When Having a Snack Might Save You
Got an important decision to make? If you’re feeling hungry, new research suggests you should probably have a snack or a meal before you...
The Narcissist Trap
How good are you at reflective thinking? If you’re a narcissist, your answer is probably something on the order of “stupendous, just...
Consciousness: Signals in the Noise
StartFragment In February’s blog post, "How your Brain is Like an Ant Colony", we discussed how neural networks follow the concept of...
The Anatomy of Emotion
What is fear made of? In his book Self Comes to Mind, Antonio Demasio describes emotions as complex, largely automated neural programs of...
How Your Brain is Like an Ant Colony
Ants are amazing. They can carry 50 times their body weight. Their total biomass worldwide equals the total biomass of humans. Fungus...
Zen and the Art of Riffing
Q: What did the Zen master say to the hotdog vendor? A: “Make me one with everything...” Central to the premise of this old joke is the...
The Experiencing Self, or, Why Present-You Hates Past-You
Unlike Calvin here, most of us will probably never get the opportunity to have a face-to-face conversation between our current selves and...
The Science Behind Your Out of Body Experience
What do epilepsy, an out of body experience and your personal space bubble share in common? Mother-and-son science writers Sandra and...
How Smart are You?
How do we measure intelligence? The ancient Chinese had some of the first tests designed to evaluate a person's smarts: a game called...
Sourdough, Websites, and the Self: The Myth of the Driver's Seat
Our story this week begins around 1500 BC. It was roughly 3500 years ago that somehow––let’s be honest, probably through some kind of...
