Imagine accurately making an object move left, turn right, stop, and back up, all without touching it or moving any part of your body. This astonishing feat is made possible by the technology of brain-controlled interfaces, also known as BCIs, which can send commands from your mind to a device and instruct it to perform various actions. If you can…
What’s wrong with teenagers? Why do many of them take dangerous risks? Why do they care more about their friends than their families? And why do they lead lives of such high drama and intense self-expression? According to renowned psychologist and bestselling author Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., there’s nothing wrong with teenagers. In his new book, Brainstorm: The Power and…
Our understanding of how heart function affects mental and emotional well-being has been advanced by leaps and bounds thanks to the Institute of HeartMath (IHM). Studies conducted by this pathbreaking research organization show that signals sent from the heart to the brain via the nervous system dramatically affect how we think and feel. As the IHM notes, “These heart signals…
In his new book One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life (Crown Publishing Group), Mitch Horowitz tells the fascinating story of the “loosely knit band of psychical researchers and religious philosophers, mental-healers and hypnotists, Mesmerists and Spiritualists, Unitarians and Transcendentalists, suffragists and free-love advocates, black liberationists and Christian socialists, animal-rights activists and Biblical communists, occultists and Freemasons, artists and…
Recently I interviewed neuropsychologist Rick Hanson about his specialty: hardwiring happiness. Using neurological techniques, Hanson says, you can change the structure of your brain by building neuropathways for feeling good. “When it comes to negative experiences, your brain is like Velcro,” he said. “With positive experiences, the brain is like Teflon.” He went on to explain that for survival purposes,…
As long as 42,000 years ago, homo sapiens were making music—and not just chanting and beating on their chests. Millennia before Man-the-toolmaker figured out the principles of the wheel or the lever, he was carving finger holes in bird bones and hollowed-out pieces of mammoth ivory and blowing through them. Archaeologists have recovered some of these amazing artifacts in southern…
Recently I took my mother to see tap star Savion Glover at our local performing arts center. The hall was packed, mostly with children whose parents had brought them to see the legendary dancer. Predominant in the crowd were students from inner-city performing arts schools. During intermission my mother and I went to the concession stand, where candy was on…
