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Books about the brain: ‘Ha!,’ ‘Joy, Guilt, Anger, Love’ and ‘Consciousness and the Brain’
The Washington Post: Over the years, my romance with the brain has lost a bit of its spark. I majored in cognitive neuroscience (with the hope of understanding consciousness) and after college spent two years managing a neuroimaging lab. But in my career as a science writer, my interests have migrated toward the “softer” mind sciences, such as social psychology. I came to realize that exploring the fascinating computational power of neural networks would not shed much light on what it feels like to, well, feel. The gap betweenbrain and mind is too great.
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Busted Bracket? Science Suggests Strategy to Improve March Madness Picks
It’s official: No one on this planet will walk away with Warren Buffett’s $1 billion dollar prize for filling out a perfect March Madness bracket. Hopes for the money were quickly dashed after the second round of games in the NCAA college basketball tournament – Dayton topped Syracuse, Stanford snuffed out Kansas, and Kentucky ended Wichita State’s hopes for the first perfect NCAA season in almost 40 years. Suffice it to say, we all made wrong picks in one way or another. It’s likely that some people will blame their mistakes on the bracket “gurus” – those experts who allegedly know the ins and outs of each game in extraordinary detail.
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Why A Sweet Tooth May Have Been An Evolutionary Advantage For Kids
NPR: It's no surprise researchers have shown again and again that kids are more likely than adults to spring for something like a bowl of Fruit Loops. But young kids' preference for extremely sugary foods might be even more biologically ingrained than we thought. Scientists now think that kids' growing bodies may prompt them to crave more sugar — and a child's sweet tooth might be heightened during growth spurts. In a small study, researchers from the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia determined what tastes kids prefer by having them rate various soups, sugar waters, jellies and crackers with different levels of salt and sugar.
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Eldar Shafir: Scarcity
BBC Radio: Jo Fidgen interviews psychologist Eldar Shafir about his theories of how scarcity of time and money can both help and harm us. Listen here: BBC Radio
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Expressions of fear and disgust aided human survival, study says
Los Angeles Times: Why do our eyes open wide when we feel fear or narrow to slits when we express disgust? According to new research, it has to do with survival. In a paper published Thursday in the journal Psychological Science, researchers concluded that expressions of fear and disgust altered the way human eyes gather and focus light. They argued that these changes were the result of evolutionary development and were intended to help humans survive, or at least detect, very different threats. To test their hypothesis, study authors examined two dozen volunteer undergraduate students with standard eye-exam equipment, and asked them to mimic expressions of fear and revulsion.
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To Keep Teenagers Alert, Schools Let Them Sleep In
The New York Times: Jilly Dos Santos really did try to get to school on time. She set three successive alarms on her phone. Skipped breakfast. Hastily applied makeup while her fuming father drove. But last year she rarely made it into the frantic scrum at the doors of Rock Bridge High School here by the first bell, at 7:50 a.m. Then she heard that the school board was about to make the day start even earlier, at 7:20 a.m. “I thought, if that happens, I will die,” recalled Jilly, 17. “I will drop out of school!” That was when the sleep-deprived teenager turned into a sleep activist.
