What Do You and Your Cat Have in Common?
What do you and your cat have in common? Well, one possibility is a unicellular organism called Toxoplasma gondii. There are roughly 7...
The Key of You: The Symphony of Your Biological Clocks
Western medicine prides itself on the ability to diagnose and treat a variety of maladies that a very short time ago were considered...
How Your Brain is Like an Ant Colony
Ants are amazing. They can carry 50 times their body weight. Their total biomass worldwide equals the total biomass of humans. Fungus...
The Immortality Atlas: Mapping the Human Connectome
The Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci guaranteed his immortality when he literally put his name on the map—at least, if...
Procrastination, the McClellan Problem, and You
General George B. “Little Mac” McClellan was the Union force commander during the Civil War. Beloved by his men, and a stickler for...
The Strange Case of Phineas Gage, redux
In January of 2013, I wrote a post on one of neuroscience’s most famous cases. New details make it necessary to retell the story. It’s...
Zen and the Art of Riffing
Q: What did the Zen master say to the hotdog vendor? A: “Make me one with everything...” Central to the premise of this old joke is the...
The Morgan Freeman Fallacy: How Much of Your Brain Are You Using?
“It is estimated that most human beings only use ten percent of their brain,” Morgan Freeman intones in the movie Lucy. Central to the...
Neuroscience, Decision-making, and Strippers
Decision making: there are countless books about it because, lets face it, decisions are at the epicenter of what we humans do. Make the...
Caveperson Chemistry: Rewriting Our Family Tree
Located in the mountains of southwestern Siberia, the Denisova Cave takes its name from a Russian hermit named Denis, rumored to have...
