Scientists at Leeds University, England believe that they have found the answer to how a lot of our unconscious actions are generated — by simply following our herd of brethren!

A new study demonstrates that it only takes about 5% of people to have a decisive influence on the direction that a crowd of people would take, and the rest simply follow. Read more →

New research findings from the Stanford University proves that men find playing video games more rewarding. This wouldn’t appear surprising to the millions of console and PC gaming widows worldwide, but this gives us an opportunity to have a look at the good old chicken-and-egg conundrum in the context of arriving at sweeping generalizations on gender difference issues on the basis of imaging alone. Read more →

I never quite got around to write the sequel to Barbara and Allan Pease’s evocative work (1), although I had figured out a nice name for it, “Why men don’t use makeup, and women can’t Sumo wrestle.” Not to make fun of the genetic determinists who study gender differences, but to drive home the whole nature-nurture point on this issue: men and women have evolved to be different. But not in its restricted Darwinian sense, but in the current expanded evolutionary contexts as well — social, psychological and politico-economic. Read more →

A new study from the Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine has provided important clues to how chronic pain might throw our lives out of gear by affecting many areas of the cerebral cortex. Worse, if left unchecked, it could lead to irreversible damage to the interconnection between the neurons, leading to permanent changes in the way our brain functions. Read more →

About 4% of the world’s population possess the recessive gene for red hair, and actually 2% are redheads, as a result of a mutation that arose in Northern Europe several thousand years ago. Scientists have been divided in their opinion about whether the red headed population is headed for extinction in an age of global mingling. Read more →

Good news from the world of medicine for those caught snoozing after lunch at their desks — you can claim it was a deliberate memory enhancement strategy. New research from the University of Haifa’s Center for Brain and Behavior Research shows that a 90-minute day nap speeds up the process of long-term memory consolidation as well as improve learned performance. Read more →