Researchers found that voters were more likely to cast their ballots for candidates with lower-pitched voices, and tended to rate them as more dominant and more trustworthy.
Can a few neurons trigger a full memory? In a new study, published in Nature, a group of researchers from MIT showed for the first time that it is possible to activate a memory on demand, by stimulating only a few neurons with light, using a technique known as optogenetics. Optogenetics is a powerful technology…
The simplicity of modern life is making us more stupid, according to a scientific theory which claims humanity may have reached its intellectual and emotional peak as early as 4,000 BC.
Astronomers have found black holes and supermassive black holes. But the discovery of a mid-size black hole could support the idea that supermassive black holes grow by eating others.
From David Barash at The Chronicle’s Brainstorm blog: When it comes to evolution and human beings, what we don’t know is if anything more interesting than what we do. Among these mysteries, of course, is religion, and among the reasonable hypotheses thus far adduced, there are several based on what I call “overshoot.” The basic…
Neither Ewan Birney nor Nick Goldman can remember exactly how they came up with the idea of storing all the world’s knowledge in DNA. They know it happened in the bar of the Gastwerk Hotel in Hamburg, and that many beers were involved. They may or may not have scrawled their ideas on a napkin….
Researchers in China compared brain scans of young people with “internet addiction disorder” with their peers and found damage to the white matter fibres connecting emotional processing, attention and decision making parts. Similar impairments have been found in research into other addictions including alcohol and cocaine. This news comes after researchers at the University of…