Jim Davies
What If You Could Describe Your Dreams While Dreaming?
The potential to hack our dreams opens a new frontier for mental research.
This Is How Your Brain Walks the Dog—a Dialogue
Habits: You two were arguing, I just kept walking. Felt like the right thing to do.Photograph by evrymmnt / Shutterstock Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . INT. HOME OFFICE—DAYBODY, a middle-aged woman, is working at a computer, trying to finish a plan for the household budget.Habits ADVERTISEMENT Nautilus Members […]
A Simple Way to Reduce Cognitive Bias
Would you like to be more rational? Of course you would. Who doesn’t want to behave and think more reasonably? Good news: New research, from Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer, suggests mindfulness, or at least an aspect of it, can help. By “mindfulness”—a feature of Buddhism for thousands of years, and a subject of scientific investigation […]
Can You Treat Loneliness By Creating an Imaginary Friend?
Tulpamancers imagine talking to the tulpa, sometimes for more than an hour a day, and eventually, perhaps after several months, the tulpa will start talking back.Photo Illustration by LeaDigszammal / Shutterstock Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Did you ever have an imaginary friend? If you didn’t, chances are […]
This Vision Experiment Resolved a Centuries-Old Philosophical Debate
“We conclude,” the researchers wrote, “that objects have a remarkably persistent dual character: their objective shape ‘out there,’ and their perspectival shape ‘from here.’”Photograph by Ryan DeBerardinis / Shutterstock Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Imagine you are looking at a manhole cover a few paces away on the […]
We Aren’t Selfish After All
In turbulent times, people go from “me” thinking to “we” thinking.
Most of the Mind Can’t Tell Fact from Fiction
Stories, fiction included, act as a kind of surrogate life. You can learn from them so seamlessly that you might believe you knew something—about ancient Greece, say—before having gleaned it from Mary Renault’s novel The Last of the Wine. You’ll also retain false information even if you didn’t mean to. That seems like a liability: […]
The Neural Similarities Between Remembering and Imagining
The act of recalling something that happened to you looks very much like what happens when you imagine something new.Photograph by HBRH / Shutterstock Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Imagine a living room. Not yours or your friend’s or one you saw in a home makeover show, but […]
Many of Our Beliefs Are Unconscious: A Response to Nick Chater
After a few years of driving, you are able to hold conversations while navigating a busy city. How is this possible without unconscious thought?Photograph by wavebreakmedia / Shutterstock Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Nick Chater has put forward a bold claim in his recent book, The Mind Is […]
5 Reasons Why Humans Can’t Do Without Sports
The importance of being playful is evident in how ancient the behavior is.Photograph by U.S. Air Force / Staff Sgt. Jannelle McRae Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Last year, more than 111 million people—about a third of the U.S. population—watched the Super Bowl. The numbers will likely be […]