For thousands of years, humans have relied on storytelling to engage, to share emotions and to relate personal experiences. Now, psychologists at McMaster University are exploring the mechanisms deep within the brain to better understand just what happens when we... Continue Reading →
A space-exploring robot crashes on a distant planet. In order to gather the pieces of its damaged spaceship, it needs to build emotional rapport with the local alien inhabitants. The aliens speak a different language but their facial expressions are... Continue Reading →
A rope coiled on dusty trail may trigger a frightened jump by a hiker who recently stepped on a snake. Now a new study better explains how a one-time visual experience can shape perceptions afterward. Led by neuroscientists from NYU... Continue Reading →
The reason why some people find it so hard to resist finishing an entire bag of chips or bowl of candy may lie with how their brain responds to food rewards, leaving them more vulnerable to overeating. In a study... Continue Reading →
Nerve cells in the brain region planum temporale have more synapses in the left hemisphere than in the right hemisphere – which is vital for rapid processing of auditory speech, according to the report published by researchers from Ruhr-Universität Bochum... Continue Reading →
People who have greater levels of mindfulness — or the tendency to maintain attention on and awareness of the present moment — are better able to cope with the pain of being rejected by others, according to a new study... Continue Reading →
Yale scientists have identified a possible neurobiological home for the spiritual experience — the sense of connection to something greater than oneself. Activity in the parietal cortex, an area of the brain involved in awareness of self and... Continue Reading →
Parts of the brain not traditionally associated with learning science become active when people are confronted with solving physics problems, a new study shows. The researchers, led by Eric Brewe, PhD, an associate professor in Drexel University’s College of Arts... Continue Reading →
An international research team led by Carnegie Mellon University has found that when the brain “reads” or decodes a sentence in English or Portuguese, its neural activation patterns are the same. Published in NeuroImage, the study is the first to... Continue Reading →
Scents of Science 