Neuroscience

How Big Is The Brain? Here’s Some Perspective.

Imagine your brain is the size of Earth. How big would all of its constituent parts be? The brain-mapping folks at Eyewire teamed up with Visual.ly and FEI to host a Scale-Of-The-Brain infographic competition. With competition judges like Christopher Jobson (of Colossal), Maria Popova (of Brainpickings) and MIT neuroscientist and professional brain-mapper Sebastian Seung, entries…

Thom Yorke Demonstrates Why Facial Symmetry Isn’t Everything

While some studies have suggested that symmetrical faces are perceived as more attractive than others, the way we process facial features suggests that it is actually asymmetry that makes our mugs interesting, appealing and memorable. In a visually tantalizing piece for the latest issue of science magazine Nautilus, Simone M. Scully spoke with neurobiologists, psychologists…

Possibly the Worst Misuse of Neuroscience Ever

Of all the terrible ways that insights from neuroscience have been twisted for use in unrelated areas, this might be the worst. According to one self-help author, you can “fix your financial impulses in 45 days” by pumping up the dopamine in your brain. Science! In an article on Ready for Zero which is recycling…

What Science Reveals About The Craft Beer Revolution

Between 2011 and 2013 the number of U.S. craft breweries jumped from 1,970 to 2,483. And the trend shows no sign of slowing down, with at least 413 new breweries opening in the past few months. Why is everyone so hopped up about craft beer? (See what I did there?) As usual, science has the…

A Drug That Could Destroy Political Movements

As neuroengineering becomes a reality, scientists are grappling with the ethics of changing people’s perceptions and feelings — especially when it comes to love. We’re on the cusp of “anti-love” drugs, that could help people recover from bad love affairs. What could go wrong? A lot. https://gizmodo.com/scientists-need-philosophers-to-solve-this-problem-1578428283 Over at New York Magazine, Maia Szalavitz has…

Every Neuron in a Brain Recorded in 3D on a Millisecond Timescale

To learn how the whole brain works, it doesn’t do to just record from one neuron—you want to know what every single neuron is doing every millisecond. Now scientists have invented a technique that can actually capture the 3D activity of an entire brain milliseconds at the time—possibly the most complete picture of brain activity…

Scientists Say They Need Philosophers to Continue Their Research

At the University of Washington, researchers are pioneering a field of neuroscience called “neuroengineering,” which will one day involve doing things like regulating people’s moods with brain implants. In this fascinating video, they explain how their work spilled over into philosophy. The issues that these neuroengineers are tackling are going to become increasingly important in…

Smart Drugs Could Be Impairing The Brains Of Young People

It’s estimated that over a million students in the U.S. misuse prescription drugs and stimulants to boost their attention span, memory, and alertness. But a new study suggests some of these drugs are detrimental to developing brains, causing long-term impairments to cognitive function. As noted in the new study by Kimberly Urban and Wen-Jun Gao,…

Lucid Dreaming Can Be Induced By Zapping Brains With Gamma Waves

By administering mild electric currents to the brain, neuroscientists from Frankfurt University have successfully induced self-awareness in sleeping volunteers. Amazingly, the technique could be used to help people take better control of their dreams. But it’s also a discovery that’s offering critical insights into the very nature of consciousness itself. Gamma waves have been linked…

How Does “Valence” Help Your Brain Distinguish Between Good And Bad?

Have you ever had anyone tell you that they feel the “good kind of tired” while you are feeling the much-more-common bad kind of tired? How do you experience having a good appetite versus just being hungry? To put in scientific terms, how do we judge valence? What Valence Isn’t Valence isn’t the term used…

Scientists Tinker with Neurons to Turn Lovers into Fighters

It would be nice to know how and why aggression occurs. It would give us better insight into everything from international war to schoolyard bullying. New research in mice suggests that estrogen may be more important than testosterone in modulating aggressive behavior, and that sex and aggression may be intimately connected. A Caltech research group…

The Neuroscience of Anti-Science Activists

When confronted with facts that contradict our beliefs, there’s a solid evolutionary reason why we double down and refuse to change our minds. It’s called “motivated reasoning,” and it suggests that rationality is always a process of rationalization. Writing in Mother Jones, Chris Mooney describes the “science of why we don’t believe science”: The theory…

Neuroscientists Are Developing an Entirely New Way of Shooting Movies

One of the delights of watching Gravity is director Alfonso Cuorón’s habit of shooting important scenes in one, long take with no cuts. Now, a scientist believes that we can create an entire cinema of no cuts, using radically new methods borrowed from neuroscience. Over at Scientific American, Jennifer Oullette delves into the work of…

Boosting Brain Power Comes At A Price

Studies show that mild electrical currents can accelerate a number of cognitive functions, such as learning and math. But researchers now say there are mental tradeoffs to doing so. About a year ago, a research team led by Rol Cohen Kadosh showed that transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS) makes people better at math. It works…

Your Thoughts May Be Nothing More than “Self-Organized Criticality”

What’s happening in your brain when you have a thought? Neuroscientists have been debating this idea for years, but one physicist believes he has the answer. It comes from observing how matter shifts from one state to another in the physical world. Illustration by James O’Brien In Quanta magazine, Jennifer Oullette explores how a theory…

A radical new theory by a well-respected scientist suggests that consciousness is a state of matter, like a liquid or gas. According to MIT’s Max Tegmark, “perceptronium” gives rise to various types of consciousness when certain mathematical and physical conditions are met. Conceivably, the theory could be formulated as a set of problems that can…

Mind Readers: The Scientists Setting Coma Victims Free

Thousands remain trapped between life and death. Three scientists are working to free them. Roger Highfield reports. “Imagine you wake up, locked inside a box,” says Adrian Owen. “It’s only just big enough to hold your body but sufficiently small that you can’t move. “It’s a perfect fit, down to every last one of your…

How to Mold a Brain

Our brains are inherently plastic, and can be easily shaped to change our behavior. In this video Crash Course looks at the history of psychology to explain how possible to mold our grey matter Kicking off with Pavlov and his bells and then taking a deep dive into some of the most controversial psychology experiments…

What Animal Gets The Most REM Sleep?

Do you think its dogs? Dogs sleep a lot. Guess again. What about cats? Not them either. It isn’t a primate, so that rules out humans, apes, and monkeys. Sleep researchers divide the phases of sleep into two broad categories: REM and NREM. In REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, your muscles are almost completely paralyzed,…

A new study suggests it’s all downhill after our mid-twenties. By comparing the performance of 3,305 StarCraft 2 players aged 16 to 44, researchers say we reach the peak of our cognitive motor performance at the age of 24. On the positive side, they say older plays can still find ways to compensate. Image: StarCraft…