This article at MSNBC explains the history of the term "nervous breakdown." It's rarely used now, except in pop culture. The term — a vague catch-all phrase that could mean anything from a psychotic episode to having a bad day — is not a medical term, doctors say, but it…
Chimpanzees aren't the only spectacularly intelligent animal species. Sometimes human beings act intelligently! Yes, humans are animals, as difficult as this is to believe for many people. In this TED video, Joshua Klein reminds us about the intelligence of yet another species: crows. Using their intelligence, crows continue to flourish…
Ouch! The serious study of philosophy or neuroscience might make you less moral. That’s my take-away from a recent article: “The Value of Believing in Free Will: Encouraging a Belief in Determinism Increases Cheating,” by Kathleen D. Vohs and Jonathan W. Schooler. This particular article by Vohs and Schooler purports…
That's the message of Audrey Schulman, writing in Orion Magazine. Her article is entitled, "How to be a Climate Hero." Schulman describes psychology experiments where the subject is surrounded by stooges, everyone in the room doing a mundane task. Eventually, something untoward happens. For instance, smoke starts pouring out of…
Frans de Waal was recently interviewed by Stephen J. Dubner in the Freakonomics blog of the NYT. Dubner co-authored Freakonomics with Steven D. Levitt. De Waal and Dubner discussed the ramifications of an experiment where capuchin monkeys received either a grape or a piece of cucumber in return for a…