History, Evolution, and the Darwin Debate
Neuroimaging Helps to Predict Which Dyslexics Will Learn to ReadScienceDaily (Dec. 22, 2010) — Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have used sophisticated brain imaging to predict with 90 percent accuracy which teenagers with dyslexia would improve their reading skills over time.
Brain’s Inherent Ability to Focus Learning DiscoveredScienceDaily (Dec. 13, 2010) — Medical researchers have found a missing link that explains the interaction between brain state and the neural triggers responsible for learning, potentially opening up new ways of boosting cognitive function in the face of diseases such as Alzheimer’s as well as enhancing memory in healthy people.
‘Brain Maps’ Created for How Humans ReachScienceDaily (Dec. 5, 2010) — A ballet dancer grasps her partner’s hand to connect for a pas de deux. Later that night, in the dark, she reaches for her calf to massage a sore spot. Her brain is using different “maps” to plan for each of these movements, according to a new study at UC Santa Barbara.
Do ‘Traffic Lights’ in the Brain Direct Our Actions? Delayed Inhibition Between Neurons Identified as Possible Basis for Decision Making
ScienceDaily (Nov. 26, 2010) — In every waking minute, we have to make decisions — sometimes within a split second. Neuroscientists at the Bernstein Center Freiburg have now discovered a possible explanation how the brain chooses between alternative options. The key lies in extremely fast changes in the communication between single nerve cells.
Stunning Details of Brain Connections Revealed
ScienceDaily (Nov. 17, 2010) — Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine, applying a state-of-the-art imaging system to brain-tissue samples from mice, have been able to quickly and accurately locate and count the myriad connections between nerve cells in unprecedented detail, as well as to capture and catalog those connections’ surprising variety.
Damage to Prefrontal Cortex Compensated by Intact Areas; ‘Phantom’ Images Stored in Flexible Network Throughout Brain
ScienceDaily (Nov. 3, 2010) — Brain research over the past 30 years has shown that if a part of the brain controlling movement or sensation or language is lost because of a stroke or injury, other parts of the brain can take over the lost function — often as well as the region that was lost.
How Brain Is Wired for Attention
ScienceDaily (Nov. 2, 2010) — University of Utah (U of U) medical researchers have uncovered a wiring diagram that shows how the brain pays attention to visual, cognitive, sensory, and motor cues. The research provides a critical foundation for the study of abnormalities in attention that can be seen in many brain disorders such as autism, schizophrenia, and attention deficit disorder.
Frontal Lobe of the Brain Is Key to Automatic Responses to Various Stimuli, Say Scientists
ScienceDaily (Nov. 1, 2010) — Some people may excel at riding a bike, tying a tie, or playing the piano, but those same people may find it difficult to explain or teach those skills to someone else.
Study of Babies’ Brain Scans Sheds New Light on the Brain’s Unconscious Activity and How It Develops
ScienceDaily (Nov. 1, 2010) — Full-term babies are born with a key collection of networks already formed in their brains, according to new research that challenges some previous theories about the brain’s activity and how the brain develops
Brain’s Journey from Early Internet to Modern-Day Fiber Optics: Computer Program Shows How Brain’s Complex Fiber Tracks Mature
ScienceDaily (Oct. 26, 2010) — The brain’s inner network becomes increasingly more efficient as humans mature.
Controlling Individual Cortical Nerve Cells by Human Thought
ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2010) — Five years ago, neuroscientist Christof Koch of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried of UCLA, and their colleagues discovered that a single neuron in the human brain can function much like a sophisticated computer and recognize people, landmarks, and objects, suggesting that a consistent and explicit code may help transform complex visual representations into long-term and more abstract memories.
Falling in Love Only Takes About a Fifth of a Second, Research Reveals
ScienceDaily (Oct. 25, 2010) — A new meta-analysis study conducted by Syracuse University Professor Stephanie Ortigue reveals falling in love can elicit not only the same euphoric feeling as using cocaine, but also affects intellectual areas of the brain. Researchers also found falling in love only takes about a fifth of a second.
Chain Reactions Identified Within the Brain
ScienceDaily (Oct. 25, 2010) — As anyone who as ever picked up a guitar or a tennis racket knows, precise timing is often an essential part of performing complex tasks. Now, by studying the brain circuits that control bird song, MIT researchers have identified a “chain reaction” of brain activity that appears to control the timing of song.
