Scientific American - Language & Linguistics

Thinking About Mortality Changes How We Act

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:00:00 EST

The thought of shuffling off our mortal coil can make all of us a little squeamish. But avoiding the idea of death entirely means ignoring the role it can play in determining our actions. Consider the following scenario:

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Brain Injury Rate 7 Times Greater among U.S. Prisoners

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

A car accident, a rough tackle, an unexpected tumble. The number of ways to bang up the brain are almost as numerous as the people who sustain these injuries. And only recently has it become clear just how damaging a seemingly minor knock can be. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is no longer just a condition acknowledged in military personnel or football players and other professional athletes. Each year some 1.7 million civilians will suffer an injury that disrupts the function of their brains, qualifying it as a TBI.

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Lies We Tell Ourselves: How Deception Leads to Self-Deception (preview)

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

In Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1970 rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar , a skeptical Judas Iscariot questions with faux innocence (“Don’t you get me wrong/I only want to know”) the messiah’s deific nature: “Jesus Christ Superstar/Do you think you’re what they say you are?”

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Social Clicks: Sounds Associated with African Languages Are Common in English

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

Some Africans click, but English speakers don’t. That’s been the conventional wisdom about click sounds, which serve as regular consonants in Zulu and Xhosa and a few other African languages but which were presumed to just be used in English for encouraging a horse, imitating a kiss, or expressing emotions such as disapproval or amazement. But researchers have recently found that clicks are far more prevalent in the world’s lingua franca than had been thought.

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MIND Reviews: The Righteous Mind

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion [More]

What a Yawn Says about Your Relationship

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:00:00 EST

You can tell a lot about a person from their body. And I don’t just mean how many hours they spend at the gym, or how easy it is for them to sweet-talk their way out of speeding tickets. For the past several decades researchers have been studying the ways in which the body reveals properties of the mind. An important subset of this work has taken this idea a step further: do the ways our bodies relate to one another tell us about the ways in which our minds relate to one another? Consider behavioral mimicry. Many studies have found that we quite readily mimic the nonverbal behavior of those with whom we interact. Furthermore, the degree to which we mimic others is predicted by both our personality traits as well as our relationship to those around us. In short , the more empathetic we are, the more we mimic, and the more we like the people we’re interacting with, the more we mimic. The relationship between our bodies reveals something about the relationship between our minds.

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Scientists Manipulate and Erase Memories (preview)

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:00:00 EST

Joël Coutu knelt on the cold cement floor of the pet supply store he managed in Montreal, his wrists bound behind him with telephone wire. He could feel the barrel of a pistol pressed against the back of his neck. “You’re lying!” the gunman screamed. “And I am going to blow your head off.”

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U.S. Science Degrees Are Up

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 08:00:00 EST

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The Power of Introverts: A Manifesto for Quiet Brilliance

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:40:00 EST

Do you enjoy having time to yourself, but always feel a little guilty about it? Then Susan Cain’s “ Quiet : The Power of Introverts ” is for you. It’s part book, part manifesto. We live in a nation that values its extroverts – the outgoing, the lovers of crowds – but not the quiet types who change the world. She recently answered questions from Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook .

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Stuttering Reflects Irregularities in Brain Setup

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 08:00:00 EST

Put on a pair of headphones and turn up the volume so that you can’t even hear yourself speak. For those who stutter, this is when the magic happens. Without the ability to hear their own voice, people with this speech impediment no longer stumble over their words--as was recently portrayed in the movie The King’s Speech . This simple trick works because of the unusual way the brain of people who stutter is organized--a neural setup that affects other actions besides speech, according to a new study.

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Forgetting Actually Strengthens Memory--a Special Report (preview)

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 08:00:00 EST

Most people picture human memory as something resembling a secure metal vault into which we cram our valuable--and not so valuable--thoughts for safekeeping. The people with the biggest vaults, then, can keep the most stuff. They know the most and make the fewest mistakes. [More]

Is There a Difference between the Brain of an Atheist and the Brain of a Religious Person?

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 08:00:00 EST

Is there a difference between the brain of an atheist andthe brain of a religious person? [More]

Infants Possess Intermingled Senses

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 08:00:00 EST

What if every visit to the museum was the equivalent of spending time at the philharmonic? For painter Wassily Kandinsky, that was the experience of painting: colors triggered sounds. Now a study from the University of California, San Diego, suggests that we are all born synesthetes like Kandinsky, with senses so joined that stimulating one reliably stimulates another.

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MIND in Pictures: Music to Your Brain

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 08:00:00 EST

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A Brief History of Clocks

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST

Humankind’s efforts to tell time have helped drive the evolution of our technology and science throughout history. The need to gauge the divisions of the day and night led the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans to create sundials, water clocks and other early chronometric tools. Western Europeans adopted these technologies, but by the 13th century, demand for a dependable timekeeping instrument led medieval artisans to invent the mechanical clock. Although this new device satisfied the requirements of monastic and urban communities, it was too inaccurate and unreliable for scientific application until the pendulum was employed to govern its operation. The precision timekeepers that were subsequently developed resolved the critical problem of finding a ship’s position at sea and went on to play key roles in the industrial revolution and the advance of Western civilization.

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Cognitive Decline Sets in around Age 45

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 10:00:08 EST

When people over 65 show losses in their short-term memory and comprehension, it’s no surprise. But a new study claims that a general cognitive decline starts to set in as early as age 45. The research is in the British Medical Journal .

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Unusual Flavors Can Dampen Immune Response

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 08:00:00 EST

More than 100 years ago Ivan Pavlov famously observed that a dog salivated not only when fed but also on hearing a stimulus it associated with food. Since then, scientists have discovered many other seemingly autonomous processes that can be trained with sensory stimuli--including, most recently, our immune system.

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Your Birdsong Stays on My Mind

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 10:00:00 EST

Birdsong--or, more technically, vocalization-- is one way that die-hard bird-watchers identify different kinds of birds in the field, along with the more traditional visual markers. Yet how do you take written notes on the sounds that birds make? You could use conventional musical notation, but many bird-watchers aren’t musicians. Field guides often resort to vague phrases such as “far-carrying melancholic song” or the mysterious “tee-do-do-eet.” Also, how can birders identify strains of birdsong they may hear in the field?

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Recommended: Sea

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 12:00:00 EST

Sea [More]

Readers Respond to "Fight the Frazzled Mind"--and More

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:00:00 EST

Older and More Stressed [More]