Published in Frontiers for Young Minds
Is it important to have friends? Why do we enjoy spending time with them? Do we learn differently around our friends? Neuroscience research is helping us to answer some of these questions by looking at the way our brain allows us to, and benefits from, interacting with other humans. Part of the reason why human brains are so complex is that our int...
Published in Frontiers for Young Minds
We human beings spend about a third of our lives sleeping. That means that if you live to 90, you'll sleep for about 30 years – probably more time than you'll spend doing anything else. Sleep is really important since we cannot live without it and spend so much time doing it. Yet unlike the other basic biological drives such as eating and reproduci...
Published in Frontiers for Young Minds
Published in Frontiers for Young Minds
What we perceive is not always what our eyes see. Vision, and perception more generally, should not be thought of as a webcam that just takes pictures of the world. This is not a fault in how our brains work, but rather is exemplary of how the brain constructs perception and takes advantage of its massive inter-connectedness in ways that are highly...
Published in Frontiers for Young Minds
Have you ever felt left out, isolated, rejected, and/or frustrated that your parents, your siblings, or even your classmates do not seem to understand you? If so, you are not alone. In the 1980s, scientific reports indicated that 2 out of 10 people felt socially isolated at any given time. Two recent national surveys indicate that this number has n...
Published in Frontiers for Young Minds
Everything you know is in your brain. For anything you do not know, you can ask the web. However, as you can imagine, in the past, there were no computers and no web at all. Think about people living 3500 years ago, in places where pyramids towered above, instead of the modern buildings you can see around. The lack of explanations about how things ...
Published in Frontiers for Young Minds
What happens in your brain when you find out that someone thinks you’re cool? Neuroscientists have recently started to investigate this by looking into how our brains process information concerning our reputation. Just a few years ago, it was discovered that when we learn that other people think highly of us, a key part of the brain’s reward system...
Published in Frontiers for Young Minds
When I was a kid, I thought of going to school as an obligation imposed by my parents, and I guess many kids feel the same. My father used to say, “you need to study hard to build a better future for yourself,” but I think that if my father had told me “studying is good for your future brain,” then I probably would have focused more on my learning ...
Published in Frontiers for Young Minds
Children today interact with media an average of 7 hours a day, every day including weekends. That is more than the weekly time adults spend at work. What is the impact of so much media consumption? Research in this field is still in its infancy, but an emerging field on video game and the brain suggests that we are in for some surprises.
Published in Frontiers for Young Minds
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to see through the eyes of a bird? What about a fly? Or your dog? Scientists who study animal eyes can find out what it would be like to see the world from an animal's perspective by studying their behavior, as well as the shapes and sizes of their eyes. In addition, they can study the inner parts of the...
