Like obesity doesn’t suck already. It’s physically painful, socially awkward, and medically hazardous. Now it appears to be intellectually corrosive, as well. Obesity is such a puzzle. A billion people on Earth are currently overweight, and one third of those are obese. It appears to be a natural human condition in ecosystems where calories are [...]
Many stroke victims will attest to this: You don’t need a whole brain to be a whole human. And a ten year old girl, darling of neuroscience, could tell you that half a brain will do the trick. Born with just one hemisphere, this girl’s MRI features a black void where normally a right hemisphere would [...]
If you stuck a microphone into your brain, what would the brain waves sound like? Probably the squa-squish of blood pumping, actually. But a Chinese team has found a way to convert your many and interwoven brain waves to music. It’s jazzy. They “taped” under a few conditions — slow brain wave sleep, REM sleep, [...]
The verdict is in! Male and female brains use different areas to assess the beauty of art and natural objects. Females engage both the left and right parietal ( areas, while males engage only the right. (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.) Now sisters, before we start the hooting and huffing, take heed: [...]
Bees can count to four. Well, not really. But like humans in many cultures without formal education, honey bees instinctively differentiate two objects from three; and three from four. Beyond that, both the bees and the humans seem to throw up their hands/legs/antennae and conclude “lots.” (The article.) This was interesting enough when it [...]
