The "connectome" is one of the most audacious science projects ever conceived: a detailed map of the human brain, neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse. In this EXTENDED interview, MIT computational neuroscientist Sebastian Seung explains what we can learn.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Steven Pinker tells Steve Paulson that parents don’t really have much to do with shaping their children’s personalities.
In Super Senses, psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk talked about how trauma disrupts people's relationship with their body. This extended interview includes more on studies into how trauma rewires the brain, and how yoga can help people heal.
Solar engineer Martha Lenio was the first woman to command a mission on the HI-SEAS — the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation. It's a project co-sponsored by NASA and the Univeristy of Hawaii that simulates what it would be like to live on Mars for eight months. To survive in such extremes, they were sequestered into a 1,000 square foot dome, and when they went outside they had to wear space suits. When Lenio got there, she said it didn't feel much like Mars, but she changed her mind after 8 months without the sun and wind on her skin. She spoke with Anne Strainchamps about missing her family — and missing YouTube cat videos.
There's a short story about a guy who's so afraid of other people reading his mind that he wears a tin foil hat to protect his thoughts. The tin foil part is crazy, but protecting your mind is maybe not such a bad idea. Academic psychologist Rob Brotherton says there are certain psychological traits that predispose people to believe in conspiracy theories. For example, there's an experiment done by a group of psychologists in Amsterdam. It involves a group of subjects and a messy desk.
FIND OUT HOW LIKELY YOU ARE TO BELIEVE IN CONSPIRACY THEORIES BY TAKING ROB'S QUIZ.
Louisa May Alcott was no "little woman". Biographer Harriet Reisen uncovers the fierce feminist behind "Little Women".
This week in Watch This! we talk about "Salinger" and "Shakespeare Uncovered."
Restaurants serve food and feelings in this story by Nathan Witkin.
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