The five most-read stories on Scope this week were:
Broken: A poem about coming to grips with chronic disease: Inspire contributor Angelika Byczkowski shares a poem about her experience living with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.
Dumb, dumber and dumbest? Stanford biologist suggests humans on a downward slide: Stanford developmental biologist Gerald Crabtree, MD, hypothesized in two articles published this week in Trends in Genetics that humans are slowly accumulating genetic mutations that will have a deleterious effect on both our intellect and emotional stability. The reason, he believes, is the relative lack of selective pressure during the past 3,000 years.
The science of willpower: Earlier last year, Stanford health psychologist Kelly McGonigal, PhD, published a book based on her popular Stanford Continuing Studies course “The Science of Willpower.” In this Q&A, she discusses the latest research on the topic and how stress, sleep deprivation and nutrition can lessen our ability to resist temptations.
Internet addiction: Learning to disconnect: NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams took an in-depth look last week at obsessive Internet use. Among those featured on the show was Stanford psychiatrist Elias Aboujaoude, MD, an expert on compulsive disorders and behavioral addictions and author of a book on the dark side of the Internet.
