The advent and widespread adoption of the Internet has led to something those early web developers probably never imagined: a massive proliferation of baby animal pictures, videos, and memes. If you can believe it, there are actually dozens of researchers out there who study the neuroscience of “cuteness,” and their research results may surprise you.…
In a new study published in Psychological Science, neuroscientists Moshe Bar, director of the Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center at Bar-Ilan University and a professor at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, concluded that the less our minds our loaded the more capacity we have for creative thought. This seems logical, of course, but Dr.…
It’s no secret that teenagers are influenced by their peers. Now, a new study conducted by researchers at UCLA’s Ahmanson–Lovelace Brain Mapping Center looked specifically at how teen brains reacted to “likes” of photos on social media. The main finding was that alarge number of likes resulted in activity across a variety of brain structures.…
An interesting paper came across my radar week – “Placebo effects in cognitive training” published in PNAS (with a paywall, unfortunately). In this paper, the authors investigate the effect that people’s expectations might have on the results of brain-training experiments. Every research study needs to recruit people to participate, and a common way is to…
Posit Science’s very own Dr. Michael Merzenich has been awarded the 2016 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience for his work in discovering adult brain plasticity and applying its principles to improve the human condition! The Kavli Prize––a partnership between The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, The Kavli Foundation, and The Norwegian Ministry of Education and…
Sometimes when we want to change our mood, we overlook the small stuff and focus on the big stuff. Instead of looking at what’s simple and right in front of us, we tend to look beyond into the aspirational abyss. Let’s say you’re not feeling so great and you’re looking for a little stimuli to…
