Sleeps Role in Obesity, Schizophrenia, Diabetes...Everything
Is sleep good for everything? Scientists hate giving unqualified answers. But the more sleep researchers look, the more the answer seems to be tending toward a resounding affirmative.
"neuroscience"
The Neuroscience of Lucid Dreams
Lucid dreams are perhaps the most bizarre perceptual experience one can have. You are asleep and dreaming, but suddenly you realize that it's all just a dream.
What's Special, Or Not, About Human Brain Anatomy
As a teenager, Chet Sherwood, a biological anthropologist at George Washington University, did not know he was destined to become a scientist.
Hello and Welcome to the Scicurious Brain!!
Hi Everyone! Scicurious here, and thrilled to be blogging with the fine folks you will see introduced over the next few days. I am a post-doc in neuroscience at a fancy R1 university, and I have a PhD in physiology from another fancy place...
Cooler Than #SharkWeek: What Can We Learn From the Brains of the Largest Sharks?
Shark Week is upon us, and rather than be fooled by sharky fakery or outright lies, how about some real, true, scientifically-accurate shark science?
Dali masterpieces were inspired by Scientific American
Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali was a reader of Scientific American, and created one of his most iconic pieces based on a Scientific American article on face perception.
Statistical Flaw Punctuates Brain Research in Elite Journals
Neuroscientists need a statistics refresher. That is the message of a new analysis in Nature Neuroscience that shows that more than half of 314 articles on neuroscience in elite journals during an 18-month period failed to take adequate measures to ensure that statistically significant study results were not, in fact, erroneous...
Working Memory and The Movies Streaming In Our Heads
Peter Carruthers began his career studying philosophy as an undergraduate at the University of Leeds, an outpost for Wittgenstein scholarship.
New Clues to Just How Much the Adult Brain Can Change
Popular neuroscience books have made much in recent years of the possibility that the adult brain is capable of restoring lost function or even enhancing cognition through sustained mental or physical activities...
New Science Channel show HACK MY BRAIN—Featuring Scientific American MIND’s Illusion Chasers!
Todd Sampson is an advertising exec in Australia. An average Joe, who, like the rest of us, wants to be super human . So he's enlisting scientists all over the world to hack his brain and make him, smarter, faster, and more creative...
Do Dogs Fall for Magic Tricks?
Animals can be deceived, but do animals feel wonderment, awe, or sense that they have experienced the impossible?
U.S. Big Science Project Starts Search for Tools to Understand ALS, PTSD, PD, TBI, ALZ …
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...
MacArthur "Genius" Winner: Math Might Help Crack Mysteries of Schizophrenia
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...
Your Brain on Thanks
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It may not have the cache of winter holidays or the Cash! Yay! of a birthday, but it is the best feel-good holiday of the year.
Concussion Culture: How to Protect Young Athletes
In May of 2012, former NFL linebacker Junior Seau took his own life by shooting himself in the chest. Seau was dealing with depression, mood swings and insomnia.
Technology May Lift Severe Depression, but Full Recovery Takes Time
This blog is the last in a series of guest posts on technology and the brain to celebrate Scientific American Mind’s 10-year anniversary.
Brain Training Doesn’t Give You Smarts...Except When It Does
Our site recently ran a great story about how brain training really doesn't endow you instantly with genius IQ. The games you play just make you better at playing those same games.
The Symbiartic SciArt Roundup: Exhibits On View Now
Our recent effort to galvanize people around great #sciart on Twitter was a raging success, proving to us that science art is growing by leaps and bounds.
Why Julianne Moore and Taylor Swift See That Dress Differently
I don't think that the reason people see the dress differently from each other is an interesting brain process. Rather, it is a mundane differences in how people have viewed the image on their electronic display screens (phones, tablets, laptops, etc)...
Project Superhero: Using Pop Culture to Inspire Kids’ Interest in Science
In my pop-sci writing, mainly here, at Psychology Today, and in the books Becoming Batman and Inventing Iron Man, I use superheroes as foils for communicating science.
