Brain Series Current: Speed Reading vs Deep Reading Second Language Learning All Posts Cold Showers and Cognition Speed reading promises to help you read 1,000+ words per minute-triple or quadruple your normal pace. Imagine reading entire books in an hour! ...
Brain Series Current: Learn Like a Child The Forgetting Curve All Posts Second Language Learning A 5-year-old can learn a new language in months, picking up perfect pronunciation without formal instruction. Meanwhile, an adult spends years studying and still speaks with an accent. ...
Brain Series Current: Second Language Learning Learn Like a Child All Posts Speed Reading vs Deep Reading Learning a second language isn’t just about communication-it’s a full-brain workout that strengthens cognitive abilities across the board. ...
Brain Series Current: Chunking: How to Remember Phone Numbers Previous All Posts The Forgetting Curve Try to memorize this number: 2025551234567. Hard, right? ...
Brain Series Current: The Forgetting Curve: Why You Forget Chunking All Posts Learn Like a Child You spend hours studying for an exam. You know the material cold. Then a week later? You’ve forgotten half of it. ...
You’re watching a movie. A character reaches for a doorknob. Just as their fingers touch the metal, you wince-because you know what they don’t: someone is waiting on the other side with a knife. Or you’re reading a novel. The protagonist is about to make a terrible decision based on incomplete information. Your chest tightens. You want to shout at them, warn them, stop them-even though they’re ink on paper. ...
On September 1, 1953, a 27-year-old man named Henry Molaison underwent experimental brain surgery to treat his severe epilepsy. The surgery worked. The seizures stopped. But when Henry woke up, he had lost the ability to form new memories. For the next 55 years, until his death in 2008, Henry lived in a perpetual present. Every person he met was a stranger minutes later. Every conversation was new. Every day was the first day of the rest of his life-literally. ...
Have you ever missed your bus stop because you were engrossed in a podcast? Stayed up way too late because you needed to know how the book ends? Felt your heart race during a movie scene even though you knew it wasn’t real? That’s not a character flaw. That’s neuroscience. Stories don’t just entertain us-they hijack our brain chemistry. And understanding how this works can transform you from someone who tells stories to someone who creates irresistible narratives. ...
On November 4, 1970, a social worker in Arcadia, California encountered a girl who appeared to be six or seven years old. She wasn’t six. She was thirteen. She weighed 59 pounds. She couldn’t stand up straight. She couldn’t chew solid food. She couldn’t speak-not a word, not a sound beyond occasional whimpers. She’d been locked in a small room for nearly her entire life. Tied to a potty chair during the day, confined to a sleeping bag in a crib at night. No toys. No conversation. No human interaction beyond someone occasionally bringing food. ...
Dr. P. was a distinguished music teacher and singer who could tell you the exact interval between any two notes you played. He could identify a Brahms sonata from the first three measures. He could conduct a choir through complex harmonies without missing a beat. But he couldn’t recognize his wife’s face. Worse than that-when Dr. P. went to leave the neurologist’s office after his examination, he reached for his wife’s head and tried to lift it off her shoulders. ...