The Mind

Finland’s bold push to change the heart health of a nation

Beginning in its bleak borderlands, the country launched an official — and broadly influential — effort to improve food and lifestyle choices, using everything from cozy fireside chats and reality TV shows to laws and incentives.

By Emily Willingham

Microscopic image shows a false-colored section of the mouse hippocampus, highlighting the buildup of cellular waste that characterizes juvenile Batten disease, a rare genetic disorder.

Living World

When the brain’s waste disposal system fails

Marco Sardiello explains how problems with the cell’s lysosomes lead to disease

Photograph of human and robotic arms shaking hands. Scientists are devising ways for people with paralysis to control computers, robotic prosthetics and even their own limbs with their thoughts.

Technology

Bypassing paralysis

By decoding brain activity with electrical implants, computers can help disabled people move a robotic arm — or their own

Conceptual illustration of a brain reacting to many languages being spoken. Speaking more than one language may boost brain function as well as gray and white matter, and possibly preserve the aging brain

The Mind

How a second language can boost the brain

Being bilingual benefits children as they learn to speak — and adults as they age

Society

Nudging grows up (and now has a government job)

Ten years after an influential book proposed ways to work with — not against — the irrationalities of human decision-making, practitioners have refined and broadened this gentle tool of persuasion

By Bob Holmes

Computer-generated image that maps the many and diverse neural connections between the cortex and thalamus in a mouse.

The Mind

A long-overlooked brain region may be key to complex thought

The thalamus has traditionally been viewed just as the brain’s sensory relay station. But it may also play an important role in higher-level cognition, MIT’s Michael Halassa explains in a Q&A.

Photo shows a colony of ants on a white background. The workers are each painted individually with different colors of paint droplets. Larvae and a larger queen are also visible.

Living World

The mind of an anthill

Can we use the tools of psychology to understand how colonies of social insects make decisions?

A cartoon representing a stressed person shows a finger about to hit the panic button.

Health & Disease

Top 10 secrets about stress and health

The strain of life — from everyday conflicts to major losses — can stretch our well-being to the breaking point. Here’s what scientists know, and still don’t know, about the stress-illness connection.

The Mind

Rebranding placebos

Harnessing the power of sham therapies for real healing might require a new lexicon

Photograph of derelict houses in Philadelphia

Society

Fighting urban violence, one empty lot at a time

Could cleaning up neighborhoods make cities safer? Researchers are looking at novel, inexpensive solutions to crime that everyone can agree on.

A woman holds a conductor's baton in front of red neon sculptures of various musical instruments. Human response to music has deep evolutionary roots and seems hard-wired in the brain, says cognitive psychologist Daniel Levitin in this Q&A.

The Mind

The music moves us — but how?

The author of This Is Your Brain on Music talks about the very human ways the mind and body keep the beat.

Group of people standing with hands over hearts and holding American flags

Society

Immigration isn’t linked to higher crime rates — but not everyone can believe it

Criminologist Charis Kubrin has spent more than a decade researching the effects of immigration on law and order. She’s finding that it takes more than data to make her case.

Conceptual illustration of scientists presenting data to a corporate leader who is ignoring them

Society

Is it time to bring data to managing?

Trendy office layouts. Performance reviews that crush morale. There’s plenty of evidence on how to get the best out of workers, but businesses often ignore it.

Illustration shows workers fleeing from a bad boss

Society

Bad bosses: Dealing with abusive supervisors

From the boardroom to the basketball court, some managers rely on berating and bullying employees. Researchers have learned one thing: It doesn’t work.

Photo shows multiple, booth-sized metal cages in a room together, each with a prisoner inside. They are able to talk and see each other but cannot move freely.

Society

The hidden damage of solitary confinement

Meant to punish or protect, social isolation in prison creates a ripple of unintended effects on the psyche

Service with a smile comes at psychological cost, studies find.

The Mind

Barista’s burden

The dark side of “service with a smile”

A billboard depicts an older male tobacco executive lounging in a bikini while smoking a cigarette.

Society

The anti-ads

Countermarketing succeeds by exposing the motives behind the advertising of unhealthy products. It worked for teen smoking — could it do the same for junk food?

The Mind

Feeling the pressure

How we want to be perceived influences how we act, and that presents persuasion opportunities. But the social factors involved are not easy to unravel.

Illustration of a doughnut on a mousetrap

Society

In promoting health, when to tiptoe — and when to stomp?

Inform, incentivize, legislate: There’s a ladder of escalating approaches for changing citizens’ behavior — and nudges for every rung

Society

Unpersuasive: Why arguing about climate change often doesn't work

COMIC: In the US, where political parties have increasingly staked claims on one side of the issue or the other, beliefs may be more about belonging than facts

A group of Buddhist novices practicing meditation.

The Mind

Peering into the meditating mind

Some people swear by it, but studies of mindfulness have a long way to go