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Why do we spend roughly 10 percent of our waking hours with our eyes closed - blinking far more often than is actually necessary to keep our eyeballs lubricated? Scientists have pried open the answer to this mystery

While telling a lie, liars have been found to blink less - possibly because the act of deception requires rapt and uninterrupted attention to pull it off. In the seconds after telling a lie, however, the liar will blink far more frequently than a truth-teller. Perhaps the resulting downtime is necessary for the liar to consider whether the deceived person was buying the fib - or whether it was worth telling in the first place. 

ive students a stand up break of 30-90 seconds (the “pause”) to give them mental processing time for the content.

“Fast writes” develop focus (save the editing for later).

The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated. Keith Oatley, an emeritus professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto (and a published novelist), has proposed that reading produces a vivid simulation of reality, one that “runs on minds of readers just as computer simulations run on computers.” Fiction — with its redolent details, imaginative metaphors and attentive descriptions of people and their actions — offers an especially rich replica. Indeed, in one respect novels go beyond simulating reality to give readers an experience unavailable off the page: the opportunity to enter fully into other people’s thoughts and feelings.

The violent action games that often worry parents most had the strongest beneficial effect on the brain.

In contrast, using cellphones, the Internet, or computers for other purposes had no effect on creativity,