Neuroscience

Watch How The Presence Of A Mean Adult Makes This Toddler’s Head Spin

As adults, we’ve learned to alter our behavior in the presence of angry people. But as this fascinating experiment reveals, even toddlers as young as 15 months have already figured this out. This new study from the Institute of Learning & Brain Sciences at the University of Washington reveals that children as young as 15…

Awareness Can Continue For Several Minutes After Clinical Death

The biggest ever scientific study of near-death experiences shows that awareness can continue for a surprisingly long duration after the brain has shut down completely. The finding suggests that these experiences are more than just hallucinations — and that our definition of clinical death should probably be revised. Near-death experiences (NDEs) and out-of-body experiences (OBEs)…

Brain Scans Show Signs Of Cognitive Decline Before Symptoms Appear

Neuroscientists from the University of Geneva have devised a technique that reveals evidence of cognitive decline prior to the onset of symptoms — an indication that deterioration in the brain happens before we’re able to pick up on cognitive deficiencies. Top image: Scans showing a comparison between a stable, healthy brain and one exhibiting cognitive…

Nobel Prize In Medicine Awarded To Discoverers Of Brain’s “Inner GPS”

The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to U.S.-British scientist John O’Keefe and Norwegian couple May-Britt and Edvard Moser for discovering the brain’s internal positioning system. The discovery answered a question that vexed scientists and philosophers for centuries: How does the brain create a map of the space surrounding us and…

Man’s Parkinson’s Tremors Vanish With The Touch Of A Button – But How?

The short answer is deep brain stimulation (DBS), a targeted form of electrotherapy used to treat brain disorders like Parkinson’s disease and OCD. The long answer, i.e. why DBS is sometimes so remarkably effective, remains poorly understood – but researchers this week took a big step on their path to understanding the technique. Above: Andrew…

Geneticists Slam Study Claiming Schizophrenia Is Eight Disorders [UPDATED]

Last month, a study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry made international headlines by claiming that schizophrenia is not a single disease, but rather a group of eight distinct genetic disorders. Now, ten leading geneticists say this extraordinary claim isn’t justified by the data. In the AJP paper, C. Robert Cloninger, Igor Zwir, and…

Why Do Your Pupils Get Larger When You’re On Drugs?

Normally, our pupils dilate in response to changing light; as it gets darker, our pupils get larger. But they expand in size for other reasons as well, including when we’re sexually aroused and when we’re performing complex cognitive tasks. But it’s also known that certain medications — including illicit drugs — can cause pupils to…

Your Decision-Making Processes Are a Lot More Random Than You Realize

For the most part, we make decisions based on our prior experiences. But what about those situations that are completely new or unpredictable? A new study suggests that when facing an excessively uncertain or challenging scenario, the brain chooses randomness as the best strategy. When it comes to making decisions, our brains are extremely dependent…

Humans Evolved To Be Fair For Selfish Reasons

New research suggests we’re motivated to seek equal rewards — despite the disadvantages to ourselves — to prevent our partners from being unhappy and to avoid any negative outcomes that may follow. “Make sure you play fairly,” often say parents to their kids. In fact, children do not need encouragement to be fair, it is…

While watching Alfred Hitchcock, a man who has been in a vegetative state for 16 years exhibited similar brain patterns to healthy viewers, including parts of the brain involved in higher cognition and the processing of sensory information. The study “provides the best evidence to date that fMRI can be used to identify consciousness in…

Mice With Genetically “Humanized” Brains Learn Faster

It’s not quite a Pinky and the Brain scenario, but researchers from MIT and several European universities have spliced a human gene responsible for speech and language into mice — a bit of biological uplift that made the mice smarter in certain ways. This is not the first time that the intelligence of an animal…

Doctors Discover A Woman With No Cerebellum

A 24-year-old woman complaining of dizziness and nausea was admitted to a hospital in Shandong Province recently, where she told doctors she had struggled with balance all her life. When doctors performed a brain scan, they immediately noticed the problem: The woman was missing her cerebellum. Above: An MRI of the woman’s head reveals “no…

There’s More To Primate Dominance Than Strength And Aggression

A new study suggests that the brains of primates are different depending on their status as leaders or followers. But are these ‘specialized brains’ the result of genetics or an adaptation to the individual’s role in life? Researchers from the University of Oxford were curious to learn if social dominance could be correlated to unique…

The First Successful Demonstration Of Brain-To-Brain Communication In Humans

For the first time ever, neuroscientists have demonstrated the viability of direct — and completely non-invasive — brain-to-brain communication in humans. Remarkably, the experiment allowed subjects to exchange mentally-conjured words despite being 5,000 miles apart. It’s the neuroscientific equivalent of instant messaging. Two human subjects, one in India and one in France, successfully transmitted the…

This Is Your Brain On Coffee

The latest episode from Mitchell Moffat and Gregory Brown of AsapSCIENCE is on the brain-boosting effects of coffee and the mechanisms of caffeine addiction. Plus, Moffatt and Brown take a crack at the age old question (no, not that one): how much caffeine is too much? https://gizmodo.com/why-does-coffee-make-you-poop-1538746609 https://gizmodo.com/how-much-caffeine-is-too-much-5982468

The Woodpecker’s Guide to Avoiding Head Injuries

Most woodpeckers use their beaks to drill into tree trunks in search of tasty bugs and their larvae. One group of ‘peckers, the sapsuckers, lick the sap out of the holes they drill using their long, brush-like tongues. The acorn woodpecker drills holes to store individual acorns. Colonies of acorn woodpeckers can store more than…

What Do Animals Really Dream About?

If animals dream like us, where do they go in their slumber? Some scientists have discovered that we can peer into the minds of sleeping cats, birds and other creatures to find out. Photo Credit: cybermacs via flickr | CC BY 2.0 https://gizmodo.com/what-do-animals-dream-about-1625103575

What Do Animals Dream About?

“Almost all other animals are clearly observed to partake in sleep, whether they are aquatic, aerial, or terrestrial,” wrote Aristotle in his work On Sleep and Sleeplessness. But do other animals dream? On that the Greek philosopher also had an opinion. In The History of Animals, he wrote: “It would appear that not only do…

Did You Know There Are Tests For Sarcasm Detection?

And that was not a sarcastic question. If you’re feeling at all unsure about your ability to tell the difference between sarcasm and straightforward statements, learn all about the tests designed for just that. There are multiple conditions that can wipe out, or greatly diminish, a person’s ability to detect sarcasm. These include lesions on…

Emmert’s Law Proves That Your Mind Forces You To See What It Expects

We see using our eyes, but we perceive using our brain. Both take the duty very seriously, and occasionally, there is a turf war. In cases of Emmert’s Law, the brain wins, and reality loses. It’s the brain that takes the shapes and colors that we see with our eyes and forms them into comprehensible…