PreFrontal Nudity

The brain exposed

Alex Korb Ph.D.

Dealing With Technostress

Humans shape technologies, but our lives are then shaped by the technologies we create - for better or worse. Here's how to protect your mind and brain.

Expectations, Dopamine and Louis CK

According to the comedian Louis CK, “everything is amazing right now and nobody’s happy.” And it's because of dopamine signaling in a particularly important brain region.

The Stress of Uncontrollability

Feeling out of control amps up the brain's anxiety circuit. Understanding your own brain's response to uncontrollability can put you in the driver's seat.

What’s Right With You?

It’s time to put your brain in the right mode for the New Year. Here are some simple tricks.

How to Strengthen Your Brain's Happiness Circuitry

I used to think that being happier was all about teaching yourself to think more positively. But often the most powerful path to increasing happiness is to strengthen the right brain circuits by using these five simple neuroscience tips.

Stop Thinking Positively

These days we're inundated with messages about the power of positive thinking, but sometimes positive thinking can actually interfere with success. Fortunately, there is another way.

Getting Lost in the Noise

When trying to accomplish something great, if you check in too often with your progress, then you can be getting in your own way. I had to learn this the hard way, but, fortunately, there is a way out.

4 Observations on Memory and Emotion

Watching Pixar's Inside-Out, I was moved through a full range of emotions, but also, as a neuroscientist, I was impressed with the nuanced depiction of complex brain functions that the movie depicted. Understanding these can help you better understand yourself:

Anxiety And Ice Cream

Once when I got sick after eating ice cream, I learned something about how the brain deals with trauma. We often tell ourselves that our anxieties are all mental, and other people will often tell us the same, but it's not always true. There is usually something deeper at play.

The Powerful Pull of Repeating Old Routines

When the seatbelt broke in my car, I got a lesson in how the brain controls habits, and how those habits can control your life.

The Shot Clock and the Body Clock

During March Madness most people overlook important aspects of neuroscience that contribute to peak athletic performance.

Empty Man Syndrome

For some people depression is a hole they can't ever seem to climb out of. Often there are several factors conspiring against them.

The Mystery of Fatigue

Everyone knows what fatigue feels like, but it’s hard to know what fatigue actually is. New research has uncovered a secret beyond just physical fitness and positive psychology.

New Year’s Compassion

While many people have high hopes for their New Year's Resolutions, the way that they interact with themselves sabotages their chance for success. It has to do with the way the brain controls habits, and the effect of self-critcism on the habit circuit. Fortunately, there's something you can do about it.

How Should You Empty a Bathtub?

Life often presents us with uncomfortable situations where we don't like any of the obvious choices, and the only acceptable solution is none-of-the-above.

Predictable Fear

In the brain, fear and excitement are closely intertwined. The neuroscience of behind these emotions can explain why we like axe-wielding murders in our movies, but not in our apartments.

Real Life Yoga

Yoga offers a multitude of neural benefits, but it's usefulness is limited when it's confined to the mat. To get the most out of yoga there's something you need to understand about how the brain deals with stress and habits.

90 Seconds of Yoga

Working long hours at a computer takes its toll on your back, neck and hips, not to mention your stress levels, but fortunately ninety seconds of yoga may be the answer.

Emotional Long Division

Examining and controlling your emotions is mediated by the medial prefrontal cortex and is an essential part of becoming a successful adult, and it's probably the most important thing I learned in elementary school.

Sex, Dopamine and the World Cup

Watching soccer is very different from almost any other sport. It's like a seduction, involving dopamine release to potentially exciting situations.

Calming Your Brain for Better Sleep

Planning and worrying activate the prefrontal cortex, which makes it harder to fall asleep and stay asleep. Fortunately, it's possible to calm an overactive prefrontal cortex, and here's how.

How to Change Your Attitude to Improve Your Sleep

Have trouble sleeping? There's actually a simple trick to changing your brain's electrical activity and neurotransmitter levels to improve your sleep, and it involves gratitude.

Men Have Hormones Too

Guys love to talk about women acting emotionally irrational because of their hormones, but men have hormones too. And while men’s hormones don’t vary in a monthly cyclical way, their hormonal irrationality can be just as predictable.

6 Ways the Love Hormone Helps You Lose Weight

Recent research demonstrates that the brain circuit for eating overlaps with the brain circuit for interpersonal relationships. This provides some new ways to trick the brain to help curb cravings and lose weight.

The Problems with the Love Hormone

Your relationship with your parents growing up can often negatively impact your happiness in your romantic relationships. Understanding the neuroscience behind this can help you take control of the situation.

That's Affirmative

Most people have a hard time keeping their New Year's Resolutions, but recent studies have found a way to help activate the right prefrontal brain circuits and help your resolutions stick.

The Joy of Leftovers

Ever wonder why Thanksgiving leftovers are so delicious? The answer can be found in the way your brain activates the dopamine system.

Misguided Protestors

People who do research on monkeys or other animals take extremely good care of them. The same cannot be said of Burger King.

The New Brain Surgery

Scientists are currently developing a non-invasive alternative to brain surgery for several types of brain disorders. This new technology utilizes ultrasonic waves that can pass through the skin and skull without having to make a single incision.

Your Brain on Alcohol

Alcohol primarily effects three brain regions, which explains why it is pleasurable, lowers social anxiety, and you eventually get dizzy and fall into the punch bowl.

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