http://discovermagazine.com/rss/topic-feeds/mind-brainDecisions, Depression & Happiness, Emotions, Memory, Sex & the Brain, Senses, and more.http://backend.userland.com/rssTue, 21 May 2013 01:30:00 GMThttp://discovermagazine.com/2013/june/12-where-do-thoughts-occurSure, your brain is a wonder. But some cognitive scientists argue that without the help of your body, your brain would be nowhere.Tue, 21 May 2013 01:30:00 GMThttp://discovermagazine.com/2013/june/12-where-do-thoughts-occurhttp://discovermagazine.com/~/media/70025BDBCD5C4194B82206E0932E9CFD.jpg?mw=500http://discovermagazine.com/~/media/70025BDBCD5C4194B82206E0932E9CFD.jpg?mw=500http://discovermagazine.com/2013/june/08-meet-the-worlds-most-advanced-brain-scannerThe super-MRI used in the Human Connectome Project is the ultimate brain hacking machine.Sat, 18 May 2013 00:00:00 GMThttp://discovermagazine.com/2013/june/08-meet-the-worlds-most-advanced-brain-scannerhttp://discovermagazine.com/~/media/E3B6C62750934F96B449548D7DE69FBF.jpg?mw=500http://discovermagazine.com/~/media/E3B6C62750934F96B449548D7DE69FBF.jpg?mw=500http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=1229 Most of us would agree that harming others on purpose and for no reason is immoral. Social scientists have long assumed that marketplaces are to blame for many a compromised moral. There's no shortage of historical examples: take the slave trade, or buying indulgences from the church, for instance. Now science has weighed in to confirm this hunch: a marketplace degrades a person's morals. That was what German researchers found in an experimental set-up that put people's morals up against moWed, 15 May 2013 14:40:23 GMThttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=1229http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2013/05/business-man-with-angel-and-devil.jpghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2013/05/business-man-with-angel-and-devil.jpghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=1148When, in a moment of weakness, you reach for that chocolate donut or bag of jelly beans, to all appearances your tastebuds are running the show. You imagine the snack's sweet taste; you might even salivate a little. If, on the other hand, these foods tasted like cardboard, you wouldn't be so tempted, right? Wrong. New research has found that it's not the taste of calorific foodstuffs that makes them enticing but rather their effects on our blood sugar. Our brain learns which foods are calorieWed, 08 May 2013 17:08:18 GMThttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=1148http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2013/05/girl-eating-donuts-200x300.jpghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2013/05/girl-eating-donuts-200x300.jpghttp://discovermagazine.com/2013/june/01-lying-to-yourself-helps-you-lie-to-othersThe science of self-deceit is more than a matter of evolutionary curiosity. Sometimes, it's a question with life or death consequences.Thu, 02 May 2013 10:00:00 GMThttp://discovermagazine.com/2013/june/01-lying-to-yourself-helps-you-lie-to-othershttp://discovermagazine.com/~/media/44D878198A8B4348B804BF181298D3D9.jpg?mw=500http://discovermagazine.com/~/media/44D878198A8B4348B804BF181298D3D9.jpg?mw=500http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=929 The ruse is common in spy movies---an attractive female saunters in at a critical moment and seduces the otherwise infallible protagonist, duping him into giving up the goods. It works in Hollywood and it works in real life, too. Men tend to say yes to attractive women without really scrutinizing whether or not they are trustworthy. But scientists have shown, for the first time, that a drug may be able to overcome this "honey trap," and help men make more rational decisions. Nearly 100Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:44:02 GMThttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=929http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2013/04/business-woman-shaking-hands-300x300.jpghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2013/04/business-woman-shaking-hands-300x300.jpghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/science-sushi/?p=2808Facebook gleefully reported earlier this week that their privacy practices are "A-Ok", in response to the growing federal concerns that the company leaks too much personal information. While it's all well and good that they are legally in bounds, users still worry about just how much is shared via the popular social networking site. After all, just what does your Facebook activity say about who you are? A lot, actually. Michael Kosinski and his colleagues from UC Berkley recently investigaTue, 30 Apr 2013 13:00:42 GMThttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/science-sushi/?p=2808http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/science-sushi/files/2013/04/images-300x144.jpeghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/science-sushi/files/2013/04/images-300x144.jpeghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/science-sushi/?p=2752 Our voices communicate information far beyond what we say with