This is your brain on...

No fake. I'm doing my PhD, which technically makes me a scientist-in-training. But this isn't about me, it's about you, and whether or not you can trust what we put on this site. Myself, as well as everyone here at HIKY, doesn't want you to just take our word for it without questioning why? What makes a guy like me trustworthy? There are probably thousands of websites out there with health info, some of it true, some of it false, and most of it probably trying to sell you impotence pills. What s… Continue

If there's any aspect of love that is undeniable, it's that people can't seem to get enough of it, as long as it's a good thing. Apparently, romantic poems go back as far as 4000 years, written on tablets in Summeria. But why? Everyone can agree on the fact that love feels pretty good, particularly in the beginning (i.e. the first year). Obviously, the next question for me is whether or not looking at the brain can provide any insights. Can we be addicted to love?

A particularly good study was… Continue

As part of our ongoing development, the inner sanctum of HIKY are thinking about incorporating video-conferencing into our site, somehow. This whole notion stemmed from a suggestion that I meet with Tim Patterson, resident teleconferencing guru at Baycrest. Aside from regaling us with fascinating stories, Tim showed us the capabilities of Baycrest and other hospitals, in terms of what services they provide via video-conference. To put things in perspective, they have video-conference rooms and l… Continue

Inspired by the name of our site, I decided to dedicate my first blog post on what we know about the brain and how it responds to the "big L." Today's lesson: Feeling what others feel.

Think about all the songs in the world, and then try to estimate how many mention love. Just based on a rough estimate, I'd put the number at around 50%. Of all those sappy, sentimental love songs that you always hear at weddings, you often hear phrases about how one person feels the same was as the other. From C… Continue

First and foremost, I should explain who I am. I'm a psychology graduate student at the University of Toronto. Like all graduate students, I do research in some specific area, and for me, that area is memory. What is a good way to characterize how our memory works? What sorts of things influence our ability to remember bits of information we experience as we go through life? How can we use previous memories to help us to solve problems in new situations? What areas of the brain are involved in m… Continue