Mindframe

Our brains are programmed not to lose. It's called loss aversion, and it makes sense. If our ancient ancestors lost even a meager food cache, that could mean the difference between life and death. This vestigial neural code is still with us today, even though nowadays, grocery stores are chock full of vitamins in the shape of cartoon characters and nutrition-dense produce like rutabaga. This turnip/cabbage hybrid is a staple at Best family Thanksgivings, over the loud protest of my daughter and editor Jessica, who continues to claim that it tastes like it's been cooked in a dirty sweat sock. (Editor's note: Because it does.) Loss aversion is not just reserved for food. It shows up all over the place. Las Vegas casinos rely on it to keep gamblers going. Customers don't want to walk away from the slots with less than they started, so they continue to gamble, and in the process pretty much insure they will, that's right, lose more money. It's an irony that s...

Seven Psychopaths , the title of Martin McDonagh's new movie, rolls off your tongue a little too easily. Who doesn't savor a good psychopath yarn? Like the twisted wreckage in a car crash, as much you might want to, you can't turn your head and look away. Be forewarned: the movie is awash in blood, but Christopher Walken's pitch-perfect performance is well worth the price of admission. What is it about psychopaths that captures our interest? Is it the aberrant lack of empathy that we just can't wrap our minds around? Recently at the Neuroscience Society convention, I caught up with Doug Schultz from the psychology department at the University of Wisconsin. Schultz has done some fascinating experiments regarding psychopaths. The central question: is there something unique about a psychopath's amygdala, that ancient processing center for fear? Are psychopaths' amygdalas constructed differently than those of 'normal' people? So, where does one lo...

When techno wizard Steve Jobs and his crew first brought us the iPod, it came pre-installed with a nifty program called 'shuffle mode.' This, of course, was designed to free your playlist from the monotony of memorized order. (Your brain is really good at identifying and then getting bored with the tedium of pattern. Case in point: those Empire carpet commercials.) Then the complaint calls started to to flood in. "Hey, my shuffle function is busted," people would say. "What gives?" That's when Apple knew they had a problem. Was their shiny new gizmo malfunctioning? Hardly; Apple's problem was it was working too well . When a sequence is truly random, anything can happen––up to and including an entire album getting played in order, or a playlist consisting of nothing but Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" fifteen times in a row, followed by "Beat It."  Given our pattern-loving brains, it's no surprise people started ...

You flip a coin three times in a row. All three times, it comes up heads. How do you predict the next toss would land? The pessimist will suggest that the pattern is bound to break. Their best guess is tails. The optimist will think, “Hey, I’m on a roll! Heads all the way, baby!” Of course, the actual answer in both cases is always the same: 50/50 for heads or tails. The mental quirk that sees patterns in coin tosses once kept us alive. Back on the  savannah, when your ancestors saw that bush rustle up ahead, their pattern-seeking brains gave them pause, calculating that if a lion had been there before, it could be there again. Maybe this time it was only the night breeze, but why take the chance? It only took one mistake to become dinner. These days, unless you live near a wildlife preserve or a low-security zoo, that rustling is pretty much always gonna be the wind. But those ancient instincts are still with us, conjuring pattern mirages from nowhere. Think Vegas; there’...