The study of the brain, mental functions and behaviour.
2024: the first human crew of four will set out on their 7-month one-way trip to Mars. They will establish a human outpost on this inhospitable planet and be joined by four new people every two years. This is the mission of Mars One. But are we really sure Earth-based technology can keep them alive?
It’s late. Really late. And you need to be up early. You’re tossing and turning. The later is gets the more stressed you feel. How are you going to get through the next day so sleep deprived? What if I told you all you need is to <em>believe</em> you got enough sleep?
Every second, 26,000 cups of coffee are drunk around the world. That’s more than two billion cups of coffee consumed every day. Yet most of us think of coffee as unhealthy. If coffee is your guilty pleasure you’ll be pleased to hear you can forget the guilt: coffee is good for you.
A couple of weeks ago I asked students in one of my classes whether they were early risers or night owls. Almost all identified as one or the other. But is either being up at dawn or burning the midnight oil simply habit, or is something else going on?
Why call a valued assistant a ‘right-hand man’? Why does an awkward dancer have ‘two left feet’? And why, in times gone by, were left-handers thought to be possessed by the devil? Throughout the ages left-handers have been stigmatised and persecuted. But it turns out ‘handedness’ is determined before you even leave the womb.
We’ve known for a while that having certain facial features will lead people to judge you as either trustworthy or untrustworthy. And in fact our brains make those complex judgments much faster than we could have ever imagined. Now scientists have worked out how we do it.
Dr Jen Martin 