In the Human Brain, Size Really Isn’t Everything

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The New York Times, December 26, 2013

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There are many things that make humans a unique species, but a couple stand out. One is our mind, the other our brain.

The human mind can carry out cognitive tasks that other animals cannot, like using language, envisioning the distant future and inferring what other people are thinking.

The human brain is exceptional, too. At three pounds, it is gigantic relative to our body size. Our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, have brains that are only a third as big.

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“The Dark Matter of Psychiatric Genetics”

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The title of my blog post is provocative, I know, but I’m actually just lifting it from the title of a new commentary in the journal Molecular Psychiatry by Thomas Insel, the director of the National Institutes of Mental Health. In his piece, Insel expresses his excitement about a new way of thinking about how genes can contribute to our risk of psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia. It’s based on an emerging understanding of the human genome that I explored in a recent story for the New York Times: each of us does not carry around a single personal genome, but many personal genomes.

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An Up-to-Date Neanderthal Genome Fits Into the Web of Humanity

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There’s more news on the ancient human DNA front: as I report in my new “Matter” column in the New York Timesmy new “Matter” column in the New York Times, scientists have now reconstructed the genome of a Neanderthal with exquisite accuracy. Their genome sequence is as good as what you’d get if you had your own genome sequenced with the finest equipment available today. And yet the DNA comes from a fossil that’s approximately 130,000 years old.

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Can Boosting Immunity Make You Smarter?

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Discover, December 19, 2013

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After spending a few days in bed with the flu, you may have felt a bit stupid. It is a common sensation, that your sickness is slowing down your brain. At first blush, though, it doesn’t make much sense. For one thing, flu viruses infect the lining of the airways, not the neurons in our brains. For another, the brain is walled off from the rest of the body by a series of microscopic defenses collectively known as the blood-brain barrier. It blocks most viruses and bacteria while allowing essential molecules like glucose to slip through. What ails the body, in other words, shouldn’t interfere with our thinking.

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A Phenomena(l) Year!

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A year ago today, Phenomena was launched, and I just wanted to take a moment to thank all of you for reading the work of Virginia Hughes, Brian Switek, Ed Yong, and myself over these past 365 days. The Loom has seen a lot of homes in its ten years, but Phenomena has been the best, I must say, from its delightful design to the support of people at National Geographic such as Jamie Shreeve and Brian Howard.

In case you’re curious, here are the ten most-read posts I wrote here over the past year:

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