Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

Solomon Shereshevsky could recite entire speeches, word for word, after hearing them once. In minutes, he memorized complex math formulas, passages in foreign languages and tables consisting of 50 numbers or nonsense syllables

What "heading" a soccer ball does to your brain; Also, chewing gum can make you a better test taker; And, scientists confirm that boozing can lead to really bad decisions. CBSNews.com's Nick Dietz has the details.

Performance usually improves with practice, but not if training is a rotten time. A new study shows that people’s ability to identify noises declines when the sounds are paired with putrid smells--a phenomenon that may allow our brain to detect danger more quickly

See how a rat’s mothering style can be passed down to her pups--and to their pups and so on--by altering the mix of chemical groups, or epigenetic marks, on genes in the brain. This animation is based on research led by Michael Meaney of McGill University

When real brains operate in the real world, it’s a two-way street.

When a researcher asks a volunteer to slide head-first into the open eye of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine, the expectation is that the device's magnetic field will penetrate the skull to produce a faithful picture of the brain without changing its behavior. A new study suggests, however, that MRI machines do, in fact, manipulate brain activity--and they change the brain in a way that helps treat depression. In other words, MRIs may be unintentional antidepressants

With 100 billion neurons and trillions of synapses, your brain spins neural webs of staggering complexity. It propels you to breathe, twitch, and butter toast, and yet we remain largely ignorant of how the brain does even these simple tasks--let alone how it stirs up consciousness.

Do we have free will? It is an age-old question which has attracted the attention of philosophers, theologians, lawyers and political theorists.

L'Oreal reveals that company scientists are developing a pill to prevent gray hair; Also, parents opposed to vaccinations turn to buying and selling lollipops licked by kids with chickenpox; And, scientists are trying to determine if exposure to traffic exhaust can damage your brain.

I’m a huge advocate of the "Rule of Three." This presentation technique holds that a speaker can more powerfully express three items or messages than any other number of items.

It's no coincidence that a big, new idea never comes when you need it most.

A recent study showed that certain brain areas expand in people who have greater numbers of friends on Facebook . This was welcome news for online social network addicts, particularly teenagers : "Mom, I'm not just on Facebook ; I'm doing my temporal lobe calisthenics." There was a problem, though

By Virginia Gewin of Nature magazine Nicotine causes changes in gene regulation that enhance the brain's subsequent response to cocaine. [More]

Game maker--and game changer-- Sifteo is building the future of play by incorporating the best of its past, combining the interactive nature of video games with the hands-on feel of timeless classics like dominoes, chess, and the Rubik's Cube.

Game maker--and game changer-- Sifteo is building the future of play by incorporating the best of its past, combining the interactive nature of video games with the hands-on feel of timeless classics like dominoes, chess, and the Rubik's Cube.