Category Archives: Neuroscience and Psychology

The smell of remembering

Posted on April 24, 2011 by Chris

There was a time in the 60s when various people promised you could learn in your sleep. Just play a tape of a lesson as you slept, and voila! you would be ready to ace the test in the morning. … Continue reading →

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Birds and humans are the only animals that gotta’ dance

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Chris

An interesting interview from Discover, about how nearly every species except humans can’t learn to bop to the beat of music. As the researcher explains, this probably has to do with our vocal learning pathways, which have to be highly … Continue reading →

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To Lose Weight: Learn to Be Hungry

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Chris

It sounds like a joke: if you want lose weight, go hungry. But I’m serious. A lot of the obesity we see exists because our bodies have forgotten how to be hungry. We are designed to fast occasionally. Our bodies … Continue reading →

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How to get yourself to exercise more

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Chris

I find that when I first start a run I can sometimes feel like a steaming pile of dog poo, especially if I have been away from running for a bit. But I also know that if I keep on … Continue reading →

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Dopamine and Serotonin: Words and Music

Posted on April 15, 2011 by Chris

Serotonin has sometimes been called the “police officer” of the brain, regulating the action of other neurotransmitters like dopamine. But this seems to me to be not quite the right analogy. I think of serotonin as the mood music of … Continue reading →

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Alcohol helps the brain remember

Posted on April 13, 2011 by Chris

I’m going to skip to what I found most remarkable about this news release from the Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addiction Research at The University of Texas at Austin: “People commonly think of dopamine as a happy transmitter, or a pleasure … Continue reading →

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The myth of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards

Posted on April 3, 2011 by Chris

I have been doing a lot of reading recently about what motivates us to do what we do, and I am amazed that there are so many different theories still in operation out there and that a lot of it … Continue reading →

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The “Aha!” moment, memory, intelligence and humor

Posted on April 1, 2011 by Chris

Interesting news from the Weizmann Institute about how “aha” moments, when we suddenly see how something makes sense, stick in the memory better than things we study to remember. That flash of insight is worth more than an hour of … Continue reading →

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Fountain of Youth

Posted on March 16, 2011 by Chris

I just went to a talk by Amy Wagers, who is a researcher at Harvard now but used to be at Stanford. She talked about work that she did with Stanford’s Tom Rando, putting young and old mice together so … Continue reading →

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