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BY CARL ZIMMER In 2011, a 66-year old retired math teacher walked into a London neurological clinic hoping to get some answers. A few years earlier, she explained to the doctors, she had heard someone playing a piano outside her house. But then she realized there was no piano. The phantom piano played longer and longer melodies, like passages from Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto number 2 in C minor, her doctors recount in a recent study in the journal Cortex. By the time the woman – to whom the doctors refer only by her first name, Sylvia – came to the clinic, the music had become her nearly constant companion. People with such musical hallucinations usually are psychologically normal – except for the songs they are sure someone is playing. Scientists were able to compare Sylvia’s brain activity when she was experiencing hallucinations that were both quiet and loud – something that had never been done before. By comparing the two states, they found important clues to how the b...

Septagram illustrating disciplines which comprise cognitive science (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) BY PHYLLIS KORKKI Since ancient times, the elusive concept of wisdom has figured prominently in philosophical and religious texts. The question remains compelling: What is wisdom, and how does it play out in individual lives? Vivian Clayton, a geriatric neuro psychologist in Orinda, California , developed a definition of wisdom in the 1970s that has served as a foundation for research on the subject ever since. After scouring ancient texts, she found that most people described as wise were decision makers. So she asked a group of law students, law professors and retired judges to name the characteristics of a wise person. She determined that wisdom consists of three key components: cognition, reflection and compassion. Research shows that cognitive functioning slows as people age. But a recent study in Topics in Cognitive Science pointed out that older people have much more info...

"Under the horse chestnut tree", 1 print : drypoint and aquatint, color ; (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) There's a time to teach, to show, to model... and then a time to let go... ----- TOM BRADY The parent -child bond is fraught with emotional and physical trials every step of the way. But what happens to the parent nearing those final days of nurturing? Madeline Levine spent her career as a psychologist and a writer – and mother – with the belief that her job was to prepare her three sons to live independently and enthusiastically move into adulthood. But now that the youngest of her three sons is out of college, and the older two are doing just what she wanted for them all along, her reaction surprised her. “How odd that I should be blindsided by a sense of loss as my sons move fully into lives of their own,” she wrote in The Times . “Some part of me must have known that each move toward independence – from zipping a jacket to hanging out at the mall...

Facebook logo Español: Logotipo de Facebook Français : Logo de Facebook Tiếng Việt: Logo Facebook (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) BY KATE MURPHY Imagine a world suddenly devoid of doors. The controlling authorities say if you aren’t doing anything wrong, then you shouldn’t mind. That’s essentially the state of affairs on the Internet. There is no privacy. Increasingly, people are coming to understand how their online data might be used against them. You might not get a job, a loan or a date because of an indiscreet tweet. But less obvious is the psychic toll. “With all the focus on the legal aspects of privacy and the impact on global trade there’s been little discussion of why you want privacy and why it’s intrinsically important to you as an individual,” said Adam Joinson of the University of the West of England in Bristol. Perhaps that’s because there is no agreement over what constitutes private information. It varies among cultures, genders and individuals. Moreover, i...

Cover via Amazon JANE E. BRODY I now know why I gained more than 13 kilograms in my early 20s: I was lonely. I had left for school and a job in the Upper Midwest and I knew no one. I filled my lonely nights and days with food, especially candy, cookies and ice cream. I could not rein in my eating until I returned to New York and my family, and began dating my future husband. Loneliness , says John T. Cacioppo, an award-winning psychologist at the University of Chicago , undermines people’s ability to self-regulate. In one experiment he cites, participants made to feel socially disconnected ate many more cookies than those made to feel socially accepted. In a real-life study of a middle-aged and older adults in the Chicago area , Dr. Cacioppo and colleagues found that those who scored high on the University of California, Los Angeles , Loneliness Scale, a widely used assessment, ate more fatty foods than those who scored low. “Is it any wonder that we turn to ice cream o...

Cover of Parenting (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Calliope Hummingbird / Stellula calliope - female feeding two chicks (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) While I am not agreeing to everything written in this article, there is much to learn from the facts of life, as presented here. I still teach my kids that it's not what they do, or what they achieve that makes them. They are who they are, no matter what.  Many kids raised in nice environments end up as rascals, criminals, and some kids raised in not nice environments end up being better, more educated. We do our job as parents, and that is where the thin line has to be drawn and adhered to. This article is more for parents, by the way. ----- BY PAMELA DRUCKERMAN I RECENTLY spent the afternoon with some Norwegians who are making a documentary about French child-rearing . Why would people in one of the world’s most successful countries care how anyone else raises kids? In Norway, “we have brats, child kings, and many of us ...