Why You Should Bet Big on Bionic Brains

“For a start, the brain is built from a relatively small and simple body of information—the 25 million bytes of the genome. The complexity comes from ordered growth and elaboration.”

The Music of a Human Brain

“Researchers have turned human mental activity into music, and it sounds uncannily like free-form jazz piano.”

Scientist Shows What Happens To 'Soul' After Death

“The Orch-OR theory of consciousness remains controversial in the scientific community. Many scientists and physicists have challenged it, including MIT physicist Max Tegmark, who wrote a paper in 2000 that was widely cited.”

The Marketplace in Your Brain

“Neuroscientists have found brain cells that compute value. Why are economists ignoring them?”

Does self-awareness require a complex brain?

“Neuroimaging studies reveal that a wrinkly cerebral cortex is what distinguishes human thinking from other animals’”

Tired of Feeling Bad? The New Science of Feelings Can Help

“Is your emotional style getting you down? Research finds the neural basis of your responses to life-and how you can change them.”

Childhood abuse may stunt growth of part of brain involved in emotions

“Three key areas of the hippocampus in the brain were smaller in people who reported maltreatment in childhood”

Brains Are Automatic, But People Are Free

“Michael Gazzaniga, one of the world’s leading researchers in cognitive neuroscience, describes the mystery of free will: “If you think about it this way, if you are a Martian coming by earth and looking at all these humans and then looking at how they work you wouldn’t—it would never dawn on you to say, ‘Well, now, this thing needs free will!’ What are you talking about?””

New Insight Into Aging Brains

“Study Links 24% of Intelligence Changes Over a Person’s Life to Genetic Factors”

The neuroscience of happiness

“New discoveries are shedding light on the activities that make us happy. An expert explains”

Why our brains make us laugh

“From a Tufts term paper to a new book on the cognitive origins of humor”

Neuroscience Challenges Old Ideas about Free Will

“Celebrated neuroscientist Michael S. Gazzaniga explains the new science behind an ancient philosophical question”

Why we forget

“Science shows our memory can easily be distorted and erased — but our forgetfulness also helps us survive”

Rethinking Thinking

“How a lumpy bunch of tissue lets us plan, perceive, calculate, reflect, imagine—and exercise free will.”

Your Brain Knows a Lot More Than You Realize

“Neuroscientist David Eagleman explores the processes and skills of the subconscious mind, which our conscious selves rarely consider.”