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.

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.

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.

Do ideas and emotions really spread like a virus?

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

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

No, not everyone in Germany speaks English.

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

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

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

While the idea of a person falling in love with the Eiffel Tower might seem like a relatively new one, it's a kind of affection that's been around forever.