Don’t tell me about the world. Not today. It’s springtime and they’re knocking baseball around fields where the grass is damp and green in the morning and the kids are trying to hit the curve ball. – Pete Hamill I’ve been at a loss for what to say today—particularly as there is no shortage of people who [...]

Ed Note: This post originally appeared on The Urban Ethnographer, where it was selected as a ResearchBlogging Editor’s Selection. It has been slightly edited for posting here. It was chosen for publication in The Open Lab competition. It’s been a very hot summer here in New York City. And the city smells. It’s more than [...]

Why can you vividly recall the day your father took you to your first baseball game many years ago, but you can’t remember where you just put the car keys? We tend not to think about it much, but memory is the seat of consciousness. The process of how we remember, how we forget, and [...]

It has happened to everyone. You can’t recall a name or you forget your credit card PIN number. Rather than waiting two weeks for a new one to arrive in the mail, wouldn’t it be great if there were a pill you could swallow to pop that lost memory back into your head? That is [...]

The Think Tank is a mobile cognitive science lab and education station that will harness intrinsic interest in the human brain.

The madeleine episode in Proust’s Swan’s Way exemplifies the power of smells and tastes to bring back memories, and has inspired research and further fiction too.

Magicians sometimes perform seemingly impossible feats of memory, for instance, to remember the order of a “randomly shuffled” deck of cards. To accomplish this, they use well established mnemonic techniques.

In 1981, a 30-year-old man was driving home from work on his motorcycle. Maybe it was too dark. Maybe he was going too quickly. Maybe there was something on the road. Maybe his attention wandered. Whatever the reason, the routine trip soon took a traumatic turn: the motorcycle spun off the exit ramp, its rider [...]

This September, cigarette packs in the U.S. will be getting a lot more colorful. And a lot more disturbing. By then, tobacco companies will be required to display one of nine graphic health warnings on each pack, to comply with the Tobacco Control Act of 2009. The U.S. has followed dozens of other countries in [...]

In kindergarten, several of my friends and I were very serious about learning to tie our shoes. I remember sitting on the edge of the playground, looping laces into bunny ears and twisting them into a knot over and over again until I had it just right. A few years later, whistling became my new [...]

One of brain researchers’ closest brushes with science fiction in the last 10 years came with the discovery of a chemical that could completely wipe out memory, a molecule that evoked a real-life version of the scenario depicted in the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in which a couple undertakes a procedure to [...]

Researchers from the University of California, Irvine reported in 2006 on a woman named Jill Price who could remember in great detail what she did on a particular day decades earlier. James McGaugh, Larry Cahill and Elizabeth Parker put the woman through a battery of tests and ascertained that she was not using any of [...]

I always knew we humans have a rather tenuous grip on the concept of time, but I never realized quite how tenuous it was until a couple of weeks ago, when I attended a conference on the nature of time organized by the Foundational Questions Institute. This meeting, even more than FQXi’s previous efforts, was [...]

As science has long demonstrated, eyewitness accounts are frequently riddled with errors. Human memory in general is far from perfect—working less like a video camera than an ever-evolving collage, studies have shown. But in courtrooms across the country eyewitness testimony of alleged crimes have frequently been enough to convince juries to send defendants to jail—even [...]

Human memory has been shown again and again to be far from perfect. We overlook big things, forget details, conflate events. One famous experiment even demonstrated that many people asked to watch a video of people playing basketball failed to notice a person wearing a gorilla suit walk right through the middle of the scene. [...]

Editor’s Note: The following blog post first appeared May 17 on the World Science Festival’s Web site. U.S. Patent 7,928,070 issued in April of this year for what was simply labeled as a “memory-enhancing protein.” Todd Sacktor, a professor at SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn, and a panelist at the 2011 World Science Festival’s The Unbearable [...]

Wandering the neighborhood randomly is not usually the best strategy to find a great dinner—especially if you live in a place where such meals are few and far between. The resulting trajectory, known in mathematics as "a random walk," does not always make for the best use of time and energy, particularly in locations where [...]

