Neuroscience

Getting Fired Up About Synapses

You may have noticed that a lot of posts about neuroscience research on scientificblogging.com describe new discoveries about the synapse.  If you are not a neuroscientists you might wonder why we get so fired up about the synapse (pun intended).  Well the ...

Article - Kathy Murphy - Jul 13 2010 - 9:31am

The Neurons That Tell You To Quit

The basal ganglia is a series of highly connected brain areas localised deep in the cerebral cortex that recently has attracted interest of neuroscientists when it was linked to learning, and discovered to be affected in a number of disorders of the addic ...

Article - Catarina Amorim - Jul 23 2010 - 10:39am

Getting All A's But Flunking Life- IQ Scores Climb As Creativity Sinks

Almost 30 years ago philosopher James Flynn discovered that IQ scores were increasing in every industrialized country around the globe. But before we pat ourselves on back, Bronson and Merryman warn us that we may be in the midst of a Creativity Crisis. Al ...

Article - Drs. Fernette and... - Jul 30 2010 - 10:10am

How Sensitive Is Your Pig? New Technique Registers Swine 'Optimism'

A pig's 'mood' can show us how content he is, say researchers at Newcastle's School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development. Led by Dr Catherine Douglas, the team has employed a technique to 'ask' pigs if they are feeling o ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 28 2010 - 10:42am

Mice Walk Again

Historically, the medical approach to curing the incurable effects of tragic spinal cord injuries--such as the case made famous by America's classic super hero, Christopher Reeve--has been to affect regeneration of damaged nerves through stem cell th ...

Blog Post - Matthew T. Dearing - Aug 8 2010 - 11:39pm

Spontaneous Brain Rhythm- Why Some People Can Sleep Through Anything

Some people can sleep through a Who concert while others wake up if a mouse in the yard moves.   A new report in Current Biology says the difference is that sound sleepers show a distinct pattern of spontaneous brain rhythms. During sleep, brain waves beco ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 10 2010 - 10:25pm

The Open Source Virtual Brain

The Open Source movement has been an integral part of software development for many years now, and it is starting to explode into the science world. The latest project might even transform brain science communication and understanding to a new level as th ...

Article - Matthew T. Dearing - Aug 16 2010 - 11:29pm

Why Meanings Must Be Fuzzy

A word is vague if it has borderline cases. Yul Brynner (the lead in "The King and I") is definitely bald, I am (at the time of this writing) definitely not, and there are many people who seem to be neither. These people are in the “borderline re ...

Article - Mark Changizi - Aug 19 2010 - 10:46am

Ray Kurzweil Responds To PZ Myers Regarding "Ray Does Not Understand The Brain"

Well, you knew this day was coming. Ray Kurzweil, futurist and author, was attacked for his supposed lack of understanding of how the brain functions, by popular biologist and ScienceBlogs blogger PZ Myers earlier this week. Image courtesy of Singularity H ...

Article - Andrea Kuszewski - Aug 20 2010 - 7:25pm

Ray Kurzweil Video Presentation On The Brain And The Power Of Hierarchical Thinking (full Video)

There has been much debate surrounding Ray Kurzweil and his talk at the Singularity Summit on August 14th 2010, where he discussed reverse engineering the brain, among other things. He was criticized quite harshly by science blogger and biologist PZ Myers ...

Article - Andrea Kuszewski - Aug 20 2010 - 5:17pm