A few days ago, I heard a terrific radio program featuring an interview with Daniel Tammet. Tammet is an autistic savant who is probably best-known for being able to recite pi to over 22,500 digits by memory. (Side note: it takes him more than 5 hours to perform this feat!) But what fascinated me most…
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I’m excited to announce that my brand new book Soft-Wired is now out and available in paperback or Kindle format. This book was a labor of love, and it took me many years and many iterations to say exactly what I wanted, how I wanted to say it. The result is a book that covers much of…
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Coffee: wonder drug or guilty pleasure? Scientists have been puzzling this out for some time now. In fact, coffee has been one of the world’s most popular beverages for hundreds of years. And although health professionals used to warn us about the ills of coffee and caffeine, it seems that current research has mostly turned…
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I always enjoy the fun, approachable, fast-paced science videos from ASAP Science. Here, the team presents a quick primer on the biology of aging. In just three minutes, you can learn why you can blame your father for a shorter life span, why some worms are virtually immortal, and what a telomere is. Enjoy!
Your brain is only 2% of your body’s mass, but uses 20% of the oxygen you breathe. Although the brain accounts for only 2% of the whole body’s mass, it uses 20% of all the oxygen we breathe. A continuous supply of oxygen is necessary for survival. A loss of oxygen for 10 minutes can…
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I am excited to share this video news report about a schizophrenia study I’ve been working on for the past few years. The e-CAeSAR Study is being conducted in partnership with the Schizophrenia Trials Network at ten top-tier research centers nationwide. The trial tests a unique online cognitive training program (called “PACR”) designed for people…
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I really enjoyed this TED talk from Dr. Read Montague, a scientist who is heading the Roanoke Brain Study. The project’s goal is to take MRI images of 5,000 people of all ages over a period of many years, to learn more about how the brain works and how we interact with one another. Enjoy!
I woke up in a cheerful mood this morning because yesterday the results of a scientific study were published and they once again demonstrated that very strong benefits can be achieved through only 10 hours of Posit Science brain training. The cognitive benefits were not just seen in the tasks themselves, but in measures of…
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What is your earliest memory? A frightening fall down the stairs? Blowing out candles on your third birthday? Or perhaps it is a trip to the hospital to visit a newborn sibling? Whatever the content, it is probably short and rather hazy. Adult recollections of infancy and early childhood are typically fragmentary. We forget so…
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Phineas Gage began the day of September 13, 1848 as a man remarkable only to those who knew him personally. He worked as the foreman of a railway construction gang in Vermont, where his group was preparing the bed for the Rutland and Burlington Rail Road. At just twenty-six years old, Gage was already a…
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