So that’s what the claustrum does!
Three years ago, I asked “What the heck is a claustrum?” In that piece, I described the mystery of this oddly shaped brain region, located just below the cerebral cortex.…
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Sleep
Sleep Paralysis: What Is It and What Causes It?
Sleep paralysis is a type of REM parasomnia or abnormal behavior that takes place during the REM sleep cycle. Also known as sleep atonia, this condition refers to the feeling…
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What I Learned from Tracking My Sleep with Fitbit for Two Months
If someone had told me a year ago that he sleeps with his watch on at night, I’d probably wonder just how eccentric of a personality I was dealing with.…
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Neuro Primer: Sleep
It’s easy to ask: “Why sleep?” But we can also turn the question on its head: “Why wake?” We need to be awake, among other reasons, to find and eat…
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Neuro Primer: Aging
What happens to the brain in aging?
Normal aging comes with many changes in brain structure and function. As individuals approach the age of 65 years and above, they experience…
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Our Dreams Have Many Purposes, Changing Across the Lifespan
lthough radically different in terms of their content and feel, the range of dream states are just as complex as waking states. If we look across an individual’s lifetime, we…
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The Wisdom of the Sloth: Is Sleep a Lost Virtue?
In the sixth century, Pope Gregory I compiled an infamous list of seven deadly sins. Of these seven, sloth is the only sin named for an animal in English. But…
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Consciousness: The Final Frontier
When I walk through my kitchen, I smell fresh food and feel warmth radiating off of it. These internal, subjective experiences are called qualia. I assume that my refrigerator, my…
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The inescapable nightmare of fatal familial insomnia
A family curse
During the early 1980’s, an Italian physician was investigating a mysterious and dreadful disease that had long plagued his family. In earlier generations, this disease had killed…
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How to Give Thanks Like a Neuroscientist
You’re on your way to the traditional Thanksgiving family get-together. You drive down a familiar street, locate your familiar house, and park in a familiar spot.…
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Weird animal brain: Bottlenose dolphin
Marine mammals, such as dolphins, whales, and porpoises, spend their entire lives at sea. Like us, they need to breathe, avoid danger, and care for their young. Like us, they…
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This is Your Brain on Starbucks
My father often jokes that hundreds of years from now, future anthropologists will speak of the cult of the Seattle goddess, her shrine adorning every airport, shopping mall, and train…
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