our words. Like most animals, the sounds we produce have the potential to convey how healthy we are, what mood we're in, even our general size. Some of these traits are important cues for potential mates, so much so that the sound of your voice can actually affect how good looking you appear to others. Which, really, brings up one darn good question: what makes a voice sound sexy? To find out, a team spearheaded by UniversSun, 28 Apr 2013 14:00:26 GMThttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/science-sushi/?p=2752http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/science-sushi/files/2013/04/13616863_s-300x199.jpghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/science-sushi/files/2013/04/13616863_s-300x199.jpghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=822When you lose something important---a child, your wallet, the keys---your brain kicks into overdrive to find the missing object. But that's not just a matter of extra concentration. Researchers have found that in these intense search situations your brain actually rallies extra visual processing troops (and even some other non-visual parts of the brain) to get the job done. It has to do with the way your brain processes images in the first place. When you see objects, your brain sorts them inMon, 22 Apr 2013 20:54:01 GMThttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=822http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2013/04/lost-wallet-200x300.jpghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2013/04/lost-wallet-200x300.jpghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=743 Most new parents are primed to watch for their baby’s first glimmer of a smile or the first sign he is tracking that toy spinning above him. Now researchers have used neural markers to establish that infants as young as five months are conscious of a visual image and can reflect on it. It’s been a tricky proposition for scientists to figure out when infants register consciousness. Babies can’t yet speak to indicate they’ve seen an image flash before them, and babies are difficult to train (Thu, 18 Apr 2013 18:13:36 GMThttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=743http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2013/04/baby-playing-with-toys.jpghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2013/04/baby-playing-with-toys.jpghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/science-sushi/?p=2725 I remember quite vividly the first time I tried beer — I almost spit it out. Bitter, bubbly and generally bad, I didn't get why everyone seemed to be so enamored with it. Yet I, like so many people in the world, continued to drink it. Have you ever wondered why we, as a species, consume alcoholic beverages even though they taste terrible at first? A new study suggests that despite the bitter taste, the chemicals in beer trigger the brain's reward system. This pleasurable effect might justMon, 15 Apr 2013 23:19:53 GMThttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/science-sushi/?p=2725http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/science-sushi/files/2013/04/14169905_s.jpghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/science-sushi/files/2013/04/14169905_s.jpghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=641 In a paper sure to please lazy stand-up comics and beleaguered husbands everywhere, scientists say that men do indeed have a hard time understanding women. Recent results show that men have a significantly harder time recognizing women's emotions than they do men’s, and that men seem to use different parts of their brain when ascribing intentions and feelings to women versus men. Previous experiments had suggested that men are naturally wired to be more intuitive toward other men’s mental sFri, 12 Apr 2013 14:52:43 GMThttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=641http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2013/04/confused.jpghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2013/04/confused.jpghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=626 Activity in a particular part of our brains while listening to new music reveals whether we enjoy the tune, and even how much we’d be willing to pay to hear it again.­­ Neural activity in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), part of the brain’s ventral striatum, can predict how much a listener likes a particular piece of music when heard for the first time, according to research published in Science. Researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to observe neural activity in 19 particiThu, 11 Apr 2013 18:26:07 GMThttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=626http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2013/04/music.jpghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2013/04/music.jpghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=477 It’s happened to all of us---something wakes you smack in the middle of a random, Technicolor assortment of people, rooms, buildings and streets. They were all interacting as if it made sense, and then you can remember hardly anything from