Robin Marantz Henig

There's very little about being in a functional-M.R.I. scanner that is natural: you are flat on your back, absolutely still, with your…

— Robin Marantz Henig

The English language has 112 words for deception, according to one count, each with a different shade of meaning: collusion, fakery, malingering,…

— Robin Marantz Henig

I'm always made a little uncomfortable by studies that assert that Millennials are the most narcissistic generation in history. To me, being…

— Robin Marantz Henig

The tenuousness of modern life can make anyone feel overwrought.

— Robin Marantz Henig

The human brain has evolved the capacity to impose a narrative, complete with chronology and cause-and-effect logic, on whatever it encounters, no…

— Robin Marantz Henig

Hardships of early human life favored the evolution of certain cognitive tools, among them the ability to infer the presence of organisms…

— Robin Marantz Henig

Many of us are tethered to bodies that sabotage us in our struggle to keep from getting fat, or to slim down…

— Robin Marantz Henig

Lies can be verbal or nonverbal, kindhearted or self-serving, devious or bald-faced; they can be lies of omission or lies of commission;…

— Robin Marantz Henig

For humans and animals alike, truly vigorous, wholehearted, spontaneous play is something of a biological frill.

— Robin Marantz Henig

Scientists who study play, in animals and humans alike, are developing a consensus view that play is something more than a way…

— Robin Marantz Henig

The essence of play is that the sequence of actions is fluid and scattered.

— Robin Marantz Henig

The real thing young people should fear is missing out on those few, true, long-term friendships that make for a richer, happier…

— Robin Marantz Henig

As the brain matures, one thing that happens is the pruning of the synapses. Synaptic pruning does not occur willy-nilly; it depends…

— Robin Marantz Henig

It's almost a rite of passage for the middle-aged, it seems, to invent generational stereotypes for dumping on the young.

— Robin Marantz Henig

As people construct a life narrative, researchers have found, they tend to remember more events from the teens and twenties than from…

— Robin Marantz Henig

The chance you passed up or missed could have had any number of different outcomes, and it's easy to fantasize about how…

— Robin Marantz Henig

The limbic system explodes during puberty, but the prefrontal cortex keeps maturing for another 10 years.

— Robin Marantz Henig

The 20s are like the stem cell of human development: the pluripotent moment when any of several outcomes is possible. Decisions and…

— Robin Marantz Henig

I'm a freelance writer, and I work alone at a big desk in the living room of my apartment. There are many…

— Robin Marantz Henig

Kids don't shuffle along in unison on the road to maturity. They slouch toward adulthood at an uneven, highly individual pace.

— Robin Marantz Henig

Some people, no matter how robust their stock portfolios or how healthy their children, are always mentally preparing for doom. They are…

— Robin Marantz Henig

The music that was popular in your youth seems to be the music you recall most vividly - and most nostalgically -…

— Robin Marantz Henig

When a trait is universal, evolutionary biologists look for a genetic explanation and wonder how that gene or genes might enhance survival…

— Robin Marantz Henig

Parents bobble between a nostalgia-infused yearning for their children to play and fear that time spent playing is time lost to more…

— Robin Marantz Henig

If you're satisfied with your social life, according to psychologists, you tend to be satisfied with life in general.

— Robin Marantz Henig