Psychology and neuroscience
Mind & Matter covers psychology and neuroscience: what the evidence says about how brains work and why people do what they do, with limited patience for overclaimed studies.
The viral eight-second human and nine-second goldfish comparison came from an unsourced graphic, not from Microsoft's survey or EEG experiments.
Sep 21, 2026
For decades, the standard object-choice test has been a bad day for chimpanzees.
Sep 11, 2026
There is a real body of research behind the idea that a partner's presence dampens a stress response.
Sep 11, 2026
The idea that a calm relationship must be missing something has a long life in popular culture, and the research on adult attachment does not support it.
Sep 10, 2026
Reframing a bad situation in a more positive light is among the most widely repeated pieces of psychological advice in circulation.
Sep 10, 2026
In 2016, Steven Maier and Martin Seligman published a paper in Psychological Review correcting the theory that had made both of them famous.
Sep 10, 2026
People rate the same act of vulnerability more favorably when someone else does it than when they imagine doing it themselves.
Sep 10, 2026
A 2013 CT experiment showed that expert readers could look directly at an unexpected gorilla without reporting it. The finding concerns attention, not a clinical cancer-miss rate.
Sep 9, 2026
Research cannot predict what a child will remember about a grandparent. Emotional memories can be vivid but reconstructed, odours may cue childhood scenes, and adult grandchild closeness is associated with wellbeing.
Sep 9, 2026
Night owls sometimes score higher on selected tests while morning types do better in classrooms and wellbeing surveys. The difference often lies in timing, sleep and what each measure rewards.
Sep 5, 2026
Creative experts had younger-looking functional-connectivity patterns, and a small controlled gaming experiment moved the same modelled measure. Neither result shows that biological ageing was reversed.
Sep 5, 2026
Natural-water swims were recalled more positively than open-air pool visits, with autonomy and competence accounting for the difference. The cross-sectional survey cannot show that the setting caused the lift.
Sep 5, 2026
A small outdoor experiment found lower average blood-pressure measurements while people viewed pool water. Its design removes ocean spray, but not every contextual difference between the three scenes.
Sep 5, 2026
Twin studies and common-variant studies are not measuring precisely the same quantity. The gap between their estimates reveals what genetics can see, what it misses and why personality is so difficult to measure.
Sep 4, 2026
