Newsweek

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.

Brain Stimulation Holds Promise In Autism Treatment

This article originally appeared on Spectrum on September 23, 2015. Will Robeson bounces into the neuroscience lab at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, familiarly calling out to each staff member. He makes his way to a black leather recliner positioned next to a suitcase-sized piece of equipment, with controls and a…

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The Sun Has Finally Come Out for Alex

With his new cochlear implant, our son is able to talk and sing. The transformation is miraculous.

My son Alex told me about his day recently. He played cars with Max and Aidan, sang the “Mr. Sun” song and danced–a typical day for a 2-year-old. His report, however, was anything but routine. It was the first real conversation we had ever had. Alex is hearing-impaired. Every word…

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Splashing in the Gene Pool

Biotechnology finds a home in the grocery store

Radishes as big as yams!  Skim milk right from the cow!  Carrots that taste like apples, cucumbers that taste like something, cotton plants that taste like rayon (to boll weevils).  In the early 1970s, when scientists discovered the principles of recombinanat DNA, the only miracle that seemed beyond the reach…

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Doctoring Without Drugs

Alternative medicine is based on the theory that the body has a natural healing ability

Arline Merola’s 2-year-old son Matthew had a classic case of chronic ear infections.  And he was treated in the classic way: antibiotics most of each winter and the threat of surgically implanted tubes to drain his ears.  Last October Merola decided to try something else.  She went to Paul Mittman,…

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A (Vague) Sense of HISTORY September 1990

Ignorance of history affects our future as a democratic nation and as individuals

Historians tend to tell the same joke when they’re describing history education in America.  It’s the one about the teacher standing in the shoolroom door waving goodbye to students for the summer and calling after them, “By the way, we won World War II.” The problem with the joke, of…

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