You, Illuminated

Commonsense explanations of neuroscience

by Joshua Gowin

Brain Chemistry and Upbringing Shape How We Make Friends

Having good friends benefits our health, happiness and overall life satisfaction. Despite friendship’s importance, we had little understanding of how we learn to make friends. New evidence from Ruth Feldman at Bar-Ilan University in Israel showed for the first time that early parenting and biology interact to shape how we relate to our friends. Read More

Why Do We Backseat Drive? A Brain Perspective

The grocery store is seven blocks from my house and I know exactly how to get there. But when my wife started driving there she took a wrong turn. An instant after I asked her where the hell she was going, I realized she probably knew what she was doing, but it was too late. The fight was on. Read More

Can We Predict Crime Using Brain Scans?

A study out this past month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that forecasting future criminal behavior could become reality in the near future. The study offers the first evidence that brain scans might be used to predict who will commit a crime. Read More

More Coffee, Less Bang?

According to a new study from the University of Bristol, regular caffeine consumers may not receive any benefit in performance. Worse still, they may depend on their favorite beverage just to function at the baseline level of non-consumers. Read More

Agreeable? You’re More Likely to Benefit From Placebo

The next time you take a pill to relieve a headache, time how long it takes until the pain disappears. If it’s less than 15 minutes, chances are good that you benefited more from a placebo effect than your ibuprofen. According to a recent study, your personality determines how likely you are to experience a placebo effect. Read More

Musical Training Boosts Verbal Memory

Before cutting any more of the arts curriculum from schools, take a look at the results of a study that came out this month in Frontiers in Neuroscience. Kids who took music lessons developed better memories for words than kids who took an extra science class or had no extra lessons. Read More

Are Temper Tantrums a Fight/Flight Response?

Could the fight/flight response be the driving force behind tantrums. If so, can tantrums be short-circuited with breathing exercise and thought training? Read More

Oxytocin Improves Emotion Recognition in Autism

Research from Japan suggests that oxytocin might help individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders recognize difficult-to-identify emotions. Read More

To Do a Tough Job, Your Brain Conjures the Reward

Yesterday at the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) conference, Michael Treadway presented research on how we decide to buckle down and complete a tough task. He suggests that the brain needs to activate reward circuitry before taking on a challenge. Read More

The Damaging Impact of Abuse on Brain Development

After you're born, the greatest impact on the brain you'll have as an adult comes from the experiences you have in the first years of your life. Here's the latest research on what can result. Read More

Can Bilingualism Offset the Impact of Poverty?

Support for a bilingual advantage among low-income children has been mixed. Some suggested that it may even be harmful because it confused children with more words and slowed their uptake of the language and integration into culture they lived in. A forthcoming study in Psychological Science set out to settle the matter. Read More

Through An App, A Better Way to Teach Kids About the Brain

I had the chance to speak with Erica Warp, co-creator of Ned the Neuron, an app to teach kids about the brain, and Alesha Bishop who's working to get the word out about this exciting project. Here's what I found out. Read More

The Neuroscience of Racial Bias

if most people do not want to appear racially biased, why does bias persist? Further, how can we get rid of it? Recent neuroscience studies offer answers to both questions. Read More

Ecstasy Improves “Mind-Reading,” But Only for Positive Emotions

Ecstasy is most well known as a party drug that makes you really friendly, but recently it has received attention for the treatment of PTSD. A new study may explain ecstasy’s dual role as a party-catalyst and therapeutic. Ecstasy improves mind-reading—your ability to correctly guess what someone is feeling by reading their facial expression—but only for positive emotions. Read More

Brain Condition Saves Aurora Shooting Victim’s Life: Explained

Amid the tragedy and heartache in Aurora last week, a fascinating story of survival emerged. Petra Anderson was shot in the head, but her brain has had from birth a small "defect" in it that may have save her life. Here's what her brain condition might be. Read More

How Your Brain Decides: It Depends on Who’s Involved

McKell Carter, Scott Huettel and colleagues pinpointed a brain region that predicts upcoming decisions but is specific to people and depends on their relevance to you. Its activation depends on who’s giving you a cue and how important they are. Read More

