Neurons in the hippocampus categorize what we experience into abstract, discrete events, such as taking a walk versus having lunch

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Researchers studying yellow warbler responses to the parasitic cowbird realized that red-winged blackbirds were eavesdropping on the calls and reacting to them, too.

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Alzheimer’s took my wife’s memory and her life and tortured our family. There was nothing we—or medicine—could do to stop it 

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Painted images of intriguing human-animal hybrids are signs of modern thought

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As psychologist Abraham Maslow wrote, “Perhaps human nature has been sold short”

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Resilience and strength can often be attained through unexpected routes

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One conversation could keep your kids safe

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Amyloid, the leading target for dementia therapy, faces skepticism after drug failures

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Exercise like walking, swimming, and even dancing have been shown to be good for your memory, but the optimal intensity of that exercise has been unclear... until now

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Rigorous new studies should be able to settle the matter

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They don’t stand on one leg around just anybody but often prefer certain members of the flock.

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What did you get your mother for Mother's Day? Was it beautifully thoughtful, or a rush job you fixed with a few clicks of the mouse and a credit card?

When Warren Buffett announced last week that he will be giving away more than $30 billion to improve health, nutrition and education, people all over America reflected on his remarkable generosity, pondered all the noble things the gift would achieve and asked themselves what they would do if...

Jan Molinell lost $300,000 when Enron collapsed. A former Enron Corp. employee in Florida, Molinell closely followed the trials of Kenneth L. Lay and other Enron executives -- half-fearing that Lay's political ties to the White House would allow him to escape scot-free, and half-wondering whether an...

President Bush came to Washington promising to be a uniter, but public opinion polls show that apart from a burst of camaraderie after Sept. 11, 2001, America is more bitterly divided and partisan than ever.

So the bad news is that it is hot and sticky and muggy. Your skin makes tearing sounds when you get up from a plastic chair. On the Metro, you start to tell people apart by how they smell.

Both athletes were stars. Both faltered, then staged dramatic comebacks -- displaying the tenacity that separates heroes from also-rans. Both now face drug charges that could end their careers.

Is Pluto a planet? The world's astronomers met in Prague last week to vote on this question, and in a sort of cosmic game of "Survivor," they voted Pluto off the solar system.

Here's a question with three different answers. The first answer is derived from arithmetic. The second comes from common sense. The third is based on psychology.

When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. called on America to open the doors of opportunity to people of color, the civil rights leader was making a moral argument.

When George W. Bush takes the podium tomorrow night to deliver his sixth State of the Union address, what are the chances he will say this? "The war in Iraq has been one gigantic mistake. I am sorry I got us into this mess. I am going to bring the troops home right away."

In Shakespeare's "King Lear," a powerful man comes to a tragic end because he surrounds himself with flatterers and banishes the friends who will not varnish the truth to please him.

The NCAA men's college basketball championship game was on the line. People in office pools around the country were holding their breath. Louisville was down by four points with a few minutes left on the clock. A UCLA player stole a pass and raced down the court where, after being bumped by a...

If Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama ever took a break from fundraising to bone up on psychology, they might realize the need to talk up . . . John Edwards.

A few days ago, Hamas fighters stormed Fatah strongholds in Gaza that were allied with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and effectively took control of one of the two pillars of the evolving Palestinian state. Fatah groups struck back in the West Bank, the other Palestinian pillar, and...

There are two ways to think about the staggering amounts of money given by special interest groups to politicians -- the type of contributions that were detailed for the last quarter in reports filed yesterday by presidential candidates and members of Congress.

Exhibit A: Sometime over the next few days, a San Francisco athlete will break baseball's most treasured record. Despite his achievement of hitting more home runs than anyone else in Major League Baseball, Barry Bonds will be greeted with rage, ridicule and vast amounts of spit -- because many pe...

In the face of mounting public and political opposition to the war in Iraq, recent reports from the White House suggest that President Bush remains serenely confident.

Why would David Vitter, a U.S. senator with four young children, have gotten involved with a seedy escort service? Why would Michael Vick, a gifted NFL quarterback, get mixed up with the sordid world of dog fighting? Why would Bill Clinton, a Rhodes scholar, six-time governor and president of the...

