When feeling stressed or nervous, you notice the pounding heart, pale face, and dry mouth – fundamental autonomic responses to psychological stress.  Stress responses are conserved in many mammalian species and thought to be beneficial for wild animals, such as when they encounter their enemies. ... click to read more

The function of sleep is still elusive despite the well-known effects of sleep loss or poor-quality sleep on cognitive function and long-term health. When and how long animals (including humans) sleep is determined by, on the one hand, their internal circadian clock, which aligns physiology... click to read more

For at least 10,000 years, approximately 90% of humans have preferred using the right hand over the left. The question of why about one in ten people are left-handed has fascinated scientists for centuries, but no clear answer has yet emerged. We already knew that genetic... click to read more

Memory is how our past experiences shape our behavior in the future. For example, as children, we form memories of our parents and other people speaking and use those memories to learn spoken language ourselves. Forming memories cause changes to many different regions of our... click to read more

When we look at the world before us, we experience a unified scene of shapes and colors. But individual neurons in our brain do not. They are microscopic automata that can only emit electrical impulses when specific shape patterns appear in their little territory of... click to read more