Someone who greatly enjoys sweet foods is said to have a "sweet tooth." Experimental evidence now shows us that eating sweets forms memories that may control eating habits. In other words, people may enjoy eating sweets because the taste is correlated with positive memories.

The findings, published online in the journal Hippocampus, show that neurons in the dorsal hippocampus, the part of the brain that is critical for episodic memory, are activated by consuming sweets. Episodic memory is the memory of autobiographical events experienced at a particular time and place.

In the study, a meal consisting of a sweetened solution, either sucrose or saccharin, significantly increased the expression of the synaptic plasticity marker called activity ...

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.

Cutis Verticis Gyrata is a rare skin condition that makes the scalp look like a brain.

Users of magic mushrooms often report altered states of consciousness and a synesthesia-like melding of the senses. Now, scientists may have figured out why: Psilocybin changes the brain’s wiring, creating a hyperconnected brain that contains links between regions that don’t normally communicate with each other.


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Approximately 10% of the world population is left-handed. What causes this anomaly?

While there are several theories that try to explain this trait -- such as the positioning of the baby during the final trimester, hormone exposure during pregnancy, or epigenetic factors -- the most consistent and hardwired explanation boils down to plain old genetics. In other words, the reason you're right-handed or left-handed is because it's written in your DNA.

Research suggests that handedness displays a complex inheritance pattern. For example, if both parents of a child are left-handed, there is a 26% chance of that child being left-handed. A large study of twins from 25,732 families also indicated that the heritability of handedness is roughly 24%.

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This is a human brain without grooves and folds, a condition known as lissencephaly. It belonged to a patient who died in a mental health facility in 1970, and almost a year ago a photographer found the jar containing the brain in a collection at the University of Texas, Austin. People with this rare condition suffer from seizures, muscle spasms, a range of learning difficulties, and usually die before the age of ten. ...

After a broken neck left him quadriplegic, Ian Burkhart was told he would never be able to use his hands. Now he can grasp a bottle and pick up a credit card by using a computer plugged directly into his brain. Special software is able to decode his thoughts and convert them into electrical signals in his hand, bypassing the damaged nerves in his spine. Now Ian has regained an amazing degree of control over his hand, each movement stimulated by his own thoughts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I_q_dFtPhU ...

We've all heard about the right brain-left brain theory, which we owe to Nobel Prize winner Roger W. Sperry. The theory suggests that ‘left-brained’ people are more logical and analytic than ‘right-brained’ people, who are more creative and have a holistic approach to life, but is it true? Despite its popularity, researchers say that most people learn to be both logical and creative and that lateralised patterns of brain activity change as we age. ...