Category Archives: Cognition

April 21

Peas or carrots: Evidence-based education programs targeting stress and attention

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I’m always keen to hear how scientists are able to reach out to their communities, whether it is by talking to young students about research opportunities, by tutoring or teaching, or by taking steps outside the lab to make direct links between research and the community. At this year’s meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS), one of […]

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April 17

Numbers in the brain

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If you look around, number quantities are inescapable: our culture is based on precisely measuring time, distance, and quantities. However, even creatures that aren’t exposed to sophisticated human number systems are inevitably exposed to quantities of things. Animals in the wild come into contact with varying quantities of other animals and of their food, and […]

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April 10

Main-lining the Secret Truth of the Universe: Pessimism and the Brain (part 1)

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Cohle: I’d consider myself a realist, alright? But in philosophical terms I’m what’s called a pessimist. Hart: Um, okay, what’s that mean? Cohle: Means I’m bad at parties. Hart: Let me tell you, you ain’t great outside of parties either. A friend in college told me that she only felt like she knew the truth when […]

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April 03

Talkin’ 2 Myself: Eminem and the Science of Inner Speech

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The other day, I was listening to Eminem’s “Talkin’ 2 Myself,” and I started thinking about the therapeutic effects of talking to oneself (coincidentally, Eminem briefly discussed the song with Big Boy on Power 106 this Monday!   Seriously random, considering Recovery was released in 2010…).  Specifically, I was curious about the fine line between […]

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March 28

Genetically programmed, but with options

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This is a guest post by Adam Calhoun (@neuroecology), a very talented science writer and fellow member of UCSD Neurosciences.  Australia has been having a problem with discarded beer bottles. It turns out that the Australian Jewel Beetle finds these bottles so attractive that they will mate with them until they die from dehydration. The bottles, […]

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March 13

The value of values affirmation in education and beyond

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The fields of social and cognitive psychology constantly provide examples of how small changes in the environment can impact cognition which may seem shocking in their simplicity. Cleaning one’s hands may lead to an increased feeling of moral cleanliness [1], a patch of gray may appear as much darker or lighter in brightness depending on […]

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March 06

Hallucinating without drugs, the profundity of silence, and the thalamocortical circuit

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I’m lying on my bed, with waves of pulsating light coming in and out, changing color, with shapes occasionally manifesting themselves, turning sometimes into people, sometimes into objects, and, more often than not, strange bunnymen, a la Donny Darko (albeit significantly less creepy). After ten minutes of this, I’ve had enough; taking the halved Ping-Pong […]

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February 27

Buried Alive

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You wake up. It’s pitch black, the air is stale, and your body is pressed by wooden planks on all sides. You try to reach up but your hand hits wooden planks above you. Seized by terror, you try to thrash about but there is no room to move and it’s getting harder to breathe. […]

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February 13

Oxytocin, bonding, and breastfeeding

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Valentine’s Day is a time for expressing love, and while its title may initially conjure up socially normative images of candle-lit dinners, long-stemmed roses, and canoodling with a romantic partner, I’d like to take this opportunity to talk about the kind of love that prevents our species from dying out: that of a mother and […]

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January 30

[title goes here]

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Here’s a confession- I had absolutely no idea what I was going to write about when I signed up for today’s post.  I assumed that, as in the past, inspiration would come to me with time to spare. I was wrong. I wracked my brain.  I read weeks’ worth of Science and Nature emails searching […]

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