The Latest from Big Think

Experiments with people wearing blindfolds demonstrated that "what we normally perceive of as sight is really as much a function of our brains as our eyes," says one researcher.

Researchers have designed a type of laser technique that is able to distinguish the bad -- specifically, the proteins responsible for Alzheimer's and similar diseases -- from the good. Simply locating them could make removing them much easier.

The conflict is too complex for a single map.

Thursday night was an especially chilling Halloween for New Yorkers. We remember well the heartbreaking, senseless deaths of Sandy. The killer storm strained resources across the five boroughs, and plunged […]

Chinese researchers working with Microsoft have created a protoype that uses Kinect to enable hearing individuals to communicate with the deaf without needing to learn or understand sign language.

Using brain scans, Finnish researchers discovered that infants who listened to "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" in utero recognized the melody up to four months after birth. It's the first study to measure how long fetal memories last.

Oxford University researchers are currently testing the device, which captures images and puts them on transparent LED displays, on people who retain some ability to perceive light and motion.

Newly published in PLoS Computational Biology is a study describing new technology that safely delivers controlled anesthesia without requiring consistent human monitoring.

It's the first European country to allow parents to specify "X," giving them time to decide whether to have their child undergo sex-reassignment surgery. Some say the new law doesn't go far enough to address issues faced by intersex adults.

Gardiner’s life-long immersion in Bach’s music—as performer and conductor, rather than as academic analyst—qualifies him perhaps better than anyone else alive today to recreate what it was to be the living, breathing, human Bach.

Test subjects were asked to rate paintings before and after receiving a mild amount of current in a portion of their brain. Paintings that depicted realistic scenes earned higher ratings after the zap.

Dutch design school graduate Alejo Bernal created a toy car that can be driven using a commercially-available EEG headset. The amount of concentration required to move it could provide exercise for those with attention deficit disorders.

A new report warns that a quarter of the world's food crops are being grown in areas that are already experiencing high levels of water stress. Increases in drought conditions and population size could make the situation worse.

Science gets things right and it takes a long time and it takes a lot of chatter to get there.

I don’t think we’ve conceptualized yet well enough how the brain gets its job done to abstract all of that activity in our brain into meaningful units to which we can then think about how to move those around to build a brain.

Buy from a double A rated insurance company, a lifetime annuity, that will pay you for as long as you live. 

No wonder we only have a couple of kids, rather than 10 or 12.   

Someone is always getting killed.  Someone is always getting assassinated.  But there are also good things that happen in Afghanistan. 

Most families nowadays have no alternative but to allow their women, their daughters, wives and so forth to go out to the workforce.

Businesses are reaching the limits of what they can squeeze out of a downsized workforce.