Neuroscience

How Chronic Stress Leads To Bad Choices- By Restructuring The Brain

Every day we make a multitude of decisions based on the consequences of our actions; goal-orientated responses. In an always changing environment this capacity is crucial but, because it is complex, it also requires a lot from the brain. So repeated action ...

Article - Catarina Amorim - Aug 1 2009 - 8:03pm

A Biological Explanation For Psychopaths

Professor Declan Murphy and colleagues Dr. Michael Craig and Dr. Marco Catani from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London say they have found differences in the brain which may provide a biological explanation for psychopathy. Psychopath ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 4 2009 - 9:30am

Mobile Elements And Jumping Genes In The Brain Cause Genetic Variation

Harboring astonishing genomic variability, human brain cells prefer to have not one, but many DNA scripts. A team, led by Fred Gage, Ph.D., a professor in the Salk's Laboratory of Genetics, found that human brain cells contain an unexpected number of ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 6 2009 - 3:32pm

Using more than 10% of your brain

People who are completely paralyzed due to illness or trauma are getting help communicating with a new technology that connects their brains to a computer, CBS reports on 60 Minutes. In the future, brain computer interface, or BCI, may restore movement to ...

Blog Post - Becky Jungbauer - Aug 9 2009 - 7:03pm

Can Acupuncture Help The Brain's Ability To Regulate Pain?

Acupuncture has been used in East-Asian medicine for thousands of years to treat pain and some people swear by it, but if and how it works at the cellular level is largely unknown. Using brain imaging, a University of Michigan study says they have evidence ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 11 2009 - 4:21pm

Education Helps Mitigate Alzheimer's, Even After Onset

Researchers at the Department of Psychiatry, Klinikum rechts der Isar, Technische Universität München, say they have shown that formal education diminishes the impact of Alzheimer’s disease on cognition even if a manifest brain volume loss has already occu ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 12 2009 - 9:54am

How Computers Will Learn To Listen

A new mathematical model  could significantly improve the automatic recognition and processing of spoken language, meaning algorithms which imitate brain mechanisms could help machines to perceive the world around them. Many people will have personal exper ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 14 2009 - 5:17pm

Chronic High Doses of Cannabinoids Promote Hippocampal Neurogenesis

“The recent discovery that the hippocampus is able to generate new neurons throughout a human’s lifespan has changed the way we think about the mechanisms of psychiatric disorders and drug addiction,” says Wen Jian and colleagues in a study published in t ...

Blog Post - Bryan Perkins - Aug 16 2009 - 6:13pm

Can't Sing? Your Neural Highway May Not Be Connected

It is estimated that at least 10 percent of the population may be tone deaf – unable to sing in tune.  A new finding identifies a particular brain circuit that appears to be absent in these individuals. Nerve fibers in the neural "highway" called ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 18 2009 - 11:00pm

Will You Walk In Circles If You Get Lost? The Answer Is...

Science fact or urban legend?   If you get lost, you will walk in circles, just like you have seen in too many movies and TV shows to count. Fact, say researchers from the Multisensory Perception and Action Group at the Max Planck Institute for Biological ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 20 2009 - 12:24pm