Articles
Anthropology is the study of people throughout the world, their evolutionary history, how they behave, adapt to different environments, communicate and socialise with one another. The study of anthropology is concerned both with the b...
What makes highly creative people different from the rest of us? In the 1960s, psychologist and creativity researcher Frank X. Barron set about finding out. Barron conducted a series of experiments on some of his generation’s most ren...
With so much talk about the evidence of the positive effects of yoga and meditation, you might be surprised at what scientific research also says about how art effects the brain.
Long before modern neuroscience, artists were cr...
Religion and neuroscience are not an obvious pairing. But earlier this week, a study published in Social Neuroscience demonstrated that spiritual feelings activate the neurological reward systems of devout Mormons. The study used fMRI...
People who think too much may have little reason to worry. Recent studies have shown that there is a link between anxiety and intelligence and it is a positive one.
Scientists found that people who worry a lot do so because they...
A universal sign of motherhood is the lullaby. The world over, mothers sing to their babies, whether Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, their favouritetunefrom the radio, or evenrandom notes. This universality creates the simple lullaby a f...
Thoughtful cognitive neuroscientists such as Anna Abraham,
A new study reports people who use profanities tend to be more honest and are less likely to be associated with deception or lying.
It’s long been associated with anger and coarseness but profanity can have another, more positiv...
Empathy is hot in business wisdom these days: Forbes says it’s invaluable, Apple’s training man...
Scientists at The University of Manchester have shown for the first time that if the brain is 'tuned-in' to a particular frequency, pain can be alleviated.
Chronic pain — pain which lasts for more than six months — is a real pro...
A question for the ages: Are you stuck with yourself?
Plenty of researchers who study personality would answer in the af...
In the quest to study human happiness, including its causes and effects, even agreeing on a definition is a formidable undertaking. Joy, euphoria, contentment, satisfaction—each of these, at times, has been used as a proxy or emphasiz...
When the brain's analytic network is engaged, our ability to appreciate the human cost of our action is repressed, researchers have found. The study shows for the first time that we have a built-in neural constraint on our ability to ...
The reason we sleep goes far beyond simply replenishing our energy levels every 12 hours — our brains actually change states when we sleep to clear away the toxic byproducts of neural activity left behind during the day.
Weirdly...
Since its 1992 debut, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has revolutionized our ability to view the human brain in action and understand the processes that underlie mental functions such as decision-making. As brain-imaging ...
A new study from the University of Utah finds spiritual euphoria is partly a Pavlovian response.
Finding Jesus can feel a lot like falling in love, winning an award or getting high because all of these events activate the same r...
We are only beginning to unravel the genetic and biochemical basis of mental illness — a vague term including conditions as diverse as anxiety, depression, and mood and psychotic disorders. With millions of people suffering from such ...
If you’re over 40, working more than 25 hours a week could be affecting your intelligence, new research suggests.
Don’t do an IQ test after a full week’s work if you are 40 years or older. You could be disappointed.
If you...
What is the focus of your research as a social neuroscientist?
The overarching goal of my research is to better understand the biology of typical and disordered social behavior in animal models and in patients with social impair...
It was 1972 at Penn State University, and
If you're like most parents, you'll do just about anything you can to increase the odds that your kids will be successful.
So, what if I were to tell you there's a simple thing you can to do to make it more likely that they'll b...
You may perceive the world the way your friends do, according to a Dartmouth study finding that friends have similar neural responses to real-world stimuli and these similarities can be used to predict who your friends are.
The ...
Every age believes itself to be the age of anxiety, as Auden’s famous poem first put it. But in his new book, , the neuroscientist and writer Joseph LeDoux suggests that that has never been a stronger claim to make than it is now. In ...