Neuroscience

A new study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B says it is the first to demonstrate that birds possess empathy - and they say they have verified it using both behavioral and physiological methods…

If you saw the film version of "Mamma Mia!" you may have wondered why some of the actors could act, sing and dance and some, clearly, could not. A new study in Current Biology says that people who…

A preliminary study in JAMA (JAMA. 2011;305[8]808-814.) has found that 50-minute cell phone use was associated with increased brain glucose metabolism, a marker of brain activity, in the region…

How do we 'experience' our own bodies?     It has long been believed that our body image is limited by our innate body plan, so we cannot truly experience having more than one head, two…

The schedule 1 illicit drug known as ecstasy has been used by up to 12 million people in the United States  and millions more worldwide.  Past research has suggested that ecstasy users…

Last year I attended a singularity conference and Ray Kurzweil's avatar predicted it was 25 years away.   Well, it's been 25 years away for a long time.  It's a nice, safe number, close…

Mice have a healthy concept of fear and so they fear the scent of a predator.   While it seems obvious that brains quickly figure out with a sniff that a predator, like a cat, is nearby, the…

Measuring 'intelligence' is a much art as science.   Even using the word intelligence sends people down a philosophical rabbit hole, disagreeing about what the word means. So can there be a '…

Can olive oil prevent mental illness? A new study says the ingestion of trans-fats and saturated fats increases the risk of suffering depression and that olive oil protects against this mental…

Frédéric Chopin, composer of "The Last Waltz" and poet of the piano, suffered from tuberculosis and regularly hallucinated. Even for those in the Romantic Revolution, like Liszt, Schumann and Victor…