You want a better, more loving relationship with your spouse. You wish your friends visited more often, your children stayed in touch more frequently. You wonder if it weren’t possible to have better relationships at work and in the community. What can you do to build long-term, perhaps life-long relationships
Posts by Mridu Khullar Relph
What Fatherhood Does To Men’s Brains
Research show that indeed, a few days after birth, changes occur in the brains of both daddy and baby. According to research, not only do men get better at hearing a baby’s cry as the due date of their child approaches, but a baby’s smile activates the same circuits in the brain that are involved
The Sweet Smell Of Marketing
Unlike our other senses, our sense of smell is closely linked to the brain’s centers for emotion, memory, and creativity, according to the Monell Chemical Senses Center, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit that researches taste and smell. What this means is that when it comes to smell, we process it first with our emotional brain
Playing Mind Games: How Criminal Interrogations Work
Not all criminals are created equal, nor indeed are all crimes. In order for law-enforcement officials to be able to see through the lies of someone who has committed a crime — as the suspect is trying to talk his way out of it — knowing the background of that individual is key.
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The Odor of Your Dreams
I woke up last week convinced that I could smell coffee. My husband, the coffee drinker in our household, was away for business and my 20-month-old son hasn’t yet discovered the substance so it seemed odd that there would be the familiar comforting aroma in the air. Within seconds of my waking up
Expand Your Wits and Horizon (with Neuroplasticity)
Here’s a small experiment for you: In a notebook or on a piece of paper, jot down a memory of a time when you were happy. Include details — what you were doing, what you were seeing, and how you felt. Don’t forget the sensory details — what did it smell like around you? What were the sounds
Marketing to Your Mind
What if our brains could tell marketers our deepest preferences and our biases even if we weren’t consciously aware of them, leading them to design products that would appeal to us even when we insisted they wouldn’t? That’s not science fiction. In fact, marketing to us using our brains is
The Science Behind Those Moody Blues
On some days it doesn’t take much to turn a perfectly reasonable mood into a terrifyingly bad one. But the way we see moods — as uncontrollable beasts that take over our minds and bodies — probably causes more damage than the moods themselves. That’s because moods, whether good or bad
Why Is Facebook So Hard to Quit?
Consider this: two decades ago, there was no Facebook. Twitter hadn’t yet been conceived. Researchers and psychologists were still learning that the internet — and more so, computer games — could indeed be addictive. We hadn’t yet programmed ourselves to share intimate details of our lives on a minute-to-minute
Who’s The Decision-Maker: Your Brain Or You?
It seems an unlikely place to find a discussion on free will, but neuroscientists often grapple with the question of who is making your life choices: Your brain or your consciousness? More importantly, what’s the difference?
Are You Really Hungry?
Take this two-minute test to find out if your body needs food, or if it’s trying to tell you something else. When did you eat your last meal? A. Less than an hour ago. B. One to three hours ago. C. More than four hours ago. Which statement best matches how you feel?
Are Your Dreams Making You Smarter?
What if every time you went to sleep, tiny elves ran around your brain, organizing the clutter, putting names, faces, relationships, and conversations in the right places, and polishing up the facts you learned during the day? And what if, after these elves were done, you woke up much more likely
Inside The Dream Mind
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
Learning to Eat Less
When you think about getting healthier or losing weight, tricking your brain probably isn’t on the list of things you’ve chosen to do. But it might be the most important. Research shows that a lot of how you eat and drink affects the way your brain processes that information and how it subsequently asks
Notes to Live By: Why Your Brain Craves Music
Music isn’t essential for our survival. You won’t die if you go without listening for a week, and it’s not necessary for procreation. So why does your brain crave music? In an issue of Science, neuroscientists reported that music triggers activity in the nucleus accumbens, the same brain structure that releases dopamine