This Is Your Brain

Whether it's a morning cup of coffee or a glass of warm milk before bed, we all have our habitual processions. The way they become engrained, though, varies from person to person.

• By Casey N. Cep

A new study links oxytocin, the hormone most commonly associated with social bonding, and the one that your body produces during an orgasm, with muscle regeneration.

• By Heather Hansman

Recent research on honor culture, associated with the American South and characterized by the need to retaliate against any perceived improper conduct, goes way beyond conventional situations involving disputes and aggression.

• By Eric Horowitz

Do ideas and emotions really spread like a virus?

• By Nathan Collins

Researchers find a universal positivity bias in the way we talk, tweet, and write.

• By Heather Hansman

After three sessions in an isolation tank, the answer's still not quite clear.

• By Jeff Winkler

Does it really matter if the reason for why you give money to newlyweds is based on a skewed version of a story your parents once told you?

• By Casey N. Cep

It is all too easy to treat science as a platform that allows the observer to hover over the messiness of life, unobserved and untouched. But by remembering the role of the body in science, perhaps we humanize it as well.

• By Benjamin Breen

Maybe there's a good reason why it seems like there's been a decline in our our ability to concentrate for a prolonged period of time.

• By Noah Davis

You’ve heard to start studying foreign languages (and music and reading and memorization skills and more) at a young age, when your brain is better prepared to retain that information. New research suggests a drug typically used to combat epilepsy and bipolar disorder could help us retain that skill even as we age.

• By Cody C. Delistraty

Thanks in part to the work of Hanns Scharff and a slew of studies on interrogation techniques, we know it’s best to be genuinely friendly no matter who you’re trying to get information out of.

• By Eric Horowitz

The standard treatment—SSRIs—doesn’t work for an estimated 20 to 40 percent of the millions who suffer from depression. Luckily, researchers have been exploring new alternatives that might just do the trick.

• By Dana Smith

It’s not exactly true that everyone grieves in their own way. It’s a universal experience, which is good, because that can help us to better understand the mourning among us.

• By Katherine Shear

New research into evaluative simulation shows how we instinctively dislike certain actions deemed to be harmful regardless of their outcomes.

• By Eric Horowitz

Fresh research on Facebook, fellowship, and “suicide clusters.”

• By Ted Scheinman

Our craving and connection to story is so much more than a haphazard preference.

• By Michele Weldon

For all the interest in the habits of highly creative people, there's not much to learn from Don DeLillo's manual typewriter or Maya Angelou's mid-day showers.

• By Casey N. Cep

The meaning of patience has changed over time, but that hasn't made it any easier to practice.

• By Casey N. Cep

Although our curiosity concerning the origins of the universe might not be practical, it's uniquely human.

• By Michael White

How sleight-of-hand—and obsessive-compulsive disorder—helped the guitarist shake 30 years of addiction.

• By Ted Scheinman

No, not everyone in Germany speaks English.

• By Ryan O'Hanlon

Why we could all use a little more self-examination.

• By Casey N. Cep

Unless we want to give up the idea of communication altogether, then probably not.

• By Paul Hiebert

The way that we mentally account for the inheritance from a loved one might keep us from ever putting that money to work.

• By Eric Horowitz