While we’re asleep, we may find ourselves wandering through a vivid and complex world, stuffed with the same sensory details we experience when wakeful. We sleep and have dreams as a way to forget the unnecessary stresses and more trivial information the brain absorbs during the course of the day, yet sleeping brains [ … ]
The number of people worldwide affected with autism is estimated to be 62.2 million, and the precise cause is not yet understood. However, over the last several years, researchers have identified a number of risk factors closely associated with the prevalence and severity of symptoms. [ … ]
How often have you heard “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” or at the very least, thought that thought? You’re out shopping or driving and suddenly you see someone who looks familiar. The same probably happens if you’re watching a movie or TV show and an actor you’ve seen in something else appears on the screen [ … ]
Whenever we think of the human brain, it becomes far too tempting to just imagine the entire organ having clearly mapped regions that individually process each piece of data that comes in and file everything according to function, and not to think of the whole as being greater than the sum of its parts — that the brain relies on vast [ … ]
Our wallets and our brains are much more closely connected than you might believe. In fact, there’s such a strong correlation between the ways we spend and think, that a rising field known as neuroeconomics explores this connection [ … ]
As the days lengthen and flowers bloom, the impressive majesty of nature takes center stage at last — summer is finally here. The phenomena of the collective physical world have inspired classic works of literature, iconic paintings, and famous symphonies. And it’s all less coincidental than you [ … ]
We often live our lives with the advice to “follow our dreams” — to always do that which we can aspire to do. While dreams in reality are often less flattering than that, and almost always less coherent, we’ve attached value to what they mean for centuries. [ … ]
When it comes to losing weight, some of the most common advice out there is “portion control,” at least when people aren’t trying to promote some combination of foods that will somehow set the process of weight loss in motion. There’s probably some good advice in all of these helpful hints, but they’re not always easy to [ … ]
Whether we look forward to it or not, most of us think we understand the value of a long, uninterrupted sleep every night — often after we’ve gone without it for too long. Laura Lewis and her team of researchers at Boston University have sacrificed a great deal of sleep too — but they understand [ … ]
On a day in late August 1953, a young man later known to medical history as patient H.M. underwent an experimental procedure. The operation, an effort to control the debilitating seizures he suffered, meant the removal of parts of his brain, among them was part of a mechanism known as the hippocampus. The surgery was [ … ]
When we imagine the course of human evolution — the roughly three-million year period from the moment when Lucy began to walk upright through grasses of the Awash River Valley to modern times, it’s hard to determine the moment at which we became human, or at least as human as we might recognize ourselves. After all, there’s only [ … ]
A good night’s sleep could be more crucial than we think. It might seem like an unattainable goal to some — something we never get enough of, as we feel the unpleasant effects from a lack of it. Now those effects might run deeper than anyone previously thought possible. Recent research published by the journal [ … ]
Part of growing up, we’ve come to learn that patience is a virtue. Whether it’s a matter of being caught on the highway on the way home after finishing a long work day — or eagerly counting down the days until an exciting new movie, book, or film finally releases, patience is something we all have to embrace at some time or other. [ … ]
Over the course of the pandemic, we’ve seen eruptions of protests in a few pockets of the United States, as people demanded their country be “re-opened” — letting people go back to their daily routines — for things that we didn’t miss much before — but now seem like distant memories after several months of [ … ]
It can take decades for the first symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease to appear, this is why when a loved one starts to show signs of dementia, no one is ever really certain of the precise moment when their mental health took a turn for the worse. However, even before the telltale signs show up in an individual, the brain’s neurons [ … ]
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