Body & Brain
Does Sound Affect the Way We Taste?
The next time you eat out in a restaurant, consider the sounds around you. Is there music playing? Just the gentle hum of other people’s conversations? Maybe it’s loud and booming, maybe it’s relatively quiet. Whatever the acoustic atmosphere, it could be affecting how you experience the flavor of the food and drink you’re consuming, […]
What Role Does the Sun Play in Vitamin D Synthesis?
This article is part of the SciFri Science Club's Explain the Sun activity. Participate using the hashtag #ExplainTheSun. Vitamin D is essential to healthy bones, because it helps you absorb calcium, which strengthens your skeleton. Without the vitamin, you could develop brittle bones, increasing the chance of getting osteoporosis when you’re older. Children with insufficient vitamin D […]
From Fever Cure to Coma Therapy: Psychiatric Treatments Through Time
The following is excerpted from Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry, by Jeffrey A. Lieberman. Listen to SciFri on Friday, May 1, to hear Lieberman talk about the history of psychiatry. In the early decades of the twentieth century, asylums were filled with inmates suffering from a peculiar form of psychosis known as “general paresis of […]
Beauty and the Brain: Understanding Our Responses to Art
Perhaps you’ve walked beside one of the giant, gently curving steel plates that make up a Richard Serra sculpture. Or maybe you’ve spent time gazing at one of Mark di Suvero’s angular, pick-up-stick arrangements of steel beams. Which of these artworks do you immediately prefer? Ed Connor, a professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University, […]
There Is Such a Thing As Too Much Medical Care
The following is an excerpt from Less Medicine, More Health by H. Gilbert Welch. Listen to SciFri on Friday, March 6, to hear Welch talk about the misconceptions of medical care. We Americans consume a lot of medical care. By some metrics, we are the most medicalized society in the world. To be sure, there […]