Temple Grandin, a professor of animal science at Colorado State University, eloquently described life from the perspective of someone living with autism in her memoir, Thinking in Pictures, which served as the basis for an Emmy-winning HBO movie. Show More Summary
In the future, if you want to improve your ability to manipulate numbers in your head, you might just plug yourself in. So say researchers who reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on studies of a harmless form of brain stimulation applied to an area known to be important for math ability. Show More Summary
It may be a pure coincidence, but at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art they're displaying a tower of brains during APA week. Meanwhile, the DSM5 is officially out:
And if that weren't enough chaos for you, we have the obligatory APA protesters. Show More Summary
It’s hard to watch Star Trek Into Darkness and not think about Star Wars. Yes, J.J. Abrams is directing Episode VII and so we have that knowledge on the brain going into this. Maybe we’re even on the lookout for clues hinting at what we should expect from his take on that galaxy. Show More Summary
The quantified self movement's gaining steam, with companies creating all sorts of gadgets to track our activity levels, sleeping habits and even what's going on inside our heads. Melon's an EEG headband that taps into your brain's inner workings to show you how well you maintain mental focus. Show More Summary
Among the most recent video posts you will find on our all-new video archive page: • Child sneaks camera into school to document gross food. • The art of brain hacking. • Grizzly bear eats video camera. • 11 year old and his 3D printer. • HOWTO make glowing Converse. • Monkey shares lollipop with [...]
Hear ye, hear ye! Yesterday I wrote “The End” on Riven. It is no mistake that Snoopy is dancing with bunnies because that’s exactly what my brain is doing right now. During the last several months, I’ve been attacked NUMEROUS times … Continue reading ?
Phase 4 Films has acquired U.S. and Canadian rights to The Crash Reel, which follows the different paths taken by childhood friends and rivals Shaun White and Kevin Pearce. The latter suffered a serious brain injury while training for...Show More Summary
Chronic trauma can inflict lasting damage to brain regions associated with fear and anxiety. Previous imaging studies of people with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, have shown that these brain regions can over-or under-react in response to stressful tasks.
I've written before about Moran Cerf -- celebrated neuroscientist, former military hacker, and good-guy bank robber -- who also happens to be a great storyteller. Here's a video in which Cerf recounts some clever and fascinating neuroscience experiments that use neurofeedback to help people resolve competition between different thoughts and wills in their minds. The [...]
Alcohol treatment interventions work best when patients understand and are actively involved in the process. A first-of-its-kind study looks at the interactive effects of smoking status and age on neurocognition in one-month-abstinent...Show More Summary
In the new techno-thriller Upload, a young computer scientist with a sketchy past and distrust of society decides to take the ultimate leap forward by scanning his brain and uploading his memories, personality and consciousness intoShow More Summary
Administering high-frequency electrical noise to the brain can actually boost math skills up to six months later, according to a small study at the University of Oxford. The finding was published in the journal Current Biology and outlines...Show More Summary
Terrible at math? No worries, it's nothing that a little electrical stimulation can't help. Researchers from the UK and Austria found that transcranial random noise stimulation ( Popular Science describes it as "a painless zap to the brain") helped subjects to learn arithmetic more quickly—and they retained their edge...
According to new research, the Mediterranean diet may help to preserve cognitive functioning during the aging process. Bystrictin explains the new findings and notes the ways that the diet differs from other nutrition regimes. A study released on April 30 examined the effects of the diet on cognitive abilities. Show More Summary
Dysfunctional mitochondria in brain cells can result in learning disabilities, according to a new study in Molecular Cell. The association between dysfunctional mitochondria and Parkinson's disease has been known, but this new study,...Show More Summary
The Melon headband is a brain-sensing device that monitors brain activities while you are studying, dancing, or just doing yoga to help you track your progress and productivity. At Melon we are really interested in the idea of Understood Self, which we are trying to add to the movement of Quantified Self. Show More Summary
Look at the adorable GIF above. What you're seeing is nothing more than a blob of disconnected, alternating smaller blobs. So why do our brains tell us that we're looking at a trotting dalmation? It's all because of a little trick our brains are playing on us known as the Law of Closure. Read more...
The ideal image many people had of the genome as a straightforward template that stamps out human beings in a predictable way was, and is, a fantasy. And this is nowhere more evident than in the case of human personality traits and mental illness.
If you're not great at doing math in your head, you're in pretty good company around these parts. In general, too -- an estimated 20% of otherwise healthy adults regularly struggle to do basic arithmetic without showing their work. Don't...Show More Summary