Scientific American
Explaining déjà vu: Is this eerily familiar ‘glitch in the matrix’ a form of conflict resolution?
Some think déjà vu is a sign that you're recalling an experience from a past life. Spooky! Carrie-Anne Moss, as ...
‘Socially clueless robots’? Debunking the myth that autistic people aren’t good at friendship
A number of myths about autistic people abound. For one, it's a great myth that autistic people lack empathy. This ...
‘The genie is out of the bottle’: How ‘mind reading’ will transform medical care
The ability to detect electrical activity in the brain through the scalp, and to control it, will soon transform medicine ...
Viewpoint: Cannabis legalization fraught with ‘confusion and false promises’
Not all cannabis is created equal; neither are the people that use it. As an epidemiologist, I have studied cannabis ...
Are babies born with brains ready to understand the world?
Neuroscientists understand much about how the human brain is organized into systems specialized for recognizing faces or scenes or for ...
Does listening to music make difficult tasks easier? That may depend on your personality
The fact that music can make a difficult task more tolerable may be why students often choose to listen to ...
Stopping the ‘raging fire of Alzheimer’s’: Researchers shifting attention in fight against neurodegenerative diseases
Tau was long thought to be a secondary actor. Amyloid plaque builds up first, largely outside of neurons, followed by ...
Children of alcoholics slower at switching from one task to another, study suggests
One of the strongest predictors of becoming an alcoholic is family history: the offspring of people with the disorder are ...
Consciousness is subjective. Does that mean it can’t be rigorously studied?
The science of consciousness has enjoyed a renaissance in the last couple of decades and the study of our own ...
Viewpoint: US spends huge on cancer medicine but doesn’t have a lot to show for it
The aggressive, can-do American approach to health care isn’t working when it comes to medicine in general and cancer medicine ...
Why debunking coronavirus conspiracy theories might be counterproductive
Was it a bioweapon from a virology institute? Had it been known before and already patented? Could homeopathic remedies help? ...
Viewpoint: AI could guide us in understanding which cancer patients likely to benefit from expensive immunotherapy
Over the last decade, significant advances in research, education, early detection methods and treatment have boosted cancer survival rates while ...
‘Topographical disorientation’: What it’s like to live without a sense of direction
We all know people who say they have “no sense of direction,” and our tendency is almost always to minimize ...
Brain organoids ‘giving insight’ into origins of autism, epilepsy and schizophrenia
Knowing how the human brain develops is critical to understanding how things can go awry in neurodevelopmental disorders, from intellectual ...
Psychosomatic disorders not ‘all in the mind’: Brain-body connection bolstered by new research
Placebo effects, exercise highs, getting sick when you’re stressed out—the popular press and the scientific literature alike are replete with ...
Turning old drugs—for things like diabetes and alcoholism—into new cancer treatments
Drugs originally developed to treat diseases ranging from diabetes to alcoholism may have applications in cancer treatment, according to a ...
Brain building block glutamate could be key to treating Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, depression
Glutamate is often called the “major excitatory neurotransmitter” within the brain. It is the brain’s “go” signal. [Neuroscientist David] Baker ...
Gene therapy era: A look at current treatments and what’s next for cancers and genetic disorders
At least nine gene therapies have been approved for certain kinds of cancer, some viral infections and a few inherited ...
Podcast: How old is your dog in human years? Genetic study offers a new way to answer that question
How old is your four-legged best friend? Common wisdom says that a dog ages seven years for every human year ...
Infographic: How exercise gives your brain a boost
Why does exercise affect the brain at all? Physical activity improves the function of many organ systems in the body, ...
Non-addictive version of ecstasy ‘party drug’ emerges as potential treatment for PTSD, anxiety
MDMA, or ecstasy, once had the reputation of exclusively being an illicit party drug popular at raves and dance clubs ...
How far can we enhance the brain before human identity is lost?
Facebook recently announced it had acquired CTRL-Labs, a U.S. start-up working on wearable tech that allows people to control digital devices ...
Free will doesn’t exist? Why we shouldn’t be swayed by this ‘flawed experiment’
One of the most fervent of late 19th century materialists, T.H. Huxley, described human beings as “conscious automata” with no ...
How ancient humans ‘self-domesticated’ their own faces to appear more friendly
One hypothesis for how humans transitioned from developing a robust Neandertal visage in maturity to retaining finer features throughout life ...
ASMR: Being triggered by ‘ordinary sounds and sights’ may be more than pseudoscience
What do the sounds of whispering, crinkling paper, and tapping fingernails have in common? What about the sight of soft ...
Podcast: Researchers implanted false memories in birds to figure out how humans learn language
Babies are constantly surrounded by human language, always listening and processing. Eventually they put sounds together to produce a "daddy," or a ...
How the microbiome may boost the brain’s recovery from stroke damage
Despite a decades-long search, scientists have yet to pinpoint effective ways of protecting the brain from poststroke damage. In recent ...
