What pupils can reveal about a person’s thoughts and feelings

Meet the psychologist who reads people through the art they live with

Dimitrios Tsivrikos, an academic psychologist at University College London, says the art someone hangs in their home reveals as much about them as a bookshelf would. He advises going on a first date at a museum and asking each other about the work on the walls.

Stunning up-close photos of animal eyes

The eyes really are the windows to the soul.

How psychedelics can potentially reinvent learning

Critical periods, discovered in the early 20th century, describe a period when someone is incredibly sensitive to their environment, and any information learned can stick with them for life. Some researchers argue these states can be "reopened" via psychedelics, which put the mind into a malleable state that can potentially be used to treat conditions ranging from lazy eyes to PTSD.

Humans experience the world subjectively. What does that mean for scientific research?

When you close your eyes, do you see static or colorful patterns or an "intrinsic grey" known as Eigengrau in German? This variation of our internal experiences is just the tip of the iceberg, one that scientists are increasingly studying and...

The science of optical illusions

The human brain has developed cognitive shortcuts to help us navigate in a world where our visual senses are constantly bombarded of information. But these shortcuts can also be exploited, tricking the brain into telling us something is happening when it really isn't. This short video unpacks the neuroscience behind some of the most common (but perplexing) optical illusions.

How your subconscious influences your decisions

How much of your desires and daily choices are truly yours? One of the most effective ways to influence someone's subconscious is when they're asleep. To study this possibility, researchers trained participants to be able to dream lucidly, a phenomenon that occurs when a dreamer knows they're dreaming.

One theory claims the retinae of SAD patients may fail to adjust to less light in winter

Most people’s eyes become more sensitive to light in the winter months, but some do not. This failure to adjust causes ripple effects on those individuals’ biological clocks. This Ted-ED video provides a clear, brief, narrative explanation of the condition in six minutes.

Brain wave-reading earbuds are being used by companies to study workplace performance

Limited safeguards prevent governments from accessing and companies from sharing brain data. Foreign governments may also be developing technology to spy on and potentially disrupt human thoughts.

Personality tests use the Barnum effect, where vague flattery makes generic descriptions feel specific

A 1949 experiment by psychologist Bertram Forer showed that students rated identical, generic personality profiles as highly personalized. This is the same approach used in horoscopes, Myers-Briggs personality types, and fortune tellers. Even well-resourced tests like Myers-Briggs show poor test-retest reliability, with up to half of retakers getting different results.

Everything scientists could learn by looking at your skull

Our skulls are all unique, but they also share characteristics across groups of people. In the absence of fingerprints, forensic scientists can learn a lot about you just from your skull.

Meta's Quest and other mixed reality devices can make learning new skills easier

PianoVision utilizes the passthrough visibility of a headset to illuminate which keys to play on a real piano or keyboard, providing an immersive, software-based learning alternative to human instruction. Similar apps also offer virtual model replacements for physical devices, such as a virtual piano, to practice with.

Visualizing shifts in emotional performance in film

Computational scientists were curious: has the intensity of emotional expression in films changed over the decades? Using their sophisticated analytical models, the researchers discovered actors' emotional performance has declined in intensity over time. They believe the close-up shots common in contemporary film-making allows actors to be more subtle in their performance. Check out the main takeaways and charts with this unusual study.

Stress can be contagious—and scientists want to learn more about it

Researchers have shown that being around someone who is stressed can trigger a stress response in your body, such as elevated cortisol levels and elevated heart rate. One way this was recently studied was by having people watch stressful activities, like a recorded job interview or solving challenging math problems, and then sampling hormones in observers' spit.

A primer on human tears

Tears are one of the many behaviors that differentiate humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. Why do we cry? This comprehensive and well-written essay explores various theories about why we cry, observes tear fluid as the only one that does not elicit disgust, and attempts to interpret the meaning of tears in different circumstances. See what all the fuss is about here.

How metaphors shape the way we think

A metaphor is often viewed as a form of art, deployed only in special circumstances to help an audience grasp something complex or unique. But metaphors are far more fundamental than that, shaping much of how we think about our relationship to others and the world. This article explores how a focus on the metaphors we use can clarify and strengthen our thinking. Learn more here.

Google Search trends reveal truths about society that traditional surveys miss

Studies of human behavior show that survey respondents may lie to present themselves more favorably. By studying anonymous search data, researchers have uncovered hidden racism, mental health struggles, and interest in taboo or stigmatized topics.

