Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Brain

New Research

Your Brain Swells—Then Deflates—While You Learn

Researchers hypothesize that the brain “auditions” various cells that form, but only keeps the best of the best

The way a fruit fly fires neurons could inform machine learning.

How Fruit Fly Brains Could Improve Our Search Engines

Fruit flies have a unique way of matching data, which could teach scientists to create better, faster search algorithms

Does science support the idea that teens are more reckless and impulsive than their adult counterparts?

The Impulsive “Teen Brain” Isn’t Based in Science

Yes, adolescent brains crave novelty. But they have the cognitive control to go with it

El Greco: Apocalyptic Vision {The Vision of St. John)

Where Do New Ideas Come From?

With close study, the genealogies of even the most original ideas can be traced

Scary pumpkins are the least of what frightens us at Halloween, a day devoted to being frightened.

What Happens in the Brain When We Feel Fear

And why some of us just can’t get enough of it

New Research

Shrews Shrink Their Skulls and Brains for the Winter

The tiny animal have some surprising reactions to the changing seasons

Mothers Adopt a Universal Tone of Voice When They Talk To Babies

And other surprising facts about how we speak to infants

Delightful or despicable? Your response could help neuroscientists understand the brain's basis for disgust.

New Research

What Stinky Cheese Tells Us About the Science of Disgust

Why does this pungent delicacy give some the munchies, but send others reeling to the toilet?

A comparison of the man's brain activity before and after he had vagus nerve stimulation.

New Research

Experimental Treatment Partially Awakens Man in Vegetative State

Scientists are hopeful but cautious about the initial results of the test

A cognitive scientist suggests that your baby learns from watching you struggle.

How Your Frustration Helps Your Baby Learn

Watching adults struggle with a difficult task can teach young children the value of hard work

Luckily stress doesn’t do this to you!

How Your Body Reacts to Stress

A little tension can keep you on your toes. Too much can break down the system

Scientists found some of the physical imprints of Alzheimer's disease in the brains of elderly chimpanzees

Aging Chimps Show Signs of Alzheimer’s Disease

Long been thought unique to humans, a new study suggests that our close ancestors exhibit some of the hallmarks of the illness

The degenerative disease, chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE, is common in football players, boxers, veterans and others exposed to head trauma.

New Research

Disease Found in 99 Percent of Brains Donated by NFL Families

The degenerative brain disease develops after repeated concussions or blows to the head

Not a birdbrain.

New Research

Like Humans and Apes, Ravens Can Plan for the Future

The birds were able to choose and hold onto a tool that could unlock an eventual reward

So much potentially misleading information, so little time.

New Research

How Fake News Breaks Your Brain

Short attention spans and a deluge of rapid-fire articles on social media form a recipe for fake news epidemics

Until recently, neuroscientists have considered the method the brain uses to quickly and easily analyzes faces to be a "black box."

New Research

How Your Brain Recognizes All Those Faces

Neurons home in on one section at a time, researchers report

A man reads a newspaper in Chirakoot, India. In nearby Lucknow, researchers observed brain changes in newly literate adults.

New Research

Learning to Read May Reshape Adult Brains

How literacy changed the bodies of a group of Indian adults

Mr. Darcy, the socially awkward love interest in Pride and Prejudice, has been retroactively diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, but a new wave of fiction casts people with autism in a new light.

Why Your Next Favorite Fictional Protagonist Might Be on the Autism Spectrum

Fiction can reframe misunderstood mental conditions like autism

Taste receptors for salty, sweet, bitter and sour are found all over the tongue.

The Taste Map of the Tongue You Learned in School Is All Wrong

Modern biology shows that taste receptors aren’t nearly as simple as that cordoned-off model would lead you to believe

Some studies have shown that humans can learn to track scents like canines.

New Research

In Some Ways, Your Sense of Smell Is Actually Better Than a Dog’s

Human noses are especially attuned to picking up odors in bananas, urine and human blood

Page 15 of 26