Antidepressants might lift up one’s spirits, but might they break hearts? In “Too Hard For Science?” I interview scientists about ideas they would love to explore that they don’t think could be investigated. For instance, they might involve machines beyond the realm of possibility, such as devices as big as galaxies, or they might be [...]

Madhurima Benekareddy  is a 27-year-old researcher standing at the cross-roads of psychology and neuroscience. She researches the effects of trauma on the brain in its delicate stages of development, when we are children and adolescents, at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research  in Mumbai , India. The young brain is more plastic , and therefore [...]

In dreams, could we discover where the mysterious feeling of revelation comes from? In "Too Hard for Science?" I interview scientists about ideas they would love to explore that they don’t think could be investigated. For instance, they might involve machines beyond the realm of possibility, such as particle accelerators as big as the sun, [...]

Last week, Nature issued a new paper. The paper used two different strains of mice, one lacking all serotonin neurons (called Lmx1b knockouts), and one lacking the rate limiting enzyme for the production of serotonin (called TPH2 knockouts). The authors demonstrated that these mice, lacking serotonin, did not distinguish between sexual partners, mounting male and [...]

Every so often there comes a truly "headdesk" moment in science. A moment where you sit there, stunned by a new finding, and thinking, blankly…"OK, now what?" For psychiatry and behavioral pharmacology, one of those moments came a few weeks ago with the findings of a meta-analysis published in the British Medical Journal (Eyding et [...]

The most common cause of death of U.S. infants before their first birthday is the nebulous complication known as sudden infant death syndrome (or SIDS), according to the Mayo Clinic. The underlying causes of this condition, in which no immediate cause of death is revealed in an autopsy, remain unknown, vexing scientists and parents alike. [...]

Editor’s Note: While I’m on vacation, I’ve arranged a series of guest posts from other writers who routinely cover animal behavior and cognition. Today’s post, about my favorite domesticated foxes, comes from The Dog Zombie who blogs at The Dog Zombie. My own first-ever blog post on Scientific American blogs, last summer, was about these [...]