Introverts listen better, they assess risks more carefully, they can be wiser managers. It's not for nothing that the Silicon Valley billionaires are so often the retiring types.

Narcissism, like the other personality disorders, is a condition that's known as ego-syntonic. In other words, the paranoid person really does believe that people are after him, and the narcissist really does believe that he or she is better than or more entitled than other people, and truly doesn't see why that's not the case.

As the National Football League and other pro sports increasingly reckon with the early dementia, mental health issues, suicides and even criminal behavior of former players, the risk of what's known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), is becoming clear.

A cockroach likely has no less brainpower than a butterfly, but we're quicker to deny it consciousness because it's a species we dislike.

Toxins love to get you while you're young. Lead, mercury, secondhand smoke and sundry other environmental nasties do a lot more damage when tissue is immature, vulnerable and growing than when it's mature and comparatively fixed.

The mind of the polyglot is a very particular thing, and scientists are only beginning to look closely at how acquiring a second language influences learning, behavior and the very structure of the brain itself.

Operating-room errors hold a special terror for patients, if only because they seem like the most avoidable kind of complications. The occasional horror stories of patients who have the wrong leg removed or the wrong knee replaced generate the most headlines, as do tales of patients whose identities are mixed up entirely.