Mindframe

What do Babe Ruth, Marie Curie, David Bowie, Barack Obama, and Oprah have in common, other than fame? No, that’s not the start of a riddle; there’s a simple, non-trick answer. They’re all left-handed . Today, left-handed people make up roughly ten percent of the population. Modern science has yet to explain what causes left-handedness in humans, although we have weeded out some of our earlier theories, such as “ being a witch .” Still, the idea that lefties are in some way untrustworthy has persisted across cultures and centuries (famously, the Latin word for “left” comes from the word “sinister”).   As late as the 1960’s, American public schools forced left-handed children to write with their right hand. What gives? Perhaps it’s a classic case of a majority failing to understand a minority, and coming to fear them instead. Interestingly, even today, neuroscience experiments commonly exclude left-handed subjects, in the hopes of eliminating variables. In a 2014 article in ...

In a fair and just world, losing a limb would be the end of feeling any discomfort in that particular region. For one thing, surely at that point, you’ve got enough on your plate. For another, it sounds like something that should go without saying. Once the nerve endings in that arm or leg are no longer connected to your body—and crucially, to your brain—it’s not as though you can clock accurate information about what that appendage is going through. (Nor would you want to.) However, most post-surgery amputation patients report an unpleasant sensation sort of floating where their limb used to be. Sometimes this manifests as a burning pain, while sometimes it itches, or prickles like the departed body part has fallen asleep (an ironic expression, in this case.)  Sometimes, this only lasts a few seconds. Sometimes, it lasts days at a time. The Amputee Coalition explains that these attacks tend to decrease in length and frequency over the first six months, but warns, “many con...

How much of our social behavior is hard-wired and how much is learned? It’s a huge question. The nature vs nurture debate has raged for centuries, and while most people today would argue that our actions are shaped by at least a little of both, it’s difficult to analyze social interactions scientifically. There are a thousand nuances at play in any conversation, impossible to replicate in a lab environment. If you’re looking for clean data, it’s a lot easier to study an animal with simpler social dynamics, like mice. And as it happens, exciting things are happening in the field of neurochemical rodent behavioral analysis .  “We’re starting to get a sense of what happens between the part of the brain that takes in sensory information and the part that produces behavior,” explains David Anderson of the California Institute of Technology. Comparing a mouse’s neuron firing patterns to its real-time actions can provide some important clues to the machinery of what we call “inst...