Dramatic mood shifts while drinking alcohol are normal, but for some of us, booze takes us down a path toward nasty, belligerent, and downright aggressive behavior. By studying brain scans of drunk men, Australian scientists have pinpointed the parts of our brain that go weak when we drink, making us meaner than…
Recent scientific progress has allowed us to begin decoding the significance of many different patterns of activity in the brain. Researchers have begun to understand patterns associated with disorders such as depression, in hopes of correcting it. Other research has zeroed in on how language and speech is signaled in…
Medicine is perfect for heartwarming stories. Some close relative is facing the most hopeless prognosis, such as being in a vegetative state. Someone tries a wild treatment, and boom, people are crying, the relative is awake, and the headlines go viral. But science doesn’t really work this way.
For many years, neuroscientists believed they had identified a specific pattern of brain activity acting as a kind of “signature” for pain in the brain. Recently this so-called “pain matrix” has been called into question, and a new study by British researchers may have shattered the myth once and for all.
Six adults (and one kid), one fMRI machine, five minutes to love someone (or something) as hard as possible. In The Love Competition, a short documentary first featured in McSweeney’s Wholphin #15, filmmaker Brent Hoff and Stanford University neuroscientists try to see which type of love makes the brain most active.
There's still no technology in the world that lets you listen in on someone's thoughts. But fMRI advances are making it easier than ever to measure, interpret, and even reconstruct brain activity, and a growing market of wearables with electroencephalographic (EEG) components and brain-computer interfaces means that…
So much of neuroscience is now based entirely on fMRI studies. But as Randall Munroe's latest webcomic points out, brain scans are not without their limitations.
The human brain has been described as a massively parallel computing machine. But just how powerful is it? A recent brain scan analysis is offering some unexpected results.
Alfred Hitchcock, our master of suspense, was incredibly good at manipulating his audience—a fact that has now come in handy for neuroscientists. When they screened a Hitchcock thriller for volunteers in a brain scanner, they found that brain activity of a man who has been in a vegetative state for 16 years was…
Fantasizing about an old flame? Lusting over a celebrity instead of your current squeeze? Watch out: scientists can reconstruct the faces you're thinking about from a brain scan alone.
For the first time, scientists have shown that they can predict when people will make risky decisions based on brain activity patterns. Could this lead to a world where we consult brain scans to predict whether we're making a risky choice or not?
In today's comments we speculated on which of our favorite on-screen characters were just one step away from a pink slip, chose the super powers we would most like to have in our arsenal of fun, and (just in time for Halloween!) unlocked some secrets of what the brain does with fear.
Whether it be in movies or real life, we don’t tend to feel sorry for the villains. But strangely, and even a bit disturbingly, we often empathize more with the pain they experience. A new study offers a potential answer to this puzzling phenomenon — and it may have something to do with wanting to keep our enemies…
Answer as fast as you can: how many cats are in the image up top? Did you answer without counting them individually? Probably not – but if you were pushing yourself, there's a good chance you tallied them in groups of three or four. Now, researchers say they've identified a small tangle of neurons that makes this…
Neuroscientists have identified a brain scan that enables them to predict whether convicted felons are likely to land themselves back in jail after they've been released. But have they discovered the "repeat offense area" of the brain? Far from it.
For the first time, scientists have been able to use data from brain scans to identify who patients are thinking about.
If you've ever wondered which part of your brain thinks about a particular object, activity or concept, worry no longer—this interactive brain is about to answer all your questions.
Feast your eyes on a Maple Brain — a cerebellar sculpture (adapted from and inspired by actual fMRI scans) hewn from the stump of a maple tree. Apparently the sculptor (who, judging from his website, probably goes by "Bachy"?) "can produce figured wooden brains customized to reflect your abilities, research interests…
Back in 2010, neuroscientists confirmed that it was possible to communicate with some patients locked in a vegetative state by using an fMRI scanner. Though limited, the breakthrough suggested that more meaningful dialogue with patients in a coma could someday be possible. And now, two years later, it has finally…
Everyone has noises that make them squirm and bury their ears beneath their hands. But which sound is the absolute worst of the worst? Researchers at Newcastle University are using fMRI technology to figure out which sounds our brains hate the most.