How Lack of Insight Sustains Addiction

Over 80 percent of people don’t seek treatment for addiction. This does not mean they don’t have a problem; more likely, they don’t recognize its severity. The lack of recognition may result from an underlying neural dysfunction. Read More

Numb: The Psychology of Survival in Extreme Sports

We trust guides to know what they’re doing, to be competent in all situations in dangerous sports. However, some of them still make mistakes, sometimes deadly ones. How do we know who to trust? Read More

Brain Scans Show How Meditation Improves Mental Focus

People who regularly practice meditation may improve their mental focus by altering brain function. Compared to non-meditators, they may be better equipped to quiet brain activity related to mind-wandering. This may come as good news, considering the buzz on our increasingly shrinking attention spans. Read More

Essential for New Parents: How Baby's Laughter Affects Our Brains

With so many things to learn—immediately—to care for a baby, it seems like evolution must have given our brains a few tools to ease the shift into the newfound role as parent, just as a bird shifts to its nesting instinct. Dutch researchers Madelon Riem and Marinus van IJzendoorn found that oxytocin changes the way the brain responds to a baby’s laughter. Read More

New Protein Improves Memory, Offers Insight Into Learning Process

A research group developed a small protein that enhances memory and learning, and now they have some explanation as to why: better connections—and ability to strengthen those connections—between neurons. This knowledge may eventually improve treatment for cognitive deficits, such as autism and Alzheimer's disease. Read More

The Mind-Reading Hormone: Your Brain's Key to Empathy

The worst time to ask your boss for a raise is when she's having a bad day, giving reason to tune in to her mood, but it's all too easy to misinterpret cues to people's emotions. Wouldn't it pay to be able to read minds?

Brain research says you can. Ok, neuroscience won't give you access to the thoughts in your boss' head, but it may improve the mind-reading tools you already have. Read More

Treating Violence: New Antidotes

A friend who works at a psychiatric hospital told me that one evening several patients organized a rebellion and attempted to escape the building by use of force. While the staff worked to control the situation, one of the group's ringleaders punched a nurse in the nose. As the security guards restrained him, he turned his head and spit in their faces. Read More

Training Your Brain to Be Cool

At a dinner party, are people hanging onto your words or cutting you off mid-sentence? Recent research suggests that differences in social standing may lie in neurons—and how well they function—in the front of your brain. Read More

Getting Ahead: Why Preschool Benefits the Brain

The best time to provide someone with valuable life skills may be before kindergarten. Children who attend preschool go on to attain more education and higher incomes, are more likely to have health care and less likely to have criminal records. One of the most important findings about brain development shows that the brain has critical periods for learning. Read More

7 Things McDonald’s Knows About Your Brain

Many recent neuroscience discoveries about food's effects on our brains and how we make decisions about food are actually gold-standard trade secrets from super chains such as McDonald's. With billions and billions served, they must be on to something. Read More

How Juicy Gossip Hijacks Your Brain

Regardless of your opinion on the Casey Anthony case, one verdict has been rendered beyond a reasonable doubt: listening to all the gossip changed the way that your brain processed information about her. Your brain automatically zeroes in your attention on people you've heard negative remarks about. Read More

The Secret to Exercising More and Feeling Great

So you want to exercise more? Get fit? Well, I have a secret to help you do that. The trick is based on an old joke. Read More

Why Sharing Stories Brings People Together

A new neuroscience study may explain why telling stories builds empathy and also why, when you tell a good one, people act as if they're watching it unfold before them. Read More

Under Pressure: Your Brain on Conflict

Of all the things we lack in the world today—cheap oil, clean air, vacation time—conflict is not one of them. We must face conflict and confrontations, whether with our co-workers, significant others (current and ex) or peers, throughout our lives. Such fights can be a major source of distress. Read More

Joshua Gowin, Ph.D., earned his doctorate in behavioral neuroscience at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston.

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About You, Illuminated

You, Illuminated provides a forum to muse on the mental process of lying, why Santa Claus causes cognitive dissonance, and how vegetarianism impacts our brain. What people have said about You, Illuminated:"...informative and often entertaining"-NESCA News & Notes"Excellent and crisp writing. Keep it coming!"-Kevin (commenter on a post)"I like it except for all the brain stuff."-Frank Gowin (Joshua's father)