Do you remember the part in The Princess Bride when Miracle Max pronounces Westley to be “only mostly dead,” instead of entirely dead? “Mostly dead,” he continues, “means slightly alive.” It’s a little unexpected , because we usually think of “dead” and “alive” as mutually exclusive. But just as Westley can be “slightly alive” even [...]

Virtual reality programs try to make you feel like you’re there (wherever there is) by imitating the sights and sounds of an experience as accurately as possible. But what about your other senses, like smell? Many people believe that smell holds a particularly vivid connection to memory and experience. You’ve probably felt it–you go into [...]

Today I got an email from the Alzheimer’s Association, with an offer for a downloadable paper titled “Generation Alzheimer’s: The Defining Disease of the Baby Boomers.” It’s a sobering look at how the aging of the baby boomers (the first of whom turned 65 earlier this month) will come with an extraordinarily high price in [...]

Sometimes I wonder how anyone living hundreds of years ago survived into adulthood. My daughter wouldn’t have–she has had a couple of terrible illnesses that in an earlier era would have been untreatable. It wouldn’t take much: things as simple as an ear infection, a deep cut, or even being very near-sighted would have been [...]

I’m always looking for another justification for going on vacation and leaving work behind. Fortunately, Jonah Lehrer, a fabulous science writer, has just given me another one: while away from the office in body and mind I’m more likely to solve difficult work-related problems. As Lehrer explains: “[P]erceptions of distance (and the distance can be [...]

This year, I have a lot of New Year’s resolutions. And that could be a problem, because I don’t have a great track record of sticking to my resolutions–especially if they involve stopping a bad habit (like drinking three diet Cokes a day or procrastinating all kinds of things). I always think my resolution sounds [...]

According to scientists at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, eye movement can teach you a lot more about politics than you might guess. These scientists studied how liberals and conservatives respond to “gaze cues,” and found dramatic differences. The short version: the liberals generally followed the cues, the conservatives did not. Read about the study here. [...]

I usually think of of physical pain and emotional pain as fairly separate phenomena. Physical pain is caused by certain things (like a wound), and cured by certain things (like a pain medication). Emotional pain is usually caused by a totally different set of things (like a bad breakup) and cured by different things (like [...]

There’s a lot of debate around the similarities and differences between humans and Neanderthals. Were Neanderthals truly a different species from humans, or a different type of the same species? Were they adaptive, cultural innovators like humans, or were they just the dumb cavemen often depicted? Their brains were big like ours… but did they [...]

There are quite a few videos out there of little kids doing things at an extremely advanced level, given their age. Like this one, where a girl who’s not yet two years shows she knows the world map better than most adults, from Zimbabwe to Ecuador. (It’s pretty amazing.)