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How the Brain Regulates Physical Limits
For decades, exercise science treated fatigue like a simple mechanical failure, similar to a car running out of gas. However, fatigue isn’t a barrier. Rather, it’s an emotional boundary set by your brain to protect your body’s vital organs.
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The Anatomy of Longing for the Past
Maybe it’s the opening chord of a song you haven’t listened to since graduation or the smell of a meal your mom used to cook. These aren’t just vague recollections, they’re flashbulb moments that trigger an immediate psychological shift. Why do we recollect these memories from our youth with such vividness? And how do these…
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A Life Worth Living: Animal Therapy as a Biological Antidote to the Plagues of Nursing Home Living
According to the Eden Alternative model, the primary suffering in nursing homes isn’t physical disease, but a state of biological and social deprivation. This article discusses how animal therapy may help combat boredom, loneliness, and helplessness in these facilities.
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The Architecture of Survival: How Childhood Trauma Shapes Adult Social Memory
When a child is raised in a high-stress environment, a biological process called “adaptive calibration” may occur, which causes the child’s social memory to prioritize survival-related information. This specialization acts as a trade off whereby the brain sacrifices the ability to perceive subtle social cues, like boredom or humor, in exchange for the rapid detection…
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Artificial Affection: Exploring Human-AI Relationships
As AI adoption becomes increasingly widespread, researchers have been exploring how people develop human-like attachments to AI, which has both beneficial and risky implications.
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The Places That Shape Us: Small Towns vs. Big Cities
Some of us spent our childhood building forts in the woods with our siblings and knowing the full history of everyone in our town. Others spent their early days with endless activities to choose from and the constant sound of police cars and ambulances whizzing by. These very different environments shape the world we know,…
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Analogy-Based Learning in the Classroom: Implementing Strategies to Promote Conceptual Understanding and Performance
In this article, I discuss four principles of analogy-based learning and teaching in the classroom that are crucial for students’ success in analogical reasoning.
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It’s Okay to Fail: How Productive Failure Facilitates STEM Learning and Transfer in Comparison to Direct Instruction
What role does failure play in learning? While students tend to be aversive to failure, it plays a natural and important role in the learning process.
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Curious about Curiosity? The Mnemonic Benefits of Curiosity and Its Educational Implications
Did curiosity really kill the cat? The idiom “curiosity killed the cat” warns against the danger and misfortune that one’s curiosity can bring, but it turns out that curiosity is more beneficial than you might think.