All posts tagged: AHA

Why your brain needs plenty of “Aha!” moments

Why your brain needs plenty of “Aha!” moments

Published by skeptic

What does an “Aha!” moment do to your brain? Harold M. Lambert/Lambert/Getty Images Last week, my editor, Chelsea, said something that stopped me in my tracks.  She was worried about the ubiquity of AI, but not for the normal journalistic reasons: job losses, plagiarism, dull prose, etc. It was the possibility that by using AI, she might be sacrificing one of life’s most reliable small pleasures – the daily joy she gets from having an “Aha!” moment. “For me,” she says, “it’s almost a physical feeling, something spreading across my brain.” She wondered what might happen if we start outsourcing an increasing amount of our idea generation to AI before wrestling with it ourselves. Would we get fewer dopamine hits that come with figuring things out? And if those “Aha!” moments become rarer, what else might our brains be losing? It turns out those “Aha!” moments are indeed giving us more than just small pleasures; there is growing evidence that they change our brain entirely, shaping what we learn and remember, and perhaps even play …

Meet the New AHA Staff Member: Ali Huskiens

Meet the New AHA Staff Member: Ali Huskiens

Published by Sam Flores

Please welcome the Appignani Humanist Legal Center’s new Staff Attorney, Ali Huskiens! What is your educational and work background? Before joining the American Humanist Association, I represented employees in complex workplace disputes involving discrimination, retaliation, harassment, wage and hour violations, and related civil rights claims in federal and state court, as well administrative agencies. Most of my employment litigation matters involved a power imbalance in the workplace, so to me, helping clients regain dignity and a sense of voice mattered just as much as the legal outcome. Alongside that work, I have dedicated significant time to pro bono efforts through the National Lawyers Guild, including legal support for protest movements and broader civil liberties work focused on due process and expanding access to legal help. I earned my J.D. from Chicago-Kent College of Law and a B.A. from Loyola University Chicago. How did you first learn about humanism? The more I read and learn about humanism, the more familiar it feels. I learned about humanism much later than I learned about theistic religions. After encountering …

What TV Dramas Get Wrong About CPR—and the Real-World Cost

What TV Dramas Get Wrong About CPR—and the Real-World Cost

Published by Jenni Sidey

TV varies dramatically in informing viewers about medical emergencies, but it also teaches audiences how not to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). As part of a new study conducted at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, researchers found that existing portrayals of CPR across scripted television in the U.S. depict many outdated practices. These practices could mislead viewers when confronted with an actual cardiac arrest and cause them to delay responding with the lifesaving action they would have otherwise taken. This research, which appears in the journal Circulation: Population Health and Outcomes, is the first to comprehensively assess how bystander CPR is portrayed in scripted television programming in the U.S. It was conducted by assistant professor Beth L. Hoffman, Ph.D., MPH, of the Pitt School of Public Health, and recent Pitt graduate Ore Fawole, B.S., B.A., who was the lead author on the research. This study arrives almost 20 years after the American Heart Association issued its first public guidance regarding CPR. The association’s recommended approach …

Where is AHA? RFK Jr.’s Administration for a Healthy America doesn’t exist yet : NPR

Where is AHA? RFK Jr.’s Administration for a Healthy America doesn’t exist yet : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., pictured at the White House earlier this month, promised he would set up the Administration for a Healthy America back in March 2025. It doesn’t exist yet. Alex Wong/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Alex Wong/Getty Images Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was just a few weeks into his new job as health secretary in March 2025 when he unveiled a dramatic plan to remake the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy quickly determined that the size and structure of his agency — which includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes for Health — was “incomprehensible.” He said it was bloated and that explained why federal health officials had failed to improve Americans’ health. “We’re going to eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments and agencies while preserving their core functions,” he said in a social media video. Those “core functions” would be preserved, he explained, “by merging them into a new organization called the Administration for a Healthy America …

Meet the New AHA Staff Member: Sage Rossman

Meet the New AHA Staff Member: Sage Rossman

Published by Sam Flores

Please welcome the AHA’s new Communications Coordinator, Sage Rossman! What is your educational and work background? My very pandemic-inturrupted college experience centered around the sciences! I studied neuroscience (and LOVED it), and added on an ecology-focused biology major after realizing I didn’t want to pursue bench science. My interests veered increasingly towards science communication, fueled by some awesome professors who let me write essays about wild topics (if you want to argue about whether machines are conscious or learn about the history of research on BDSM kinks, hit me up). I took full advantage of my university’s paid internship program to explore this interest, and dabbled in everything from medical literature reviews to behavioral science consulting. Aside from a great many internships, my most interesting “side hustle” was participating in neuropharmacology studies. This was fascinating from the perspective of a neuroscience nerd, and also a great way to try out illicit substances in a safe and legal environment! After graduating, I joined a wonderful Chicago-based environmental nonprofit, Urban Rivers. I created and ran programming, doing …