Jennifer Ouellette
Articles written specifically for the GLP or the articles that are reposted from other sources (sometimes in modified form) with permission list the source as Genetic Literacy Project. Excerpted articles list the original media outlet as the source. Excerpts are posted under guidelines for Fair Use and Creative Commons for educational nonprofits (501c3). The GLP’s Fair Use policy for posting excerpts and using images is explained here.

Recreational fear: Why some of us like scary movies and haunted houses
[We] tend to seek out scary movies, horror novels, or haunted houses—and not just during the Halloween season. This tendency ...

How the Hobbit films illustrate the way human brains evolved
For Northwestern University neuroscientist and engineer Malcolm MacIver, [a scene from the Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey where Gandalf and Bilbo ...

This is your brain on horror movies
When we watch horror movies, our brains are hard at work, with lots of interconnected cross-talk between different regions to ...

‘Connecticut vampire’s’ identity revealed through genetic analysis of remains
Back in 1990, children playing near a gravel pit in Griswold, Connecticut, stumbled across a pair of skulls that had broken ...

Medieval Europe’s devastating Black Death was caused by just two strains of the disease
The Black Death ravaged medieval Western Europe, wiping out roughly one-third of the population. Now researchers have traced the genetic ...

How augmented reality and avatars could change the way we interact
According to researchers at Stanford University, layering computer-generated content, like someone's avatar, onto a real-world environment will influence people's behavior ...

Chasing the origin of hallucinations in the brain
People under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs like LSD often experience vivid visual hallucinations. But exactly what is happening within ...

Brain implants could control epileptic seizures with chemical stimulants
People who suffer severe epileptic seizures may one day be able to control or even prevent them with an electronic ...

Pinpointing the internal clock that helps us mark the passage of time
Manmade clocks may precisely measure time, but, from a human perspective, the passage of time is remarkably fluid. It drags ...

Explaining hallucinations through math
[Researcher Heinrich Klüver] classified [hallucinogenic patterns he experienced] into four distinct types that he dubbed “form constants”: lattices (including checkerboards, ...

Delving into theories about the brain’s balancing act
Gerardo Ortiz remembers well the time in 2010 when he first heard his Indiana University colleague John Beggs talk about the hotly debated ...

Brain’s pain processing mechanism called into question
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. For many years, neuroscientists ...