This Is Your Brain
How We Form Our Routines
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.
Love Can Make You Stronger
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.
Honor: The Cause of—and Solution to—Society’s Problems
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.
How Contagion Became Contagious
Do ideas and emotions really spread like a virus?
Are You Really as Happy as You Say You Are?
Researchers find a universal positivity bias in the way we talk, tweet, and write.
An Investigation Into Isolation Tanks
After three sessions in an isolation tank, the answer's still not quite clear.
How We Create Traditions With Dubious Origins
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?
Newton’s Needle: On Scientific Self-Experimentation
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.
In Praise of Our Short Attention Spans
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.
What If It Were Possible to Learn Any New Skill?
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.
A New Cure for Depression?
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.
Grief: Reframing the Way We Think About Love and Loss
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.
What’s So Bad About Harm?
New research into evaluative simulation shows how we instinctively dislike certain actions deemed to be harmful regardless of their outcomes.
New Research on Facebook, Fellowship, and Suicide Clusters
Fresh research on Facebook, fellowship, and “suicide clusters.”
Your Brain on Story: Why Narratives Win Our Hearts and Minds
Our craving and connection to story is so much more than a haphazard preference.
The Myth of the Artist's Creative Routine
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.
Patience in the Age of Distraction
The meaning of patience has changed over time, but that hasn't made it any easier to practice.
Why Do We Care About the Big Bang?
Although our curiosity concerning the origins of the universe might not be practical, it's uniquely human.
Kicking Methadone With Johnny Winter
How sleight-of-hand—and obsessive-compulsive disorder—helped the guitarist shake 30 years of addiction.
When Miscommunication Is The Most Common Form of Communication
No, not everyone in Germany speaks English.
Your Kindness Is Good for You
Why we could all use a little more self-examination.
Will We Ever See the End of Swearing?
Unless we want to give up the idea of communication altogether, then probably not.
The Psychological Case for Raising the Estate Tax
The way that we mentally account for the inheritance from a loved one might keep us from ever putting that money to work.
A History of Humans Loving Inanimate Objects
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.