When Columbia University sociologist Peter Bearman dived into the world of the white-gloved workers who open the front doors of expensive New York apartment buildings, he found that most people who applied for jobs as doormen never got one. Most doormen, however, had not applied for their jobs.

With just over five minutes to play in yesterday's game against the New York Jets, the Washington Redskins found themselves on their own 23-yard line facing a fourth and one. The team, which was ahead by just three points, elected to do what teams normally do in such situations: They played it safe...

What do the war in Iraq, your Christmas shopping and this week's Thanksgiving dinner have in common?

Nearly four decades ago, psychologist Stanley Milgram had a volunteer stand stock still on a busy New York sidewalk and look up at the sky. About one in every 25 passersby stopped to look up, too. When five volunteers were recruited to sky-gaze, nearly one in five passersby stopped to look up.

Two sociologists and a mathematician recently conducted an experiment that provides an intriguing window into the presidential candidate selection that begins this week. Matthew Salganik, Duncan Watts and Peter Sheridan Dodds had a large group of people rate 48 songs. Based on these ratings, the...

Take a step back from the Republican and Democratic presidential primary races and you will see a sharp difference between the two.

John McCain once called televangelists Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell "agents of intolerance," but now the Republican senator from Arizona is currying favor with social conservatives. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) now opposes the Iraq war, although she used to support it. Sen. Barack Obama...

Sen. John McCain's quest for the Republican presidential nomination was once seen as dead, but like those robots in the "Terminator" movies that reassemble themselves after being blown to smithereens, he came back. Five years ago, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) was a virtually unknown African American ...

In Eliot Spitzer's sex scandal and tragicomic downfall, the question that bugged many people did not have to do with ethics or politics, but whether Spitzer got a raw deal.

On Oct. 10, 2002, Hillary Rodham Clinton stood in the Senate to explain why she was authorizing President Bush to use force against Iraq: "In balancing the risks of action versus inaction, I think New Yorkers who have gone through the fires of hell may be more attuned to the risk of not acting. I...

About 25 years ago, Cass Sunstein opened a retirement account that had two portfolios. One was mostly bonds, the other mostly stocks. Like many academics who use the TIAA-CREF investment program, Sunstein divided his money equally between stocks and bonds.

Put yourself in the shoes of Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. You are widely seen by Democratic voters as a transformational presidential candidate. Democrats are nearly evenly divided between you and your competitor, and you think you are the best candidate for your party -- and...

On the eve of crucial presidential primaries in Indiana and North Carolina, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has found himself dogged by questions about his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. As the Democratic front-runner's popularity has suffered after public statements by Wright about ra...

One hundred forty-three years ago, women's suffrage advocate Elizabeth Cady Stanton faced a conundrum: With the Civil War over, Stanton had to decide whether to support the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution, which enabled black men to vote -- at a time when white women such as herself...

The United States is awash in gloom. Overwhelming majorities of Americans say they are dissatisfied with the country's economic direction, and the intensity of unhappiness is greater than it has been in 15 years, according to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll. The answer, pundits, politicians...

Subprime mortgages have been linked to a meltdown in housing and questionable Wall Street practices, and they may have been the original domino that set off America's current economic crisis.

Days before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Osama bin Laden left his compound in Kandahar in Afghanistan and headed into the mountains. His driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, traveled with him. As U.S. and Northern Alliance forces stood poised to capture Kandahar a few months later, bin Laden told Hamdan t...

Nearly a century ago, American middle-distance runner Abel Kiviat entered the Stockholm Olympics as the odds-on favorite to win the 1,500-meter race, an event in which he held the world record. Kiviat had the lead 1,492 meters into the race but was passed in the final eight meters by Britain's...

Consider these scenarios. Scandal A: A prominent politician gets caught sleeping with a campaign aide and plunges himself into an ugly paternity dispute -- all while his cancer-stricken wife is fighting for her life.

In the days after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, with the twin towers vanished from Manhattan's skyline, a poem by W.H. Auden could have been the song of a wounded nation. "September 1, 1939," written on the eve of World War II, seemed eerily prescient:

Every time the White House changes hands between the Democrats and the Republicans, the outgoing party quickly sees the virtues of staffing government departments with competent managers. The incoming party invariably seeks to reward loyal campaign operatives with political appointments.