Arts

What Learning Music Does For Young Minds

April 28, 2020

The correlation between studying music and improved cognitive function has been fairly well researched. Children, regardless of age, who have had interactive experiences with music have demonstrated improved memory, language, and math skills over those who have not had such

Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out: How Dancing Creates Freedom in the Body and Mind

April 20, 2020

Why do we dance? Although each person’s reasons might be different, many people admit that dancing gives them access to their hidden truths. One might enthusiastically welcome an invitation to a dance party as an opportunity for letting loose, releasing tension and discovering a joyous feeling, seemingly part

Tell Me A Story: Why the Brain Loves a Good Yarn

April 8, 2020

What is the relationship between storytelling and the brain? Stories, defined as having a beginning, middle, and end and endeavoring to wrest some sort of meaning from experience, are universal across all cultures and through all known history.

The Aha! Moment: The Science Behind Creative Insight

April 6, 2020

For most of us, it usually occurs at the most inopportune times; never when we’re searching for it. To Archimedes, it happened in the bathtub. Newton experienced it while wandering an apple orchard. Arthur Fry: church. Each encountered an epiphany, that powerful moment of spontaneous insight.

Why Do People Believe in Conspiracy Theories?

March 31, 2020

It’s more common than you think. According to a recent study, nearly half of all Americans believe in some conspiracy theory or other, although some are more vocal than others. So why is that? Can they all be wrong?

What Is Internet Gaming Disorder?

March 11, 2020

Decades before the Gamergate and its aftermath blew up the internet, video games had its fierce detractors — people who recognized the medium’s pervasive influence and immediately feared the worst — seeing it as a corrupting force on the people who played them. In the years since we moved

Kicking It Up a Notch: How Some Spices Trick the Brain

March 10, 2020

When the chili pepper was first exported from Mexico about 500 years ago, it was an overnight success. Fiery-hot peppers were quickly adopted all over Asia, West Africa, and elsewhere around the world. Rather than avoiding a food that burns, people wanted more.

Having Courage To Create

February 24, 2020

Courage is not the lack of fear, but rather, it is what enables us to do the very thing that frightens us. In the face of great fear, when your hands are sweating, your heart is pounding, and your legs are shaking, you are essentially left with two choices: to press on or to give up. We’ve all felt it. And if we

Lights, Camera, Action: The Brain In Film

February 9, 2020

It’s true that movies — and all art — is about what the artist intends and what the mind interprets. But films about the mind — the tricks it plays, the depths it sinks to and the feats it’s capable of — are guides to the zeitgeist of their era, as well as a window into the future.

Finding the Narrative Thread: Your Brain on Writing

January 24, 2020

Psychologists have always understood the link between the brain and writing. Sigmund Freud was a prolific writer and believed that writing had the capacity to heal: “The creative writer does the same as the child at play. He creates a world of fantasy, which he takes very seriously — that is, which he invests

Finding A Song: The Subconscious Art of Improvisation

January 20, 2020

As musicians engage in improvisation, they utilize their auditory and visual processing systems to interpret and respond to the environment — their fellow musicians and the audience around them. They engage their implicit and explicit long-term memory systems

Will We All Be Gamers Someday?

January 17, 2020

Gone are the days of video games merely being an idle pastime for the average couch potato, when all that mattered was pushing buttons for the right moves and getting to the next level. With their ability to embed in the brains of longtime gamers and change human behavior, video games have evolved

The Neuroscience of Jokes

December 31, 2019

“A couple of New Jersey hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn’t seem to be breathing and his eyes have rolled back in his head. The other guy whips out his mobile phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps to the operator”

How Cooking Made Us Smarter: A Q&A With Suzana Herculano-Houzel

November 26, 2019

Meet professor Suzana Herculano-Houzel. You may have seen her groundbreaking TED Talks conference on how we owe everything we have today to cooking — but her success story is much more complicated. Starting her journey as a prospective geneticist, Herculano-Houzel

Until Inspiration Comes Along: 5 Habits of Creative People

November 25, 2019

You may still be a writer in search of an agent, or an artist in search of a patron, but you’re determined to get that first creative endeavor finished some time this year and show the world what you’ve got. Here are just a few habits that creative people — many of them well-known — practice daily.

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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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