November 1, 2011Mind
City Living Can Heighten Social Stress: Urban dwellers are more likely to have overactive emotional centers in the brain; Michele Solis; November/December 2011; 10.1038/scientificamericanmind1111-9a; Originally published as "The Urban Brain" in November/December 2011

July 11, 2008Mind
Who's afraid? Not these brain cells: Rutgers University researchers have found brain cells responsible for helping people overcome fear of things they once found scary. The finding, published in Nature , could pave the way for these so-called intercalated cells in the amygdala, a brain region that processes fear, to become drug targets for treating phobias (such as fear of heights and closed spaces) as well as post-traumatic stress disorder in soldiers and others...; Nikhil Swaminathan

What Does Mindfulness Meditation Do to Your Brain?