Got a bad memory? It’s actually much worse than you think, for the simple reason that you don’t know how much you have forgotten. I was at a school reunion not so long ago, and was shocked at my failure to remember many of the stories my old classmates told, even though I seemed to feature […]...
Most linguists and cognitive scientists agree that we humans are uniquely blessed with the gift of language. Compared to human speech, animal calls are stereotyped and fixed, and tied to specific situations such as mating, territorial claims, expressing aggression, or raising alarm. The nearest equivalent to speech seems to come, not from our nearest relatives […]...
Our ability to recall past events in our lives is part of what has come to be called mental time travel. Our memories, however imperfect, probably evolved not to provide a faithful record of the past, but rather to supply information for building future scenarios. This allows us to plan events in detail, or to […]...
Giacomo Rizzolatti is a neuroscientist. With his unruly hair and moustache, he looks like a reincarnation of Albert Einstein. He is excitable, enthusiastic and friendly, and he runs a busy laboratory in Parma, Italy. Giacomo records the activity of single neurons in the brains of monkeys. In the frontal cortex are neurons, which are active whenever […]...
Cack-handed, cow-pawed, dolly-pawed, ker-handed, left-plug, southpaw, squiffy, these are just some of the names that have been applied to left-handers. They have an air of insult, implying that lefties are somehow inferior, or at least odd. On the other hand, as it were, we right-handers are, well, just right. Our language betrays the distinction in […]...
