Despite his mother beckoning him to come towards her, this infant hesitates to cross the "visual cliff" – an apparently steep drop that is actually covered by transparent glass. Psychologists in the 1960s found that most infants 6 to 14 months of age were reluctant to crawl over the cliff, suggesting they had the ability to perceive depth. Most psychologists believe that the ability to perceive depth is partly innate and partly a product of early visual experience.

Here's a test you can try to demonstrate how your perception of depth is still live and active. Below are two perfect circles, yet the smaller circle appears distorted. Our brain interprets the converging lines to be adding depth to the screen, as if the solid middle is further aw ...

The study, titled "CFT 70 (Countermeasure and Functional Testing in Head-Down Tilt Bed Rest Study)," aimed to learn more about how human bone and muscle might deteriorate in space. According to Drew Iwanicki, who took part in the study and who is pictured above, he experienced some serious headaches because of increased blood pressure to his head. His spine went through some serious pain, and staying horizontal was difficult. However, as soon as the bed was tilted to the vertical position, after 70 days of course, his legs felt heavier and his heart started to beat at 150 BPMs.
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To simulate life on Mars, a six-person crew will live in a dome in the middle of the desert—with almost no connection to the outside world—for eight straight months.

Could the most widely used personality questionnaire simply be a farce?

In case you don't know, the Myers-Briggs test is an assessment test believed by many to measure psychological preferences in how they perceive things and help them in making decisions. According to the Myers-Briggs test, there exist sixteen different types of personalities. This Myers Briggs Test has a series of questions that require your answers, which in turn determine the type of personality you have and provides you with general assumptions concerning how your personality type best suits you.

Back in year-3 of my undergrad., I had to spend $20 to take the test for an assignment I had to write. While it was interesting to note how my personality could be read throug ...

Dog owners often say they "know" that their dog understands what they’re feeling. Now, scientists have the evidence to back this up. Researchers tested 17 adult dogs of various breeds to see whether they could recognize emotional expressions in the faces and voices of humans and other dogs - an ability that’s considered a higher cognitive talent because two different senses are involved. Each dog took part in two test sessions with 10 trials. One by one, they stood facing two screens on which the researchers projected photos of unfamiliar but happy/playful human or dog faces versus the same faces with angry/aggressive expressions (as in the photo above). At the same time, the scientists played a single vocalization - either a dog bark, ...

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 ...

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.