Sex differences in the brain are sexy. As MRI scanning grows ever more sophisticated, neuroscientists keep refining their search for male-female brain differences that will answer the age-old question, “Why can’t a woman think like a man?” (and vice-versa).

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Depression seems to pose an evolutionary paradox. Research in the US and other countries estimates that between 30 to 50 percent of people have met current psychiatric diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder sometime in their lives. But the brain plays crucial roles in promoting survival and reproduction, so the pressures of evolution should have left our brains resistant to such high rates of malfunction. Mental disorders should generally be rare -- why isn’t depression?

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Sue Barry is a neuroscientist at Mount Holyoke College. She's also the author of the newly released book Fixing My Gaze , which tells the story of how Barry, at the age of 48, finally learned to see in 3-D. Mind Matters editor Jonah Lehrer chats with Barry about what a flat world looks like and what her own experience can teach us about brain plasticity and education.

LEHRER: You begin your new book, Fixing My Gaze , by describing the moment you realized that you lacked stereoscopic vision, which underlies the ability to see in 3-D. Could you describe that moment?

Stomach growling, but have no time for a meal? A snack will do. Drowsy and unable to concentrate? A short nap can be reviving when a good night’s rest is unavailable. But what should you do when you are alone and feeling lonely ?

Creativity is commonly thought of as a personality trait that resides within the individual. We count on creative people to produce the songs, movies, and books we love; to invent the new gadgets that can change our lives; and to discover the new scientific theories and philosophies that can change the way we view the world. Over the past several years, however, social psychologists have discovered that creativity is not only a characteristic of the individual, but may also change depending on the situation and context. The question, of course, is what those situations are: what makes us more creative at times and less creative at others?

One answer is psychological distance.  According to the construal level theory (CLT) of psychological distance, anything that we do not experience as occurring now, here, and to ourselves falls into the “psychologically distant” category. It’s also possible to induce a state of “psychological distance” simply by changing the way we think about a particular problem, such as attempting to take another person's perspective, or by thinking of the question as if it were unreal and unlikely. In this new paper , by Lile Jia and colleagues at Indiana University at Bloomington, scientists have demonstrated that increasing psychological distance so that a problem feels farther away can actually increase creativity.

I met my husband, Peter, rather randomly, at all-the-Absolut-you-could- drink benefit for the Museum of Contemporary Art . We have often observed that had we not met that night, there is no particular reason to think we would have ever chanced on each other in the future, as we did not inhabit the same professional or social spheres. From time to time, I contemplate the fantastic possibility that had one of us ventured several footsteps to the right or the left that evening, my husband, my children and my home might be subtracted from the life I lead today. Counterintuitively, this counterfactual exercise in considering how much worse off I could be today brings me not distress, but pleasure. Then again, a series of elegant studies published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggest that my experience is not so counterintuitive after all.

P. Murali Doraiswamy is the head of biological psychiatry at Duke University and is a Senior Fellow at Duke’s Center for the Study of Aging. He’s also the co-author of The Alzheimer’s Action Plan , a guide for patients and family members struggling with the disease. Mind Matters editor Jonah Lehrer chats with Doraiswamy about recent advances in Alzheimer’s research and what people can do to prevent memory loss. [More]

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Imagine a quiet night like any other. Suddenly, your infant’s cries break the silence. Fully loaded with emotion, the sound triggers an urge to stand up and run to your infant’s room. But, considering that your spouse is a musician and you are not, who will be the first to reach the crib?