After a class on out-of-body experiences, a psychology graduate student at the University of Ottawa came forward to researchers to say that she could have these voluntarily, usually before sleep. "She appeared surprised that not everyone could experience this," wrote the scientists in a study describing the case, published in February in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.  

One would think that if you could leave your own body and float above it, you'd be a little more... vocal about it. But since it was a common experience for her--one she "began performing as a child when bored with 'sleep time' at preschool... moving above her body" instead of napping--it may have appeared unremarkable. This is way more interesting than what I did, which wa ...

Beautiful people make more daughters, according to a study.

Why? It is more genetically advantageous for females to be attractive, as (in a heterosexual relationship anyway) males are more likely to choose a female partner who is attractive for both short and long-term mating, while a female partner is less likely to choose an attractive male for the long-term. Thus, for procreation among attractive people, it is less necessary to make males.

Researchers have shown that people who believe they've slept well and "deeply", even when they didn't, perform better on tests than those who're told they slept badly. So simply believing you had a good night's sleep can improve performance.

You might think that it's better to be well-fed rather than starving when you're trying to make a big, life-changing decision, but new research suggests quite the opposite.

According to a research study conducted by Utrecht University in the Netherlands, people who were hungry because of having fasted overnight perform better on a complex decision task than sated people. (Click here to read the research). This provides a first piece of evidence that the hot state of hunger improves, rather than compromises, advantageous decision making. Their experimental evidence suggests that the "hot state of hunger promoted rather than compromised complex decisions with uncertain outcomes that are advantageous in the long run as hungry participants were ...

I really enjoyed the way the folks at ASAP Science break it down in this video. Long story short, if you want the best bang for your buck, spend your money on others, and stop spending money on material goods. Having a five-dollar latte can be more beneficial than buying a $100,000 Porsche.

Author Dr. John Bradshaw suggests that because domestic cats are still essentially wild animals, that they think of their owners as bigger cats that they're quite fond of (often performing grooming rituals on them), who have really delicious food (tastier than that mouse they killed and left on your porch).

In July 2011, a 52-year-old woman presented at a psychiatric clinic in the Netherlands reported that for her entire life she’d seen multiple peoples’ faces change into dragon-like faces. She was suffering from what is known as prosopometamorphopsia; a psychiatric disorder in which faces appear distorted. What made matters worse, researchers couldn’t work out what was causing this to occur. Various brain scans including MRI, electroencephalogram, and neurological examinations, as well as blood tests were all normal. One area of the brain that might be the cause is the fusiform gyrus, which is the part of our face recognition circuitry. The fusiform gyrus is located in the ventral occipitotemporal cortex, and damage to it can make people ha ...