Social Sciences

Mood and anxiety disorders are the most common mental disorders but psychiatrists remain divided as to how to define and classify them. Definitions in the upcoming Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (…

You study the menu at a restaurant and decide to order the steak rather than the salmon. But when the waiter tells you about the lobster special, you decide lobster trumps steak. Without…

Brain overgrowth in the latter part of an infant’s first year may contribute to the onset of autistic characteristics, according to research presented at the American College of…

Waiters will pick up an inverted glass with their thumb pointing down if they plan to pour water into the glass. Grabbing thumb-down may feel awkward at first but it allows the waiter to be more…

A missing brain protein may be one of the culprits behind autism and other brain disorders, researchers at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory report in the Dec. 6 issue of Neuron. Li-…

New research from a lab at Florida State University reveals that self-control takes fuel — literally. When we exercise it, resisting temptations to misbehave, our fuel tank is depleted, making…

CHICAGO – Using a novel imaging technique to study autistic children, researchers have found increased gray matter in the brain areas that govern social processing and learning by observation.…

Omega-3 fatty acids protect the brain against Parkinson’s disease, according to a study by Université Laval researchers published in the online edition of the FASEB Journal, the journal of the…

Is there an objective biological basis for the experience of beauty in art? Or is aesthetic experience entirely subjective? This question has been addressed in a paper by Cinzia Di Dio, Emiliano…

Vase or face? When presented with the well known optical illusion in which we see either a vase or the faces of two people, what we observe depends on the patterns of neural activity going on in our…