Month: May 2020

How Exercise Improves Your Motor Skills

May 31, 2020

It’s hardly news that a routine of physical daily exercise benefits the body — and there’s hardly anything that it doesn’t benefit — your motor skills, memory, disease immunity, overall mood, and daily energy level, even if your routine is as simple as running for a few minutes every day. What’s still obscure are

Super-Hearing: The Secret Power of Learning an Instrument

May 30, 2020

Christopher has been playing the violin since he was 9 years old and studied under Marjorie Talvi, who was the first chair of the Seattle Symphony. Little does he know that his 10 years of classical training has given him a hidden superpower: His brain is really, really good at reading emotional sounds in speech.

A Primer on Neuroplasticity: Experience and Your Brain

May 29, 2020

Parents and educators are among the most voracious consumers of the latest research about the brain, searching for strategies to enhance learning and brain development. They are finding a wealth of new answers. Discoveries from the field of neuroscience are reported in the media almost daily.

How To Improve Your Emotional Intelligence

May 28, 2020

For a century, we’ve heard that IQ is the end-all, be-all measure of an individual’s intelligence. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that the results of IQ tests may be misleading — they simply don’t tell the full story. (An anecdote to drive this point home: I took two online IQ tests.

Lost In Thought: Is The Wandering Mind More Creative?

May 27, 2020

Most people spend anywhere between one-third to half of their waking hours daydreaming. Although we are often told to stop dreaming or zoning out of the present moment, it may not be a total waste of time. In fact, there could even be benefits to having your head in the clouds.

Colorful Language: How Synesthetes Perceive Words

May 26, 2020

Although the phenomenon of synesthesia has been known for centuries, it is only in the last 30 years or so (since scientists developed brain-imaging technology) that synesthesia has been seriously studied. In 1995, Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen, a Cambridge University neuroscientist, headed a team that undertook

Why Veterans Are Particularly Vulnerable to COVID-19

May 25, 2020

As the nation takes a day to memorialize its military dead, those who are living are facing a deadly risk that has nothing to do with war or conflict: the coronavirus. Different groups face different degrees of danger from the pandemic, from the elderly who are experiencing deadly outbreaks in nursing homes to

What’s Telling About Telomeres (and the Aging Process)

May 23, 2020

Is aging a natural process that we simply have to accept as a fact of life? A philosopher would say yes. Many doctors would also agree: that our cells eventually reach a point where they can no longer divide and either die or reach senescence, a retirement phase. Many scientists believe in the “Hayflick limit”

Looking At The “Art” of Choosing

May 21, 2020

How much control do you have in your life? Have you ever refrained from doing something that you wanted to do because you didn’t have a choice? Do you spend more time than desired in the cereal aisle at the grocery store trying to decide?

The Power of Words (And What They Do For Your Brain)

May 17, 2020

It’s long been said that the pen is mightier than the sword — that the written word is a far more effective catalyst at impacting the world — shaping society and individual thought more significantly than any weapon ever has. Edward Bulwer-Lytton actually coined the phrase around 1837, sometime after

Experience on Demand: What Virtual Reality Is, How It Works, and What It Can Do

May 16, 2020

Jeremy Bailenson, a communications professor at Stanford and the founder of the Virtual Human Interactive Lab, demonstrates why the conventional attitude toward VR should change alongside the rapidly advancing technology. In “Experience on Demand: What Virtual Reality Is, How It Works, and What It Can Do,”

Does Listening to Music Help You Focus?

May 15, 2020

For millions of parents sheltering in place, the home has become an office, a school and a playground all rolled into one, and the ability to dive into hours of uninterrupted work seems like a distant memory. Can popping in your earbuds and turning on some tunes diminish at least some of the distraction and improve

The Neuroscience Behind Rationalizing Our Mistakes

May 12, 2020

Many of us have a hard time admitting when we’re wrong, but, even more so, we don’t like admitting that something about our logic (or belief systems) is flawed. So we rationalize, justify and sometimes fictionalize our stories, telling rose-colored lies to downplay our mistakes and make our choices

Inside The Dream Mind

May 8, 2020

What goes on inside your brain when you’re dreaming? Well, as it happens, no one seems to know exactly. Not the mystics with the crystal balls, not the dream interpreters, and not even, as you might suspect, scientists. While several theories are floating about in both the scientific and non-scientific worlds

The Therapeutic Interconnection: Getting Results with Internet Cognitive Behavior Therapy

May 7, 2020

Yet for the last two decades, my notion of what makes a true therapeutic relationship has been somewhat challenged, transformed, and colored by the advance of internet therapy — a form of therapy that physically separates the therapist and client and redirects one’s eyes to pixelated computer screens.

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A magazine dedicated to the brain.

We believe that neuroscience is the next great scientific frontier, and that advances in understanding the nature of the brain, consciousness, behavior, and health will transform human life in this century.

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