Top 25 List: December 2011

From the ever-expanding Googleverse to the snarky payoff of celebrity gossip, life is splintered and refracted in a million ways by contemporary communication tools. This media has a profound impact on how we perceive ourselves and our world.

Love is the most profound emotion known to human beings. For most people, romantic relationships are the most meaningful element in their lives. But the ability to have a healthy, loving relationship is not innate. Almost all of us have experienced a failed relationship, and most of us have to work consciously to master the skills necessary to make them flourish.

Questions of personality have vexed mankind from the dawn of personhood: can people change? How do others perceive me? What is the difference between normal and pathological behavior? One's personality is so pervasive and all-important that it presents a clinical paradox of sorts: it is hard to assess our own personality, impossible to overlook that of others.

A pervasive developmental disorder, autism affects information processing in multiple ways. Many people with autism have difficulties with social interactions and communication, sensory deficits, and poor motor coordination. Autistic people often have restricted interests and engage in repetitive behaviors.

Parenting can be the most stressful—and rewarding—job of your life. We can all think of ways we'd do things differently from our parents, and no doubt your kids will find ways they'll parent differently from you.

At least for humans, this most basic act is anything but simple. As the pioneering sex researcher Alfred Kinsey put it, the only universal in human sexuality is variability itself. Within the universe of intimacy and pleasure that sex affords, however, there's a lot of room for error. From the behavior itself to our orientations, sex never fails to be a provacative topic.

Parenting can be the most stressful—and rewarding—job of your life. We can all think of ways we'd do things differently from our parents, and no doubt your kids will find ways they'll parent differently from you.