Neuroscience

Silhouette Illusion And Left-Right Brains Myth Debunked

In the Silhouette Illusion (video at the bottom), a silhouetted woman is seen spinning on one foot, her leg extended. ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 23 2010 - 12:34pm

Neocortex Neurons Behave Like People In Social Networks

Neurons within the brain's neocortex behave much like people in social networks, with a small population of highly active members who give and receive more information than the majority of other members, says Alison Barth, associate professor of biolo ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 10 2011 - 12:23pm

Predict Your Video Game Aptitude Using MRI

Want to know if you can be the king of Donkey Kong?    A group of researchers say they can predict "with unprecedented accuracy" how well you will do on a complex task like a strategic video game- by analyzing activity in a specific region of you ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 13 2011 - 9:34pm

The Chaos Of Brain Signaling

The dynamics behind signal transmission in the brain are extremely chaotic.  The brain codes information in the form of electrical pulses, known as spikes. Each of the brain's approximately 100 billion interconnected neurons acts as both a receiver an ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 24 2011 - 3:22pm

Did Epilepsy Cause Chopin's Hallucinations?

Frédéric Chopin, composer of "The Last Waltz" and poet of the piano, suffered from tuberculosis and regularly hallucinated. Even for those in the Romantic Revolution, like Liszt, Schumann and Victor Hugo, among others, Chopin was considered frail ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 25 2011 - 5:31pm

Bad Diets Cause Depression?

Can olive oil prevent mental illness? A new study says the ingestion of trans-fats and saturated fats increases the risk of suffering depression and that olive oil protects against this mental illness.  The study by researchers from Navarra and Las Palmas ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 26 2011 - 7:49pm

Can There Be A 'Universal' IQ Test?

Measuring 'intelligence' is a much art as science.   Even using the word intelligence sends people down a philosophical rabbit hole, disagreeing about what the word means. So can there be a 'universal' intelligence test that measures... ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 27 2011 - 2:29pm

How The Brain Knows What The Nose Knows

Mice have a healthy concept of fear and so they fear the scent of a predator.   While it seems obvious that brains quickly figure out with a sniff that a predator, like a cat, is nearby, the mechanism is not well understood. In a Nature study, researchers ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 13 2011 - 9:18pm

Ecstasy- Now With Less Cognitive Impairment

The schedule 1 illicit drug known as ecstasy has been used by up to 12 million people in the United States  and millions more worldwide.  P ast research has suggested that ecstasy users perform worse than others on some tests of mental ability but there ha ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 15 2011 - 8:12pm

Neuroscientists Create Perception Of Having Three Arms

How do we 'experience' our own bodies?     It has long been believed that our body image is limited by our innate body plan, so we cannot truly experience having more than one head, two arms and two legs but brain scientists at the Swedish medica ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 23 2011 - 6:21pm