If your July 4th plans are anything like my family’s, it’s fully loaded with lots of planned activities: parade at 10am, pool at 2pm, BBQ at 4pm, fireworks at 9pm, etc. Little time is left unstructured for the kids to, well, be independent. New research gives me pause to think, […]
Whether we like it or not, sometimes distant memories of past events pop into our heads for no apparent reason. Study after study has found that memories associated with high emotions are more likely to spontaneously come to the surface than non-emotional ones. But these memories may lack specific details […]
Agatha Christie was a master storyteller who weaved together seemingly disparate clues to tell a compelling mystery. Now, scientists are trying to sleuth the details of her mental health using linguistics analyses. A new study, which looks at the works of six renowned authors over their decades’ long writing careers, […]
We call it a “senior moment” – when we forget where we parked the car or left the keys. These moments of forgetfulness are so called because they tend to become more frequent with age. But all is not lost: New research suggests that senior moments have a lot to […]
From coaches to self-help books, everyone has advice for how to get motivated to accomplish a task. But what if you could simply see how your brain reacts to different motivation strategies and then pick the best one? New research is finding that showing people their brain activity levels could […]
Twitter is an increasingly powerful tool for information. In April, a hoax tweet from someone who hacked the Associated Press Twitter account caused the stock market to momentarily crash. Traders were swayed by a single false tweet about a terrorist attack on the White House. The incident begs the question […]
“That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.” – Emily Dickinson Poets have long known that metaphors can elevate words to higher level. Now scientists know part of the reason why: A new study suggests that reading metaphors, specifically those with words associated with taste, recruits […]
In one of my favorite movies, Groundhog Day, Bill Murray’s character eventually gets so frustrated with the inevitability of living the same day again and again that he stops caring. With his fate seemingly sealed, he no longer worries about his actions. It makes sense that, faced with no control […]
When we are around different people, our behavior changes. Some of it is intentional – like talking about things you have in common – but much of it happens spontaneously without us even realizing it, such as folding your arms or scratching your nose when others do the same. But […]
Q&A with Jon Kaas Grasping, reaching, climbing – these are just some of the basic instinctive behaviors that we see even in babies. While these movements are not uniquely human, how they unfold neurologically is unique to primates. All primates have these motor behaviors, or “motor primitives,” and they all […]
March 29–April 1 | 2025
