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Choosing a user name starting with a letter appearing earlier in the alphabet is just one scientifically vetted way to increase the odds of turning an online encounter into a first date. Christopher Intagliata reports 

High-calorie and exceedingly pleasurable foods appear to change rat brain rewards circuitry, causing the rodents to continue to seek such fare. Erika Beras reports 

Parkinson’s patients derived more benefits from a salt solution they were told was an expensive drug than from the same solution when it was described as being cheap medication. Karen Hopkin reports 

Powerful new experiments have uncovered some of the molecular underpinnings of sleep. The post Researchers Tap a Sleep Switch in the Brain first appeared on Quanta Magazine 

This episode will render you oblivious, conked out and blissfully unaware. It’s about anaesthetics: those potent potions that send you into a deep, deathly sleep. Listener Alicia wants to know how they work, so our sleuths call on the expertise of consultant anaesthetist Dr Fiona ... Show More

This episode will render you oblivious, conked out and blissfully unaware. It’s about anaesthetics: those potent potions that send you into a deep, deathly sleep. Listener Alicia wants to know how they work, so our sleuths call on the expertise of consultant anaesthetist Dr Fiona ... Show More

Sergiu Pasca, Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University has left the petri dish in the drawer and grown human neurons inside the brains of juvenile rats. Successful connectivity and brain function may allow for more rigorous testing and understanding of neurological conditio ... Show More

Neuroscientist Kay M. Tye investigates how your brain gives rise to complex emotional states like depression, anxiety or loneliness. From the cutting edge of science, she shares her latest findings -- including the development of a tool that uses light to activate specific neuron ... Show More

Rats kept awake after exploring novel objects remembered the original items but not where they’d seen those objects, raising interesting questions about human sleep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices 

Philosophers have long pondered the concept of a brain in a jar, hooked up to a simulated world. Though this has largely remained a thought experiment, CrowdScience listener JP wants to know if it might become reality in the not-too-distant future, with advances in stem cell rese ... Show More

The recent revolution in technology allows us to peer into the mind as never before—says Dr. Hannah Critchlow. She’s explored what neuroscience can tell us about consciousness, free will, and fate. she’s also investigated the neuroscience leadership to build a more ethical, altru ... Show More

It's pretty obvious to each of us that we are conscious, as we go about our days and feel the experience of just ‘being ourselves'. But how do we know that someone else is conscious? It’s something we lose during dreamless sleep, under anaesthesia or in a coma. But what exactly i ... Show More

What links conscious experience of pain, joy, color, and smell to bioelectrical activity in the brain? How can anything physical give rise to nonphysical, subjective, conscious states? Christof Koch has devoted much of his career to bridging the seemingly unbridgeable gap between ... Show More