Author of I Can Hear You Whisper
My reporting and writing on science, health, learning, parenting and other subjects has appeared in many publications including Newsweek, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American Mind, Parents, and Redbook. Here are some selected articles ranging from my latest work to a few old favorites.
A new study proves that once you start lying, your brain stops noticing.
iStock
If you say you have never lied, you are almost certainly lying. Only little lies, you say? Well, it’s long been thought that’s where the seeds of dishonesty are usually sown. Even convicted swindler Bernie Madoff thought so. According to his secretary, he said: “Well, you know what happens, it starts out with you taking a little bit . . . and before you know it, it snowballs into something big.”
Researchers delving into genetics, social networks and animal behavior are discovering how friendship affects our health and wellbeing–and played a part in our evolutionary story.
Picture two female chimpanzees hanging out under a tree. One grooms the other, systematically working long fingers through fur, picking out bugs and bits of leaves. The recipient sprawls sleepily on the ground, looking as relaxed as someone enjoying a spa day. A subsequent surreptitious measurement of her levels of oxytocin, a hormone associated with bonding and pleasure, would confirm that she is pretty happy.
And why not? Grooming appears to be a pleasurable way to spend time. Many species of apes and monkeys devote long chunks of the day to it. Among other things, grooming can curry favor and strengthen alliances so it is likely that of these two chimps, the female being primped is of equal or greater rank in the troop than the one doing the work.
The educational stakes are high for lead-poisoned kids in Flint and elsewhere.
The water crisis in Flint, Michigan has put lead back in the news. By now, anyone who’s paying attention must know that lead is a potent neurotoxin that can permanently affect a child’s ability to learn. But I suspect very few understand what it is exactly that lead does to a child’s brain. How else could politicians like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie claim that the situation is “overdramatized?”
It’s something no one wants to face, least of all Congress.
It’s something no one wants to face, least of all Congress.
When Michigan Governor Rick Snyder testifies today before the Congressional committee investigating Flint’s water crisis, he’s likely to come under heavy criticism. As he should. It took his administration an unconscionably long time to acknowledge the gravity of the situation. But while Congress focuses on the acute situation in Flint, it must not lose sight of something far bigger: the chronic problem of lead in the rest of the country.
The possibility that autism is caused by a maternal immune system gone awry is no longer a fringe idea – but proposals to identify or fix these glitches are controversial.
From the start, it was a provocative theory that ran counter to prevailing beliefs about both the immune system and autism, and in the early days Van de Water was one of its few proponents. “We’ve been swimming upstream — still are,” she says. Her peers criticized Van de Water’s work on the grounds that her results didn’t support her claims. And they were deeply upset when, in 2013, Van de Water formed a licensing partnership with a San Diego-based company called Pediatric Bioscience. That deal was aimed at developing a maternal antibody screen that might allow for early diagnosis of autism or, if performed prenatally, indicate the risk of having a child with autism. “This is very, very premature,” Yale University autism researcher George Anderson told Science at the time.