People speak of "butterflies in the stomach," a "racing heart," being "choked up" or needing to "catch breath." Language ...

As a parent, a spouse, and someone who works full time at my job and pretty much full time at keeping a household running, I often feel like I have 20 tabs open in my brain at once. There are always ...

Scientists have shown that brain connectivity patterns can predict mental functions across the entire brain. Each region has a unique “connectivity fingerprint” tied to its role in cognition, from ...

Your brain is currently expending about a fifth of your body's energy, and almost none of that is being used for what you're doing right now. Reading these words, feeling the weight of your body in a ...

Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. You probably think you’re listening to my voice right now. But what if I told you that you’re actually experiencing a ...

The brain works like a muscle. Thinking, learning, and practicing a skill literally causes structural adaptations in our brains. For instance, scientists examining musicians’ and non-musicians’ brains ...

If you have ever lifted a weight, you know the routine: challenge the muscle, give it rest, feed it and repeat. Over time, it grows stronger. Of course, muscles only grow when the challenge increases ...

Most of us have experienced this: You stayed up a bit too late the night before, and although your body turned up to work, your mind was elsewhere. Blanking out during the day is common for the ...

For decades, stimulant medications have been described as helping people with ADHD "focus better." That explanation has always felt a bit incomplete for many adults who take medication and notice they ...