It is interesting that in the book that you mentioned and in your writing there is an underlying assumption that life originated on Earth from scratch. There are scientists that believe that life could have been introduced by outsiders, see for example this article by Rhawn Joseph. There is also the Drake equation used to estimate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations. There are NASA missions, like TESS, discovering more and more planets with Earth-like conditions.
Life on Earth could be an experiment set up by some advanced civilization biological o...
Certain types of medications can potentially make people more intellectually active.
There is a concept in neuroscience called neuroplasticity. One important fact about neuroplasticity is that it declines with age, particularly it undergoes a sharp decline around or after puberty. This decline is a major reason why people have trouble learning foreign languages after this age. People who learn the language after the neuroplasticity decline are much more likely to speak with an accent, no matter how much effort they put into it. In the last decade there wer... (read more)