the dream. But what if you didn't have to? What if a machine could read your dreams? A team of researchers in Japan has established that the contents of dreams can be discerned by monitoring the brain's visual centers while people are asleep. The findiThu, 04 Apr 2013 18:03:14 GMThttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=477http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2013/04/shutterstock_11263663.jpghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2013/04/shutterstock_11263663.jpghttp://discovermagazine.com/2013/may/10-a-neurosurgeons-high-stakes-game-of-hide-and-seekA delicate surgery could stop a woman's crippling pain from trigeminal neuralgia — or threaten her life.Mon, 01 Apr 2013 10:00:00 GMThttp://discovermagazine.com/2013/may/10-a-neurosurgeons-high-stakes-game-of-hide-and-seekhttp://discovermagazine.com/~/media/EA9F44F5BA814AAF88AC77D4CCFCDD01.jpg?mw=500http://discovermagazine.com/~/media/EA9F44F5BA814AAF88AC77D4CCFCDD01.jpg?mw=500http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=309It's reminiscent of the film Minority Report, but it's true: A simple brain test performed on prisoners can predict their likelihood of committing another crime. Various psychological and biological factors are already used to judge, for instance, whether an arrested individual is granted bail or the nature of their sentence, if convicted. Age and sex are taken into account, as are behavioral qualities such as impulsivity and drug use. At the moment, however, these character traits are assessTue, 26 Mar 2013 14:03:41 GMThttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=309http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2013/03/shutterstock_113188777-300x223.jpghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2013/03/shutterstock_113188777-300x223.jpghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=248 Turns out that Gulf War Illness may be in sufferers’ heads after all — specifically in the parts of their brains that process pain. For years, thousands of veterans who served in the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War complained of problems such as body pain, fatigue and cognitive dysfunction, but a cause for their symptoms remained elusive, and sufferers were often dismissed or given vague diagnoses. A new study published online today reveals the first bodily proof of Gulf War Illness, as the collecWed, 20 Mar 2013 21:00:57 GMThttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=248http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2013/03/desert-storm.jpeghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2013/03/desert-storm.jpeghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=218 The possibility of someday recording all the neurons firing in a living creature's central nervous system has inspired generations of neuroscientists. Now a group of researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute has finally achieved the feat. The scientists studied live zebrafish larvae that had been genetically encoded with a calcium indicator called GCaMP5G. They suspended the larva in a gel and then beamed it with lasers. Just before a neuron fires, its action potential is expressMon, 18 Mar 2013 17:18:58 GMThttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=218http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2013/03/nmeth.2434_image-1024x613.jpghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2013/03/nmeth.2434_image-1024x613.jpghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/?p=2948By Julie Sedivy Is the film industry guilty of lowballing the intelligence of its audience? It’s not hard to find bloggers, critics and movie insiders (including actor Colin Firth) who think so. A common criticism is that Hollywood seems to believe that viewers are bereft of any creative thought or imagination, and simply want to ingest a pasty mush of cozy clichés, simplistic story lines and cartoon characters. Audiences, the complaint goes, simply aren’t being asked to do any work. This criFri, 15 Mar 2013 15:17:26 GMThttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/?p=2948http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/files/2013/03/shutterstock_24817561.jpghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/files/2013/03/shutterstock_24817561.jpghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=141 The brains of Neanderthals were about the same size as those of humans, but they were not organized the same way. In a study published yesterday, researchers at Oxford show that much of the Neanderthal brain was dedicated to vision and movement instead of the higher order thinking characteristic of the human brain. They say this limited brain capacity could also explain Neanderthals' eventual demise. The researchers compared Neanderthal fossils with the skeletons of ancient but anatomicalWed, 13 Mar 2013 15:23:33 GMThttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/?p=141http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2013/03/neanderthal-vs-human.jpghttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2013/03/neanderthal-vs-human.jpg