The Neuroscience of Stress: Built for the Wrong Century
Stress is a precisely engineered response built to spike and recover. Here's the two-stage cascade — and why chronic, never-ending stress corrodes the very systems it was meant to protect.
#the brain
11 articles
How Habits Form in the Brain (and Why They're So Hard to Break)
A habit is a behavior compressed until it runs without you. The cue-routine-reward loop, why control shifts to autopilot, and why old habits are never really erased.
The Neuroscience of Attention: How Your Brain Picks What to Notice
Your senses deliver far more than you can process. Attention is the ruthless triage system that decides what gets through — which is why you miss the obvious and can't resist a notification.
The Default Mode Network: Your Brain's Idle-Mode Storyteller
Do nothing and your mind wanders — to your past, your future, your self. That's a specific network switching on, and it runs a surprising amount of what you think of as 'you.'
Why Your Brain Replays the Day While You Sleep
"Sleep on it" is real. While you sleep, your brain fast-forwards through the day's experiences to rewrite them into permanent memory — a nightly handoff you can't do awake.
Why Emotional Memories Stick (and Why Vivid Doesn't Mean Accurate)
You forget last Tuesday's lunch but remember exactly where you were during shocking news. The chemistry that stamps emotional events into memory — and why it never promised accuracy.
The Brain's Rhythms: How Neural Oscillations Organize Thought
Your mind runs on a beat. Alpha, theta, gamma — and why the way fast rhythms nest inside slow ones may explain why you can only hold about seven things in mind at once.
Meet Your Neurotransmitters: The Chemicals That Run Your Mind
Dopamine isn't the pleasure chemical and serotonin isn't the happiness chemical. What these systems actually do — and why the pop-science version points you at the wrong model of your own mind.
Why Lying Gets Easier: The Neuroscience of the Slippery Slope
The first lie comes with a jolt of guilt; the tenth barely registers. The brain physically adapts to dishonesty — and the adaptation has been watched happening in a scanner.
How Alcohol, Weed, and Adderall Change How You Lie
Lying is expensive cognitive work. Some substances sabotage the liar; one quietly upgrades them. The neuropharmacology of honesty.
Your Brain Doesn't Have a Truth Detector
It has something far more exploitable: a system that believes everything by default, and a few weak alarms that occasionally suggest you look closer. Why lies work, explained.