What rodent cars can tell us about human joy

Neuroscientist Kelly Lambert and her colleagues taught rats to drive in a mini car. She writes her findings from this unconventional experiment, sharing that positive and fun experiences can sculpt the brain just as powerfully as stressful ones. Click to learn more about how the apparent joy of these rodents seemed to enhance their neuroplasticity.

Changes in vision or eye pain can be early MS symptoms

This occurs due to myelin degradation around the optic nerve, impairing its ability to transmit visual information to the brain. Individuals may especially experience eye symptoms after exercising or taking a hot shower because boosted body temperatures slow down nerve function in nerves already damaged by MS.

Could all mental health disorders have a unifying 'p-factor'?

Some researchers have argued in the past couple decades that all mental health disorders may have a unifying dimension—a theoretical "p-factor" that is common across mental illness, but life experiences and behaviors influence if and how illness manifests. Proponents point to similarities across different disorders, while detractors argue that such connections are largely exaggerated.

Understanding the highly sensitive person

This article explores the world of highly sensitive people (HSP), detailing their traits and the discourse surrounding them. Read an honest probe into the personality trait that considers issues people with the HSP label have while also surfacing the shame that sensitive people may feel in society.

The best predictor of success.

Leaving a high-flying job in consulting, Angela Lee Duckworth took a job teaching math to seventh graders in a New York public school. She quickly realized that IQ wasn’t the only thing separating successful students from those who struggled. Here, she explains her theory of “grit."

Four psychological tools for a happier, calmer life

The perennial debate on how to be happy involves various aspects of life, and one of the most essential is our psychological attitudes toward experiences. This piece lists and explains four basic tools to strengthen your "psychological immune...

What we can learn from how penguins express affection

Pebbling, a term used to describe small acts of love within a relationship, comes from penguins. Male gentoo penguins, a species of penguin that lives on sub-Antarctic islands, present pebbles to their potential mates later used to build nests. This small but helpful act is something we humans can learn from. Think of the “pebbles” you can share with loved ones on a daily basis.

Why are kids increasingly diagnosed with myopia?

According to the World Health Organization, 40% of the world will have myopia—nearsightedness—by 2030. This NPR podcast episode details why people are being diagnosed with myopia at increasingly younger ages. Early onset myopia can lead to...

Researchers found that reading ‘Harry Potter’ made children more tolerant

Psychological research showed that children and young adults who read Harry Potter developed greater empathy and more accepting attitudes toward marginalized groups.

Crows are believed to have intelligence on par with a seven-year-old child and demonstrate complex behaviors, from problem-solving with tools to recognizing human faces.

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

After 25 people used virtual reality headsets to practice flying with virtual wings—flapping their arms—their visual cortex responded to the wings almost as if they were real arms, treating them as body parts.

Studies suggest when you sleep is as important as how much you get, and syncing with your circadian rhythms may lead to less fatigue and improved long-term health outcomes

Clever Hans was a 1900s horse that was believed to be able to solve math equations, tell time, and read and comprehend German, until a psychology student discovered how he got his answers.

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

Learn how your body is, scientifically, like a firework with its own slow, controlled burn.

In recent years a child anxiety expert has created and tested a novel phobia and anxiety treatment approach for children, focused on changing how parents respond to the fears.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

Use this calculator to find the dollar value of your mental load, from meal planning to coordinating after-school care for your children.

Learn how to read a prospectus, the juicy document that any company must file with the SEC before going public.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

Alzheimer's can lead to brain shrinkage, with an average of around 2% of volume reduction per year

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings are often assumed to be sexual, though the artist claimed she was simply interested in highlighting the beauty of flowers that most people neglect

See the 25 of the best photos of auroras from around the world.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

Explore chaos in this simulation of two double pendulums, where small differences in the release angles produce wildly different outcomes.

A pickleball's loud 'pop' sound can reach 120 decibels, which is equivalent to a hammer hitting a nail

Explore what it's like inside a patient isolation unit, used in situations such as treating a patient or suspected patient with Ebola.

The hormonal disorder PCOS was renamed PMOS in 2026, a move designed to improve care and research by shifting the focus to the hormonal causes of this condition that affects 1 in 8 women.

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother, who had died nine months before he was born

The syncytiotrophoblast is the outer layer of the placenta and the largest human cell, spanning an area about twice that of a king-sized bedsheet.