Origin of Immune Cells in the Brain Discovered: Could Lead to New Treatments for Degenerative Brain Diseases, Autoimmune Disorders
Younger Brains Are Easier to Rewire – Brain Regions Can Switch Functions
ScienceDaily (Oct. 22, 2010) — A new paper from MIT neuroscientists, in collaboration with Alvaro Pascual-Leone at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, offers evidence that it is easier to rewire the brain early in life. The researchers found that a small part of the brain’s visual cortex that processes motion became reorganized only in the brains of subjects who had been born blind, not those who became blind later in life.
Brain Responds More to Close Friends, Imaging Study Shows
ScienceDaily (Oct. 12, 2010) — People’s brains are more responsive to friends than to strangers, even if the stranger has more in common, according to a study in the Oct. 13 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. Researchers examined a brain region known to be involved in processing social information, and the results suggest that social alliances outweigh shared interests.
People Blind from Birth Use Visual Brain Area to Improve Other Senses: Can Hear and Feel With Greater Acuity
ScienceDaily (Oct. 10, 2010) — People who have been blind from birth make use of the visual parts of their brain to refine their sensation of sound and touch, according to an international team of researchers led by neuroscientists at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC).
Mapping the Brain on a Massive Scale
Scanning 1,200 brains could help researchers chart the organ’s fine structure and better understand neurological disorders.
Brain Cell Communication: Why It’s So Fast
ScienceDaily (Sep. 21, 2010) — Billions of brain cells are communicating at any given moment. Like an organic supercomputer they keep everything going, from breathing to solving riddles, and “programming errors” can lead to serious conditions such as schizophrenia, Parkinson’s Disease and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Brain Uses Eyes to Pick Up Things: Unraveling the Calculations
ScienceDaily (Sep. 13, 2010) — How does your brain know where your hand has to go to pick up a cup of coffee and successfully bring this to your mouth? By converting all of the information into coordinates of the eye discovered Dutch researcher Sabine Beurze. Unravelling those calculations will make it possible to more accurately control arm prostheses.
Child’s ‘Mental Number Line’ Affects Memory for Numbers
ScienceDaily (Sep. 12, 2010) — As children in Western cultures grow, they learn to place numbers on a mental number line, with smaller numbers to the left and spaced further apart than the larger numbers on the right. Then the number line changes to become more linear, with small and large numbers the same distance apart. Children whose number line has made this change are better at remembering numbers, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Mental Maturity Scan Tracks Brain Development
ScienceDaily (Sep. 9, 2010) — Five minutes in a scanner can reveal how far a child’s brain has come along the path from childhood to maturity and potentially shed light on a range of psychological and developmental disorders, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown.
Brain Cells — Not Lack of Willpower — Determine Obesity, Study Finds
ScienceDaily (Sep. 8, 2010) — An international study has discovered the reason why some people who eat a high-fat diet remain slim, yet others pile on the weight.
Brain Connections Break Down as We Age, Study Suggests
ScienceDaily (Aug. 19, 2010) — It’s unavoidable: breakdowns in brain connections slow down our physical response times as we age, a new study suggests.
Single Neurons Can Detect Sequences
ScienceDaily (Aug. 13, 2010) — Single neurons in the brain are surprisingly good at distinguishing different sequences of incoming information
Brain’s Wiring: More Like the Internet Than a Pyramid?
ScienceDaily (Aug. 10, 2010) — The brain has been mapped to the smallest fold for at least a century, but still no one knows how all the parts talk to each other.
In Breakthrough, Nerve Connections Are Regenerated After Spinal Cord Injury
ScienceDaily (Aug. 9, 2010) — Researchers for the first time have induced robust regeneration of nerve connections that control voluntary movement after spinal cord injury, showing the potential for new therapeutic approaches to paralysis and other motor function impairments.
Gain and Loss in Optimistic Versus Pessimistic Brains
ScienceDaily (Aug. 9, 2010) — Our belief as to whether we will likely succeed or fail at a given task — and the consequences of winning or losing — directly affects the levels of neural effort put forth in movement-planning circuits in the human cortex, according to a new brain-imaging study by neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Brain’s Puberty Switch
Neuroendocrinologists Unlock Chemical Trigger to Puberty