Category: brain
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The Next 100 Things You Need To Know About People: #114 — Great Stories Release Brain Chemicals
George Lucas and the Hero’s Journey — In 1975 George Lucas had written two drafts of Star Wars, but the story had not yet “come together”. He then re-read a 1949 book by Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Lucas had read the book first in college, and now he re-read it. He decided to…
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Human Tech — Check out the new podcast
Just a quick announcement to let you know we’ve started a new weekly podcast called HumanTech. I’m hosting this podcast with my (amazing) son, Guthrie. Here’s the description at iTunes: HumanTech — A podcast at the intersection of humans, brain science, and technology. We explore how behavioral and brain science affects our technologies and how technologies affect…
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The Next 100 Things You Need To Know About People: #102 — The Best Way To Process Big Data Is Unconsciously
Jason is 20 years old and he’s deaf. He puts on a special vest that’s wired so that when it receives data, it sends pulses to his back. The vest is connected to a tablet. When I say the word “book” into a microphone that feeds into the tablet, the tablet turns the word into…
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The Neuro-Aesthetics of Hillary’s Campaign Logo
Yesterday Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy for President of the US, and before 24 hours went by I had a media request to talk about why people were reacting so strongly (in a negative way) to her logo. I’m in the middle of writing my next book (100 MORE Things Every Designer Needs to Know About…
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Your Brain On Stories
One day, many years ago, when I was early in my career, I found myself in front of a classroom full of people who didn’t want to be there. Their boss had told them they had to attend the class I was giving. I knew that many, even most, of them thought the class was…
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Are You Addicted To Texting?
One of my early blog posts was about dopamine, and since then our smartphones have become even more capable of triggering a “dopamine loop.” So I thought I would re-visit the topic. Especially because I just did an animated video on the topic for the Brain Signal youtube channel: It’s all about dopamine. Dopamine is a…
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The Brain Science Of Why Stepping Away Increases Creativity
We’ve all had the experience: You’re trying to solve a problem or come up with a new idea. You’ve been sitting at your desk, or discussing it in meetings, but you haven’t come up with a solution or the right idea. Then you step away — go for a walk, go to lunch, weed the…
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How To Get People To Do Stuff: #3 — A Hard-To-Read Font Will Activate Logical Thinking
I am taking a chance here, because I know that the subject of fonts is always controversial, and if I say that you should use fonts that are hard to read I’ll be blasted by many of my readers! But I have to share this fascinating research on how mental processing changes in some surprising…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #94 — Repetition Changes Your Brain
Have you ever wondered what a memory is exactly and how it gets formed? You have hundreds, thousands, perhaps millions of memories in your brain. Songs you remember how to sing. Scenes from movies. Memories of last year’s holiday. Facts such as the names of all the planets, and on and on. Do you know…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #92 — There Is A Brain Area Dedicated To Perceiving Faces
You are walking down a busy street in a large city and suddenly you see the face of one of your close relatives. Even if you were not expecting to see this person, and even if there are dozens, or even hundreds of people in your visual field, you will immediately recognize this as your…
