Erich Jarvis: Connecting Birdsong to Human Speech

A neuroscientist emphasizes the importance of a diverse workforce to tackle big questions about the mechanisms and evolution of spoken language.

Love in the Lab: How Scientists Study Affection

Research in animals and humans is helping to identify brain processes that are active when people are “in love.”

Xin Jin: Searching for Behavior’s Fundamental Principles

One scientist channeled his interest in physics to a passion for understanding how the brain learns and generates actions.

Neuroeconomics: A Window into Human Behavior

Understanding the drivers behind individual and group decision-making may lead to insights into the economy.

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore: The Mysterious Workings of the Adolescent Brain

Why do teenagers seem so much more impulsive and so much less self-aware than grown-ups? Hear neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore explain in this TED talk.

When are children’s brains viewed as “adult brains”?

There is no magical age at which brain development suddenly stops. The brain is constantly changing, even in adulthood and old age.

Critical Periods

Research shows early childhood is marked by critical periods — times when the brain is intensely adaptable to new sights, sounds, tastes, and touches. But what if something in early life interferes with the ability to take in sensory information?

How Forgetting Helps Us Remember

It can be frustrating to be unable to recall information when you need it. But forgetting is actually a good thing.

Jian Li: Making Big and Small Decisions

How the allure of rational robots encouraged a young scientist to pursue research on decision-making.

What does it mean to have synesthesia?

Synesthesia is a condition in which stimulation of one sense automatically evokes a perception in an unstimulated sense.

Loren Frank: Making Sense of Memory

Scientist emphasizes the importance of downtime for the brain.

Memory: From One Patient to a Breakthrough

A major breakthrough in understanding how the brain accomplishes learning and memory began with the study of a person known by his initials, H.M.

Different Facets of Memory

From remembering a friend's face to figuring out where you left your keys, the act of memory has many dimensions.

Aging: Changes in Intellectual Capacity

From the first large studies monitoring the mental functioning of the same group of healthy humans over many years, scientists have uncovered unexpected results.

Plasticity

Plasticity itself is not unique to humans, but the degree to which our brains are able to adapt is the defining attribute of our species.

Critical Periods in Early Life

Genes and the environment converge powerfully during early sensitive windows of brain development to form the neural circuits underlying behavior. Although most neuronal cell death occurs in the embryo, the paring down of connections occurs in large part during critical periods in early postnatal life.

Storing Memories

How exactly are memories stored in brain cells? After years of study, much evidence supports the idea that memory involves a persistent change in synapses, the connections between neurons.

The Cerebellum

For you to perform even so simple a gesture as touching the tip of your nose smoothly, you need an internal "clock" that can precisely regulate the sequence and duration of the elementary movements of each of these segments. That clock is the cerebellum.

The Motor Cortex

All of the body's voluntary movements are controlled by the brain, but one of the brain areas most involved in controlling these voluntary movements is the motor cortex.

Neuroeconomics: Money and the Brain

In good times and bad, people face important economic decisions. Scientists in a field called neuroeconomics study how the brain assesses economic information and weighs financial risks.