Brain
I am a contributing editor at Scientific American and write the Brain Waves blog for Psychology Today (you can find those posts here). My work has also appeared in The Atlantic, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Time, Vogue and many other publications. Earlier in my career, I was on staff at Newsweek, and People, among other places and I’ve included a few of my old favorites from those days.
Hearing Aids Stave Off Cognitive Decline
By Josh Fischman, Tanya Lewis, Carin Leong, Elah Feder Hearing aids may help maintain better brain functions in older people, and better health overall. Full Transcript Tanya Lewis: Hi, this is Your Health, Quickly, a Scientific American podcast series! Josh Fischman: We highlight the latest vital health news: Discoveries that affect your body and your mind. Lewis: And we break…
Hearing Aids May Lower Risk of Cognitive Decline and Dementia
As few as 15 percent of people who would benefit from hearing aids use them A friend recently noticed that she couldn’t always hear her phone ringing or family members calling from another room. A hearing test revealed mild loss in high frequencies, which was possibly age-related—she is in her…
Brain Waves Synchronize when People Interact
Neuroscientists usually investigate one brain at a time. They observe how neurons fire as a person reads certain words, for example, or plays a video game. As social animals, however, those same scientists do much of their work together—brainstorming hypotheses, puzzling over problems and fine-tuning experimental designs. Increasingly, researchers are bringing that reality into how they study brains.
Epstein-Barr Virus Found to Trigger Multiple Sclerosis
Conceptual image of a neuron affected by multiple sclerosis. Credit: Stocktrek Images/Getty Images A connection between the human herpesvirus Epstein-Barr and multiple sclerosis (MS) has long been suspected but has been difficult to prove. Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is the primary cause of mononucleosis and is so common that 95 percent of…
Making Eye Contact Signals a New Turn in a Conversation
Credit: Ryan McVay Getty Images What is found in a good conversation? It is certainly correct to say words—the more engagingly put, the better. But conversation also includes “eyes, smiles, the silences between the words,” as the Swedish author Annika Thor wrote. It is when those elements hum along together that…
The Stuttering Mind
Once blamed on personalities or parents, this speech disorder originates from neurological wiring and genes. New findings are pointing to new treatments.
Lee Reeves, who stutters, demonstrates three sounds that trip him up: “L” (left), “W” (center) and “ST” (right). Reeves says that relaxing when he forms the sounds reduces a lot of his speech stumbles. Credit: Anthony Francis Stuttering Stems from Problems in Brain Wiring, Not Personalities Poor neural connections among…