The Risks of Ignoring the Brain
A friend of mine was skeptical about whether behavioral scientists actually need to understand the brain.
Neuroscience
The Brains Behind Behavioral Science
A friend of mine shared this simple thought: “My ultimate goal is to change people’s behavior. Behavior change techniques are powerful enough tools. I do not need to know what the brain does.”
Rethinking Consciousness: A Q&A with Michael Graziano
Most theories of consciousness, says Neuroscientist Michael Graziano, rely on magic. They point to a feature of the brain—vibrating neurons for instance—and claim that feature to be the source of consciousness.
NIH Requests $4.5 Billion For White House BRAIN Initiative
With the singular, ambitious goal of understanding exactly how the brain works, the BRAIN Initiative was announced as one of Obama’s “Grand Challenges,” meant to be on par in scale and impact with the Human Genome Project.
Manipulating Memory through Optogenetics: A Conversation with Neuroscientists Xu Liu and Steve Ramirez
Over the past few years, MIT neuroscientists Xu Liu and Steve Ramirez have been bringing ideas that might only seem possible in science fiction to reality.
Art: A Tail or a Song?
In his new book, The Aesthetic Brain, Anjan Chatterjee utilizes neuroscience and evolutionary psychology to explore three critical questions in the field of aesthetics: What is beauty? What is pleasure? What is art?