Late Filing Taxes? Blame Your Brain
“I’ll do it tomorrow.” Right, but tomorrow never comes. There are many studies on the psychology of procrastination, but brain imaging is giving researchers neurological insight into procrastinators’ brains by revealing differences in brain structure in people who habitually put off doing things until the last minute. Don’t expect the IRS to cut you any slack if your…
Read MoreCBS 60 Minutes Sensationalized Report on a Sonic or Microwave Weapon Harming US Diplomats
On Sunday, March 17 2019, CBS 60 Minutes broadcast an alarming report on the Cuban/Chinese, sonic/microwave/neuroweapon attack on US embassy staff and their families. The report is an example of how a once credible press has been supplanted by tabloid sensationalism and fearmongering. The program featured interviews with staff and family members at the US…
Read MoreHumans Mated with Neanderthals–They Still Are
We know that Homo sapiens (meaning the wise one) co-inhabited the earth with Neandertals. What’s more, DNA analysis proves that men and women of both species (or subspecies if you prefer), mated. Of course, there was no Valentine’s Day back when the daily grind for a working man meant bringing down a woolly mammoth with a sharp stick.…
Read MoreSwitching Off Anger with an Electrode
Devonte Washington, 15, was waiting on the platform of a Washington DC Metro subway station with his mother and two sisters headed to a barber shop to get a haircut for Easter Sunday church service. The young man glanced up at a stranger, 17-year-old Maurice Bellamy, who instantly took offence–pulled out a .38 caliber pistol…
Read MoreHow Scientific American Magazine Helps Shape the English Language
It is fascinating to consider that there was a time when such commonly used words as “pre-heat,” “download,” and “phone,” did not exist. More surprising, perhaps, is that the first recorded use of these words in print, and 205 others in the English language, was in Scientific American magazine. That’s according to the Oxford English…
Read MoreGamma Waves in the Brain–Fumes or Fundamental?
SAN DIEGO—The most fundamental question of how information is coded and processed in the brain is being re-examined, and the controversy drew an overflow crowd of neuroscientists to participate in an intense debate at the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting in San Diego. The textbook explanation that information is coded digitally by the firing rate…
Read MoreCalifornia wildfires–What sort of person is compelled to commit arson?
Something more can be done in addition to environmental action to help prevent wildfires. First published in Psychology Today. The inferno of tragic fires in California has destroyed thousands of homes, incinerated hundreds of thousands of acres, and killed many people this year. In the latest, the entire town of Paradise was reduced to smoldering ash. Highlighting the…
Read MoreA Gunman’s Regret
Science can help society grapple with the horrors of modern gun violence …A death row inmate wrote to say that something I had written had helped him understand how his life derailed. If he had read this material on the neuroscience of violence earlier in his life, he wrote, “I might not be here today.”…
Read MoreCulprit in Cuban Sonic Attack Revealed!
The alarming story that a mysterious energy beam caused traumatic brain injury to US Embassy personnel in Havana has consumed the media in an anxious frenzy not seen since the UFO hysteria of the 1950’s. Many possible suspects in this cruel affair have been fingered, but the perpetrator remains elusive. That, in my opinion, is…
Read MoreBlaming Fentanyl for the Nation’s Opiate Crisis?
The current spotlight on fentanyl as the culprit causing the sharp spike in opioid deaths in the United States, is motivated by a well-intentioned effort to address an alarming public health concern, but is blaming fentanyl and the drug industry an effective way to address the root cause of the epidemic, or a desperate effort…
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