Word: brainful
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...feminists, their opponents and armies of academics have debated the differences between men and women. Only in the past few years have scientists been able to use imaging technology to look inside men's and women's heads to investigate whether those stereotypical gender differences have roots in the brain. No concrete results have emerged from these studies yet, but now a new functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of children offers at least one explanation for some common tween social behaviors: girls are hardwired to care about one-on-one relationships with their BFFs (best friends forever), while...
...part of the brain that accounts for the urge to swear - or yelp, in the case of animals - is deep within, suggesting its primitiveness. Studies of non-human primates show that vocalization is nearly always attributed to subcortical processes in the brain, in those regions that control primal, raw emotions, says Diana Van Lancker Sidtis, a professor of speech language pathology and audiology at New York University. In humans too, the urge to swear likely stems from primitive parts, but it is usually overridden by commands from the brain's more complex cortex - the abundant gray matter on which humans...
Granted, some Iranians have little taste for American culture, but they see immigration to the U.S. and Europe as a way to escape the increasingly repressive regime. The brain drain has been a pressing problem for years, but the presidential election and its fallout has quickened its pace. An Iranian student who is supposed to enter a university in New England this fall says that worsening relations may have dashed his chance to secure an American visa (stories abound of Iranians waiting upwards of a year to hear about their applications). "We cannot stay in this country," he says...
That may explain why the antioxidant N-acetylcysteine can help prevent it. The compound is thought to work by reducing the synaptic release of a neurotransmitter called glutamate. As Grant told me, glutamate is the communication chemical that "tells the brain, 'Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it!' And the rest of the brain can be overwhelmed by this drive state." Reduce glutamate and you may reduce the drive state. Previous studies have suggested the supplement may also reduce urges to use cocaine and to gamble. (See TIME's health and medicine covers...
...claims made by many brain-boosting websites and digital games, however, would have you believing otherwise. HAPPYneuron, a $100 Web-based brain-training site, entices visitors to "give the gift of brain fitness" and claims that its users saw "16%+ improvement" through exercises such as learning to associate a bird's song with its species and shooting basketballs through virtual hoops. Nintendo's best-selling Brain Age game promises to "give your brain the workout it needs" through exercises like solving math problems and playing rock, paper, scissors on the handheld...