New research shows that plants "can think and remember," according to a news story published this week. Plants can transmit information "from leaf to leaf in a very similar way to our own nervous systems," BBC News wrote. The article continues to assert that plants remember information and use "information encrypted in the light to [...]

“Seriously, it doesn’t matter how many times you ask me. I’m never going to remember where he said he was going. I don’t even know why you’re still here.” “I just don’t believe you.” “Have you looked in his house yet? That’d be the first place I’d look. Under his bed or something, I don’t [...]

I recently interviewed author and inventor Ray Kurzweil about his new book, “How to Create A Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed.” The 58-minute segment aired on December 1, 2 and 3 on the C-SPAN2 program “After Words.” The book’s thesis is that it is essentially possible to reverse-engineer the human brain to create [...]

The November/December Scientific American Mind, which debuted online today, examines the origins of genius, a concept that inspires both awe and confusion. Some equate genius with IQ or creativity; others see it as extraordinary accomplishment. As this issue reveals, genius seems to arise from a mosaic of forces that coalesce into a perfect storm of [...]

In MindUP, a social and emotional learning program pioneered by actor Goldie Hawn, children learn to be mindful—that is, attuned to the present without judgment. This skill engenders a healthy outlook on life, hones the ability to pay attention and creates a sense of calm, preparing the mind for learning. (For more on the brain [...]

I am happy to be breaking my silence of recent weeks with a preview of the September/October issue of Scientific American Mind. As the summer begins its slow resignation and people anticipate the start of school, our pages revive the ongoing societal debate about the best way to teach our kids. This issue of Mind [...]

Following on my last blog, here are more telling tidbits from the March/April issue of Scientific American Mind. Smelling the past. I don’t give much thought to odors, unless I have to purge one from the kitchen or car. So I had never considered the possibility that my ability to smell affects how I think [...]

People have long tried tricks to aid their memories. One of the most useful of these so-called mnemonic devices, I’ve found, involves associating names with word pictures or with other people you know well. I was just at a party, for example, and met a man who shared a last name with someone I’ve known [...]

Desire. When you have it, nobody questions it. When it is absent, it can be tricky to talk about. After all, the subject is delicate, and what is the point? You probably have little clue what is going on anyway. Luckily, scientists are looking out for you—because it is not even close to being just [...]

A decade ago, we lived in an apartment tower in Jersey City overlooking the Hudson River. We had a panoramic view of Manhattan—and of planes flying in and out of the nearby airports. After several years there, I got used to rolling my eyes as my husband pontificated on the make, or approach, of various [...]

Nicotine enhances the ability to focus and remember. The alkaloid acts in a similar manner to the brain’s own signaling molecule, acetylcholine. It interacts with eponymous receptors on the surface of nerve cells to regulate signaling in the brain. The role of the nicotinic-acetylcholine receptors throughout the central nervous system is so wide-ranging that new [...]

One of the most influential voices of my childhood, and the childhoods of countless others raised alongside that omnipresent mouse, has died at the age of 86. Robert B. Sherman was a songwriter who, with his brother Richard, wrote some of the most beloved and memorable Disney songs. The Sherman brothers were perhaps best known [...]

Classical conditioning is one of those introductory psychology terms that gets thrown around. Many people have a general idea that it is one of the most basic forms of associative learning, and people often know that Ivan Pavlov’s 1927 experiment with dogs has something to do with it, but that is often where it ends. [...]

Editor’s Note: Today’s post, coming appropriately after yesterday’s post on human intuitions about memory, comes from Felicity Muth who blogs at Not Bad Science, and tweets as @FelicityMuth. This post, while it can certainly stand alone, is meant to be read after reading Felicity’s contribution to The Guest Blog. We have known for a number [...]

Do you believe that memory works sort of like a video camera, faithfully recording your experiences so that you can go back later and revisit those memories, captured in pristine condition? Do you believe that if something unexpected walked into your field of vision you’d notice? Can forgotten memories be recalled through hypnosis? If you’re [...]