The brains of musicians have stronger structural and functional connections compared to those of non-musicians, regardless of innate pitch ability, according to new research from JNeurosci. Years of musical training shape the brain in dramatic ways. A minority of musicians — with Mozart and Michael Jackson in their ranks — also […]
Your guess is as good as anyone’s. (Image: © Peter Adams) Stonehenge is perhaps the most famous of all the henges, vast circular monuments constructed from wood or stone that litter the British countryside. The prehistoric monument was most likely erected in what is now England sometime between 3000 B.C. and […]
AP/Terrance Siemon The three recent appearances (and two subsequent removals) of “monoliths” in Romania, Utah and California are intriguing examples of what can capture the public’s imagination. These constructions are metallic-looking structures about three or four metres tall, with a simple geometric design and reflective surface. They’ll look familiar to fans of […]
Artist Udo J. Keppler’s visualization of the long reach of John D. Rockefeller and his mega company, Standard Oil. Credit: Udo J. Keppler, Wikimedia Commons The world’s richest man and the world’s largest oil company dominated the petroleum market in Norway long before landmark finds on the Norwegian continental shelf […]
Does social media really cause high rates of depression among teens? By Peter Gray Ph.D. Freedom to Learn For years now, the popular media have been publishing overblown articles, with scare headlines, about the dangers of “screen time.” At first the main demon was video games. Claims were made that […]
Charles Deluvio/Unsplash, CC BY-SA Social media algorithms, artificial intelligence, and our own genetics are among the factors influencing us beyond our awareness. This raises an ancient question: do we have control over our own lives? This article is part of The Conversation’s series on the science of free will. Have you […]
These footprints were made by ancient humans’ muddy feet as they traversed a lakeshore in Saudi Arabia about 120,000 years ago. STEWART ET AL., 2020 One day about 120,000 years ago, a few humans wandered along the shore of an ancient lake in what is now the Nefud Desert in […]
Time-sensitive neurons fatigue and skew our perception of time. On some days, time flies by, while on others it seems to drag on. A new study from JNeurosci reveals why: time-sensitive neurons get worn out and skew our perceptions of time. Neurons in the supramarginal gyrus (SMG) fire in response to a […]
Credit: CC0 Public Domain People are starting almost all the wildfires that threaten U.S. homes, according to an innovative new analysis combining housing and wildfire data. Through activities like debris burning, equipment use and arson, humans were responsible for igniting 97% of home-threatening wildfires, a University of Colorado Boulder-led team […]
Two major theories have fueled a now 1,500 year-long debate started by Saint Augustine: Is consciousness continuous, where we are conscious at each single point in time, or is it discrete, where we are conscious only at certain moments of time? In an Opinion published September 3 in the journal Trends […]