Nearly Naked Apes Humans are weird mammals. We have enormous brains, we live long lives, and we constantly walk upright. But perhaps one of our most unique features is our hairlessness. No other mammals, aside from subterranean ...
Understanding the Evolution of Human Handedness Chances are that if you are reading this you are right-handed. If you are not, you’re one of roughly 10% of the population that is left-handed. Or you may identify as ambidextrous. That is, you use both hands w...
Sound Science: 25 years after the Valdez oil spill, biologists in Prince William Sound are studying the slow herring recovery In the early hours of March 24, 1989, a large tanker went aground on Bligh Reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, spilling 11 million gallons of oil into this thriving ecosystem. The historically important herr...
Using the brain to map our understanding of ‘person-space’ A 2-D 'map' of the similarity between brain activity patterns elicited when thinking about different famous people. Closer people elicit more similar neural patterns in participants. Like maps of Earth, this ...
Intuition for other people’s emotional dynamics A network diagram with arrows between mental states indicating which transitions are viewed as likely (>75%) by participants. Arrowheads indicate the direction(s) of transition between states. The size of ...
Reading genomes with machine learning The human genome comprises 3 billion nucleotides of information that outline how to construct and continue to live as a human. ~2% of those nucleotides code for proteins, which perform the bulk of the work to b...
Self-control as value-based choice The usual way that laypeople and researchers alike think about self-control is as a battle between “hot” impulsive forces, such as craving, and “cold” calculating ones, such as a distant goal to be healthy. But...
Meditation reduces pain, and blocking opioid receptors makes that effect even stronger! Describe your research and the big picture problem or puzzle it addresses.Over the last 10 years, a series of well-designed laboratory studies using pain induction and healthy meditation practitioners have show...
Using spectroscopy to identify the bugs that make (or spoil) wine Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the 'sugar mold,' is used to convert sugar to alcohol in wine and beer fermentation. In the wine business, it is a common refrain that "the wine is made in the vineyard." This is me...
“Social pain?” Not in the brain Describe your research and the big picture problem or puzzle it addresses. Rejection stings, right? The social pain hypothesis says that same biology for processing social exclusion also handles physical pain....
