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Video Gaming Prepares the Brain for Bigger Tasks
Playing video games for hours on end may develop skills in childhood that could be useful when training to be, for example, a laparoscopic surgeon, a new study shows. The reorganization of the brain’s cortical
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Not So Fast—Sex Differences in the Brain Are Overblown
People love to speculate about differences between the sexes, and neuroscience has brought a new technology to this pastime. Brain imaging studies are published at a great rate, and some report sex differences in brain
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Naming Tools Is a Hands-On Task
You don’t just need your eyes to think of the name of a tool; your hands get involved, too. A new study finds that people are slower to identify a picture of a tool if
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The New Phrenology?
Phrenology was the intellectual rage of 19th century America. Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman each incorporated bits of the popular personality theory into his works, and Herman Melville went so far as to make
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Increases in Brain’s Motivation can result in Diminished Performance
Choking under pressure affects us all. Psychologists are very interested in this phenomenon, because choking sabotages performance not only in big sports contests but in the classroom and workplace as well. A study published in Psychological
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This is Your Brain on Politics
With over a year of campaigning before the general election, voters should be able to tap into lots of information when they make their decisions in the voting booth. But it turns out there’s a lot more going on when we step behind the curtain to cast our ballot.