Jet lag is not imagination. Fly from New York to Tokyo and your liver, muscles, and immune cells are still running on New York time while the sun says otherwise. What is circadian rhythm, at its core, is a set of internal clocks that expect the day to be about 24 hours long — and … Read more
A yawn is a strange package: mouth wide, eyes squeezed shut, deep breath in, tears often running, and a stretch through the jaw and neck. It lasts four to six seconds and happens in every vertebrate studied. Why do we yawn has been asked for centuries, and the answer is still partly open. The Oxygen … Read more
Why do we dream? The honest answer is that nobody knows for certain, and it is worth being upfront about that before surveying the theories — because this is a topic where confident explanations vastly outrun the evidence. What we have are several plausible, partially-supported accounts that are not mutually exclusive. What We Know For … Read more
Do we only use 10 percent of our brain? No. This is one of the most durable myths in popular science, and it is flatly contradicted by everything we can measure. Brain imaging shows activity throughout the organ, and the claim has no identifiable source in legitimate neuroscience. What Brain Imaging Actually Shows PET and … Read more