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Reports trumpeting basic differences between male and female brains are biological determinism at its most trivial, says the science writer of the year

A study by Science/AAAS shows that rats preferred freeing caged rats rather than eating food placed in the cage, suggesting that the rats show empathy, a trait only previously known to primates.

Brain games will make you smarter! The internet is making you dumber! Alcohol is killing your brain cells! The brain is a mystery we've been trying to solve for ages, and the desire to unlock its secrets has led to vast amounts of misinformation. Many of these false notions are more widely believed than the truth. We took our healthy skepticism and a bunch of brain research to find the truth behind some of the most common myths about intelligence and our brains. Here's what we learned

Being poor can sap a person's mental resources, research published in the journal Science suggests.

Elizabeth Loftus, Past President of APS, is an internationally recognized expert in the study of human memory, particularly the malleability of memories. Her extensive research shows that memory is highly susceptible to distortion and manipulation, and that people can vividly recall events that never happened. Her research on false memory, the reliability of eyewitness reports, and memories "recovered" through therapy has affected how law enforcement, courts, and psychologists consider eyewitness testimony. Loftus is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and has received the highest scientific honors for her work.

n the US, 80% of girls have been on a diet by the time they're 10 years old. In this honest, raw talk, neuroscientist Sandra Aamodt uses her personal story to frame an important lesson about how our brains manage our bodies, as she explores the science behind why dieting not only doesn't work, but is likely to do more harm than good. She suggests ideas for how to live a less diet-obsessed life, intuitively.

Despite a wealth of research, we still don't know the purpose of sleep. A new animal study suggests one possible function: to promote the repair of support structures in the brain

There are people who can quickly memorize lists of thousands of numbers, the order of all the cards in a deck (or ten!), and much more. Science writer Joshua Foer describes the technique - called the memory palace - and shows off its most remarkable feature: anyone can learn how to use it, including him

Psychology is a relatively new science which gained popularity in the early 20th century with Wilhelm Wundt. In the zeal to learn about the human thought process and behavior, many early psychiatrists went too far with their experimentations, leading to stringent ethics codes and standards. Though these are highly unethical experiments, it should be mentioned that they did pave the way to induct our current ethical standards of experiments, and that should be seen as a positive

Evolutionary biologists reveal that reports of altruism make a potential mate - even for a short-term fling - seem more attractive

The idea that a child's brain is irrevocably shaped in the first three years increasingly drives government policy on adoption and early childhood intervention. But does the science stand up to scrutiny?