By Alison Gopnik, the New York Times An excerpt: Humphrey, an emeritus professor of psychology at the London School of Economics, may not have solved the mind-body problem, and there is something to be said for the awkward geekery of philosophical analysis and experimental data. But he has some really...

By Carl Zimmer, Discover magazine 3/24/11 Excerpt: Teenagers are a puzzle, and not just to their parents. When kids pass from childhood to adolescence their mortality rate doubles, despite the fact that teenagers are stronger and faster than children as well as more resistant to disease. Parents and...

By David Zax, Fast Company Brain scanning techniques, like MRI and PET, have opened new provinces of neuroscience. It's nearly impossible to read an article about the brain without seeing the familiar heat maps featuring which parts of the brain "light up" during a given task. But there's...

by Katherine Harmon, Scientific American Gray Matter Shows Introspective Ability Is Not Black and White When answering a question, your accuracy in assessing whether you have gotten the answer right—or wrong—might depend on the volume of gray matter in a certain part of your brain, according to a new...

by Adam Hadhazy from Scientific American "As Olympians go for the gold in Vancouver, even the steeliest are likely to experience that familiar feeling of "butterflies" in the stomach. Underlying this sensation is an often-overlooked network of neurons lining our guts that is so extensive...

by Melinda Wenner from Scientific American " Fantasizing about sex gets more than just your juices flowing—it also boosts your analytical thinking skills. Daydreaming about love, on the other hand, makes you more creative, according to a study published in the November 2009 Personality and Social...

By Richard E. Cytowic in Seed Magazine "From my perspective as a neurologist who studies minds and as a creative writer who imagines characters’ inner lives, Virginia Woolf’s mind is a marvel to behold. No two books are alike. “Not this, not that,” she seems to be saying as she rejects convention...

by Celeste Biever in New Scientist "THE inner voice of people who appear unconscious can now be heard. For the first time, researchers have struck up a conversation with a man diagnosed as being in a vegetative state. All they had to do was monitor how his brain responded to specific questions....

by Natalie Angier in The New York Times "The theory of relativity showed us that time and space are intertwined. To which our smarty-pants body might well reply: Tell me something I didn’t already know, Einstein. Researchers at the University of Aberdeen found that when people were asked to engage...

By William Saletan from Slate. "Here's a real-life horror story: Five people have been found buried alive inside their bodies. Paralyzed by brain injuries, they lay inert for years, seemingly oblivious to the doctors and loved ones around them. Four were diagnosed as vegetative. Then a European...

By Victor A. F. Lamme Is there consciousness in machines? Or in animals? What happens to consciousness when we are asleep, or in vegetative state? These are just a few examples of the many questions about consciousness that are troubling scientists and laypersons alike. Moreover, these questions share...

Abstract: Planning for a future, rather than a current, mental state is a cognitive process generally viewed as uniquely human. Here, however, I shall report on a decade of observations of spontaneous planning by a male chimpanzee in a zoo. The planning actions, which took place in a calm state, included...

In this article, we analyzed the information processing that underlies nonconscious impression formation. In the first experiment (Experiment 1), the nonconscious activation of the impression formation goal led to a faster analysis of the trait implications of behaviors, compared with a control group...

The first 100 years of experimental psychology were dominated by 2 major schools of thought: behaviorism and cognitive science. Here the authors consider the common philosophical commitment to determinism by both schools, and how the radical behaviorists' thesis of the determined nature of higher...

Mental-attentional mechanisms of consciousness, meditation, and the emergence of wisdom are discussed . A developmental (neo-Piagetian), dynamic flash-light model of mental attention is used. The initial stages of consciousness in infancy are modeled, showing that the growth of consciousness is influenced...