By itself, the migratory locust is about as harmless as a grasshopper. But under the right conditions, it can assemble with billions of its comrades into apocalyptic swarms that destroy thousands of hectares of crops in Africa, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. Now, scientists have discovered that a gut parasite may be key to keeping […]
Continue reading →Earlier this week, I wrote a post criticizing Naomi Wolf’s use of science in her book “Vagina: A New Biography.” (See Naomi Wolf’s “Vagina” and the Perils of Neuro Self-Help, or How Dupe-amine Drove Me Into a Dark Dungeon.) My complaint was that Wolf treated an incredibly complex and ambiguous body of science — the neurobiology of […]
Continue reading →Earlier this week, WBUR’s Here and Now ran a taped interview with me about “Beautiful Brains,” my recent National Geographic article on teen brain and behavior. (You can listen to the interview here.) It’s only six minutes long, but nicely edited to highlight, from a high-altitude evolutionary point of view, what distinguishes adolescence, when we peak […]
Continue reading →It’s ridiculous how many things Robert Sapolsky talks about beautifully. Here he’s on a roll about how dopamine drives behavior: It’s not about reward, but its anticipation. And we humans have done well — we’ve developed these splendid executive skills and planning and so on — because these big ol’ brains can maintain that anticipation […]
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