The New York Times, August 20, 2014

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Discover, August 19, 2014

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Fear: see also dread, panic, terror, fright, trepidation, anxiety, worry, phobia, disquietude, angst, foreboding, the creeps, the jitters, the heebie-jeebies, freaking out.

Any halfway decent thesaurus will provide a long list of synonyms for fear, and yet they are not very good substitutes. No one would confuse having the creeps with being terrified. It is strange that we have so many words for fear, when fear is such a unitary, primal feeling. Perhaps all those synonyms are just linguistic inventions. Perhaps, if we looked inside our brains, we would just find plain old fear.

Continue reading “The Origins of Panic” →

Discover, August 19, 2014

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The qualities that set a great athlete apart from the rest of us lie not just in the muscles and the lungs but also between the ears. That’s because athletes need to make complicated decisions in a flash. One of the most spectacular examples of the athletic brain operating at top speed came in 2001, when the Yankees were in an American League playoff game with the Oakland Athletics. Shortstop Derek Jeter managed to grab an errant throw coming in from right field and then gently tossed the ball to catcher Jorge Posada, who tagged the base runner at home plate. Jeter’s quick decision saved the game—and the series—for the Yankees.

Continue reading “The Genius of the Jock” →

Discover, August 19, 2014

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The long battle between humans and infectious microbes has left its marks all over us. It shows up most obviously in the way our bodies are constructed. The thousands of species of bacteria that swarm over us cannot penetrate our multilayered skin. Entry points, such as the eyes and the nose, are bathed in moisture to help flush out pathogens. The lining of our lungs releases bacteria-killing compounds. Viruses that manage to infect cells are greeted by proteins that attempt to shred them into genetic confetti. Any pathogen that sneaks past all these defenses then faces an army of immune cells, which can devour and destroy the invaders. Immune cells can also manufacture antibodies, which allow them to launch swift attacks if they encounter the same infection elsewhere in the body.

Continue reading “Germs on the Brain” →

Discover, August 19, 2014

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Numbers make modern life possible. “In a world without numbers,” University of Rochester neuroscientist Jessica Cantlon and her colleagues observed in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, “we would be unable to build a skyscraper, hold a national election, plan a wedding, or pay for a chicken at the market.”

The central role of numbers in our world testifies to the brain’s uncanny ability to recognize and understand them—and Cantlon is among the researchers trying to find out exactly how that skill works.

Continue reading “A Calculating Mind” →