All grateful feelings aren’t created equal—it matters when, how, and toward whom you practice gratitude. Gratitude makes us happier, healthier, and more empathic; it may even help us live longer, says the research to date. There are specific ways to cultivate gratefulness—and journaling is one of the best documented. The Greater Good Science Center built a free, online platform to …

Older brains may forget more because they lose their rhythm at night. During deep sleep, older people have less coordination between two brain waves that are important to saving new memories, a team reports in the journal Neuron. “It’s like a drummer that’s perhaps just one beat off the rhythm,” says Matt Walker, one of the paper’s authors and a …

In a recent documentary, naturalist and wildlife presenter, Chris Packham, talked about having Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of autism. It was a rare snapshot into the life of an adult with Asperger’s – and especially so as Packham only realised this in his 40s. Packham said he “spent 30 years on the telly trying [his] best to act normal”. Though …

We’ll have a total of just 10 at our Thanksgiving this year, with the biggest absence being that of my mother, who died in March at the age of 92. Our 2-year-old granddaughter and her parents won’t be there, either, nor will my nephew and his 6-month-old son, so we’ll have no children around to temper the loss. Instead, we’ll …

Raising children can sometimes be a daunting task. I know when my own kids were young I often wasn’t sure how to respond when my son didn’t want to share his toys with other children or refused to say please or thank you to his grandmother. Wasn’t it right to tell them to share or say thank you? Not according …

Dacher Keltner’s research shows that sustained power comes as a result of some surprisingly friendly traits. Despite this, bullies do rise to power, and wield it for long periods of time. You might be wondering: Don’t totalitarian dictators and bullies successfully wield power for long periods of time and do a lot of damage? How does that line up with …

Doubt helps us avoid acting on every passing idea which can prevent us from participating in certain types of risk. We should all cut ourselves some slack for how much we doubt. If you take seriously what research suggests, we may actually be wired for it. Overt evidence of a biological basis for doubt comes from neuroscientific findings by researchers …

Our brains can store huge amounts of information, but forgetting some of that information may actually make us smarter. Intuitively, we tend to think of forgetting as failure, as something gone wrong in our ability to remember. Now, Canadian neuroscientists with the University of Toronto are challenging that notion. In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Neuron, they review …

You were sure you left the keys right there on the counter, and now they are nowhere to be found. Where could they be? Misplacing objects is an everyday occurrence, but finding them can be like going on a treasure hunt without a map. Here are some recommendations from experts to help you recover what is lost. (Consider printing this …

OF ALL THE places to meditate, the backseat of a yellow cab isn’t ideal. And yet, the other day I found myself stuck in traffic feeling tranquil, or at least less agitated than I’d usually be given the circumstances. As the firetruck next to me blared its sirens, I cradled my phone in my hands and swayed back and forth …