Arts

Becoming “Angry Birds”: The Creative Process of Filmmaking

August 16, 2019

You’ve probably heard of “Angry Birds” — the popular phone app video game, or you’re one of the many who can’t stop playing it. Now, the interactive game that’s taken the world by storm is the subject of an upcoming animated feature by Sony Pictures, hitting theater

Unlocking Inspiration: A Q&A With Jason Silva

August 15, 2019

Futurist, philosopher, artist, TV personality, filmmaker, and public speaker — Jason Silva was born and raised in Venezuela and came to the United States when he was 18 to major in philosophy and film at the University of Miami. His lifelong passion for media, storytelling, and the big questions of life led him to have dialogues

On Writing and the Neuroscience of Language

August 13, 2019

I like to say that I never chose writing — it chose me. From the time I was 9 years old, I wrote stories profusely, almost never with the ending in mind, or even the basic roadmap of where I was going — just writing the scenes as they played out in my head moments ahead of time. As I grew older, not having an idea was hardly an

A Look at the Write Brain

August 11, 2019

Verbal language of some sort has likely been part of the human experience since the dawn of Homo sapiens. Writing, on the other hand, is not innately part of the human brain’s repertoire of behaviors. All human cultures include speech, but not all have written language, and, even today

Game Theory: A Q&A with Dr. Adam Gazzaley

August 8, 2019

Dr. Adam Gazzaley has studied attention, memory, and perception for 25 years. He earned his M.D. and Ph.D. in neuroscience at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York before completing a clinical residency in neurology at the University of Pennsylvania and postdoctoral training in cognitive neuroscience at the

How Do Video Games Change Your Brain?

August 8, 2019

A visit to your local GameStop can prove overwhelming when faced with the seemingly innumerable choices of video games stacking the shelves before you. They range from shooter games like “Call of Duty” to sports games such as “FIFA,” role-playing games including “Diablo,” and even music and party games like “Just Dance.”

Music Therapy Can Sync Our Brains

August 3, 2019

Researchers Jorg Fachner and Dr. Clemens Maidhof of Anglia Ruskin University conducted the first music therapy study to use “hyperscanning” — a technique that allows researchers to monitor the activity in two separate brains simultaneously by controlling multiple scanners from a remote location. While the patient and therapist had

Notes to Live By: Why Your Brain Craves Music

July 20, 2019

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

Your Brain on Altered States: On the Origin of Altering Consciousness

July 19, 2019

When you think of altered states of consciousness (ASC), what are some of the first things that come to mind? If you’re like most of us — and not a neuroscientist or anthropologist — you’ll probably think of 1960s counterculture; of school buses decorated with psychedelic colors and images, crazed rock concerts and the popular use of LSD

Many Ways of Connecting: Where Spirituality and Technology Meet

July 14, 2019

In the past couple of decades, the Internet has been the technological game-changer in spirituality, just as it has been in so many other aspects of our culture. Now, a would-be spiritual teacher does not have to gather an audience and secure a TV contract before broadcasting his or her message.

How Secrets Make Us Sick

July 9, 2019

Are you familiar with the 2005 film “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”? It’s a fantastic romantic action comedy about two married assassins who work for competing firms. The punch line here is that each of them believes their spouse to be a regular civilian — that is, until their companies team up and try to have them kill each other.

Video Games According to “Brain Age” Creator Ryuta Kawashima

July 8, 2019

Dr. Ryuta Kawashima has been interested in the human brain ever since he was in the eighth grade. Curious about the role of human beings in the world and how the trajectory of our species would pan out in the future, he dreamed of downloading his own brain into a computer to witness

Creative Listening: How Music Can Boost Your Creativity

June 30, 2019

When you think of “creativity,” you might conjure up images of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” or of a writer spending long hours agonizing over her next novel, hoping to be the next Joyce Carol Oates. While these are certainly monumentally important creative endeavors, this knee-jerk reaction

Total Recall: Marilu Henner Can’t Forget (Even If She Wanted To)

June 15, 2019

Known to most people as the star of TV series like “Taxi” and the author of self-help books about health, diet, and lifestyle, Marilu Henner has a more unusual claim to fame, one that puts her in a very elite minority: She is one of a handful of people confirmed to have highly superior autobiographical memory.

The New Age of Enlightenment: An Interview With Steven Pinker

May 23, 2019

Steven Pinker is a world-renowned author, experimental psychologist, and cognitive scientist at Harvard University. Considered one of the most influential thinkers in the world, he has written a substantial amount of literature on language, human nature, and the mind, and received multiple awards

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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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