It is a well known "fact" that we use just 10 percent of our brains. This is why creativity gurus are always urging us to learn to tap the other silent 90 percent. It has also been a staple point for those who want to argue that consciousness has little to do with brain circuitry and more to do with some intangible soul-stuff. So where did this particular old wives' tale spring from? Well, there are at least three famous bits of neuroscientific research that have fed the myth. And here are the modern countering arguments.

I'm having a hard time thinking this is a good idea. I'd prefer to move toward less reliance on drugs rather than more.

"In this article, we propose actions that will help society accept the benefits of enhancement, given appropriate research and evolved regulation. Prescription drugs are regulated as such not for their enhancing properties but primarily for considerations of safety and potential abuse. Still, cognitive enhancement has much to offer individuals and society, and a proper societal response will involve making enhancements available while managing their risks."

Robert B. Zajonc, a distinguished psychologist who illuminated the mental processes that underpin social behavior and in so doing helped create the modern field of social psychology, died on Wednesday at his home in Stanford, Calif. He was 85.

He knew his name. That much he could remember. He knew that his father's family came from Thibodaux, La., and his mother was from Ireland, and he knew about the 1929 stock market crash and World War II and life in the 1940s. But he could remember almost nothing after that.

Obama working to avoid groupthink: "I assembled this team because I am a strong believer in strong personalities and strong opinions," he said. "I think that's how the best decisions are made. One of the dangers in a White House, based on my reading of history, is that you get wrapped up in group-think and everybody agrees with everything and there's no discussion and there are no dissenting views. So I am going to be welcoming a vigorous debate inside the White House. "But understand, I will be setting policy as president. I will be responsible for the vision that this team carries out, and I will expect them to implement that vision once decisions are made."

Memory and Forgetting According to the latest research, remembering is an unstable and profoundly unreliable process. It's easy come, easy go as we learn how true memories can be obliterated and false ones added. And Oliver Sacks joins us to tell the story of an amnesiac whose love for his wife and music transcend his 7 second memory.

Kahneman and Tversky's cogntion research makes an appearance in this article.

The study suggests that self-diagnosis by search engine frequently leads Web searchers to conclude the worst about what ails them.

A family bought a house in California in 1992. In February of 2008, a handyman found a suitcase in the basement left by the previous owners that contained press clippings on the Jonestown Massacre -- and letters from the daughter, who along with her husband and two children, died alongside 900 others in that unforgettable mass suicide.

The English city of Manchester has come up with a simple formula it hopes will help keep its citizens trim: eat right, get stuff. Exercise, get more stuff.

"James W. Pennebaker's interest in word counting began more than 20 years ago, when he did several studies suggesting that people who talked about traumatic experiences tended to be physically healthier than those who kept such experiences secret. He wondered how much could be learned by looking at every single word people used - even the tiny ones, the I's and you's, a's and the's."

The more out of control we feel, the more likely we are to find patterns in chaos.

Steven Pinker, the well-known psychological researcher who has written a lot on language, offers up his thoughts on Sarah Palin's use of language in a NY Times OpEd piece.

For every congenial character who can warm a room, there's another who can bring a draft from the north, a whiff of dead winter. And even if the thermometer doesn't register the difference, people do: social iciness feels so cold to those on the receiving end that they will crave a hot drink, a new study has found.

"Schizophrenia is famous for its symptoms of hallucinations and delusions, but sufferers also face debilitating cognitive impairment-and standard treatments with antipsychotic medications do little to compensate for intellectual loss. Seeking improved mental clarity, many patients turn to a seemingly mundane source: cigarettes. The extraordinarily high incidence of smoking in individuals with schizophrenia-about 85 percent of patients smoke compared with some 20 percent of the general population-has spurred researchers to investigate the therapeutic effects of nicotine in the diseased brain."

"In this research, we drew on system-justification theory and the notion that conservative ideology serves a palliative function to explain why conservatives are happier than liberals. Specifically, in three studies using nationally representative data from the United States and nine additional countries, we found that right-wing (vs. left-wing) orientation is indeed associated with greater subjective well-being and that the relation between political orientation and subjective well-being is mediated by the rationalization of inequality."

Experts make the best victims because they jump to unwarranted conclusions.

" For more than five generations, Patrick Tracey's family has been plagued by what he calls "a perfect storm of schizophrenia." In his new book, Stalking Irish Madness, he traces his family lineage - and the roots of the disease - all the way back to Ireland."