Neuroscience

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  • Molecular trigger for Alzheimer's disease identified

    ScienceDaily: Neuroscience News
    20 May 2013 | 12:42 pm
    Researchers have pinpointed a catalytic trigger for the onset of Alzheimer's disease -- when the fundamental structure of a protein molecule changes to cause a chain reaction that leads to the death of neurons in the brain.

  • New Research Suggests Possible Direction for Treatment of Autism

    Neuroscience RSS Feeds - Neuroscience News Updates
    Neuroscience News
    17 May 2013 | 3:35 pm
    Researchers note marked improvements in young autistic boys when using a treatment known as sensory-motor or environmental enrichment.

  • Cognitive enhancement in the future: electric brain stimulation plus cognitive training?

    SharpBrains
    SharpBrains
    17 May 2013 | 5:48 am
    Electrical Brain Stimulation Helps People Learn Math Faster (Wired): “…scientists stimulated volunteers’ brains with mild electric current while they learned new arithmetic operations based on made-up symbols. People who received brain stimulation during training sessions on five consecutive days learned two to five times faster than those who received sham stimulation, and they retained a 30 to 40 percent performance edge six months later…The researchers applied TRNS to a different brain region thought to play a role in mathematical cognition, the left dorsolateral prefrontal…

  • Affecting Perception: Interview + Gallery

    The Beautiful Brain
    Noah Hutton
    6 Mar 2013 | 1:00 pm
    An exploration of art and neuroscience has taken over Oxford Castle’s O3 Gallery this month. The exhibition is titled Affecting Perception, and it features the work of artists “affected by neurological conditions, and contemporary art inspired by discoveries in neuroscience.” The show was devised by an intrepid, forward-thinking group of recent graduates from the arts and sciences known as the AXNS Collective. Their eclectic roots and can-do spirit has yielded a first-of-its-kind show in Oxford, funded by grants that the AXNS Collective secured from the Wellcome Foundation…

  • The Law to Neuroscience: Hold Up

    Dana Foundation Blog
    Dana
    15 May 2013 | 9:36 am
    If you were unable to attend the Neuroscience and Law event in D.C. in April, you can now watch it in its entirety by viewing the webcast on the Dana Foundation website. Focusing on the use of neuroscience research in the courtroom, the event was part of the Neuroscience & Society series sponsored by American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Dana Foundation. Featured panelists included Dana Alliance and Dana Foundation Board member Steve Hyman, director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; Owen Jonesdirector of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on…
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    Brains On Purpose™

  • Visual vocabulary: Some tips for your pictograph path

    StephanieWestAllen
    7 May 2013 | 10:15 am
    We've looked at the brain-friendliness of visual communication in past posts. Today I am creating a very short post just to give you a couple of resources you may find helpful on that pictograph path™—if you decide to follow the visual way. First, a blog post on building your visual vocabulary: "Sketchnote building blocks + visual vocabulary" (Cheryl Lowry). This...

  • Filters and frames: Mediation is all about the viewfinder

    StephanieWestAllen
    17 Apr 2013 | 10:40 am
    Our brains are vigilant, hyperaware of any sensed change to see if it represents danger. Partly because they use a lot of our energy, our brains seek to deal with new information quickly and easily. So, rather like a photographer, the brain applies filters and frames. The filters shift, accentuate, and diminish what is seen. And the frames limit what...

  • Conflict concert? Dispute ditty? Mediation minuet? Can the speech of angels lead to agreement?

    StephanieWestAllen
    3 Apr 2013 | 6:54 am
    Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite. --Thomas Carlyle It's been a while since I last blogged about the role of music in conflict resolution. But I was reminded of its potential by a recent...

  • What is the biggest, scariest mediation monster of all?

    StephanieWestAllen
    24 Mar 2013 | 8:38 pm
    Before I venture an answer to the question in the title of this post, let me put forth a definition of monster, one of which I am particularly fond: Monster derives from the Latin word monstrum, which in turn derives from the root monere (to warn). To be a monster is to be an omen. --Stephen T. Asma, On Monsters:...

  • Another clue that brain locationism is likely wrong or misleading: Why is the location concept sticky as glue?

    StephanieWestAllen
    23 Mar 2013 | 10:22 am
    Locationism is when people talk about the brain as if its activities or functions happen or are governed in just one location. For example, someone may say, "Here is the place in the brain for talking and the location for balking and the place for walking." I have blogged about this misperception before, e.g, here, here, and here. For some...
 
 
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    MIT News - Topic - Neuroscience

  • Complex brain function depends on flexibility

    19 May 2013 | 10:00 am
    Over the past few decades, neuroscientists have made much progress in mapping the brain by deciphering the functions of individual neurons that perform very specific tasks, such as recognizing the location or color of an object. However, there are many neurons, especially in brain regions that perform sophisticated functions such as thinking and planning, that don’t fit into this pattern. Instead of responding exclusively to one stimulus or task, these neurons react in different ways to a wide variety of things. MIT neuroscientist Earl Miller first noticed these unusual activity patterns…

  • An unforgettable life

    13 May 2013 | 9:00 pm
    In 1953, a young man named Henry Molaison underwent an experimental operation that doctors hoped would control his frequent epileptic seizures. When the surgeon could not locate the origin of Molaison’s seizures, he removed a structure known as the hippocampus from both sides of his brain. Soon after the surgery, Molaison’s doctors realized that the procedure had had a dramatic and unintended consequence: Molaison could no longer form new memories. This tragic loss for Molaison and his family turned him into one of the most important patients in the history of neuroscience. In fact, his…

  • 3Q: Robert Desimone on the federal BRAIN Initiative

    22 Apr 2013 | 9:00 pm
    Mapping the human brain, with its billions of neurons, is one of science’s most elusive projects. But a new federal program — the $100 million Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative — could help neuroscientists at MIT and other institutions unlock some of the brain’s mysteries. How will MIT contribute to the initiative’s goals? How will the initiative impact research already being done at MIT and in the Boston area? How will science benefit? Robert Desimone, the Doris and Don Berkey Professor of Neuroscience and director of MIT’s McGovern…

  • Four MIT researchers attend White House announcement of brain initiative

    2 Apr 2013 | 2:07 pm
    Four MIT neuroscientists were among those invited to the White House on Tuesday, April 2, when President Barack Obama announced a new initiative to understand the human brain. Professors Ed Boyden, Emery Brown, Robert Desimone and Sebastian Seung were among a group of leading researchers who joined Obama for the announcement, along with Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, and representatives of federal and private funders of neuroscience research. In unveiling the BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative, Obama highlighted…

  • Students have engineering on the brain

    1 Apr 2013 | 9:00 pm
    With the recent launch of MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, MIT News examines research with the potential to reshape medicine and health care through new scientific knowledge, novel treatments and products, better management of medical data, and improvements in health-care delivery. Neurotechnology may sound dauntingly complex, but in practice it can include ideas as straightforward as recognizing computer users by the exact way they press buttons.One such prototype, developed at MIT, works by sensing subtle differences in the timing and pressure applied by a user in…
 
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    ScienceBlogs

  • A Lesson in Applied Probability [EvolutionBlog]

    jrosenhouse
    21 May 2013 | 12:50 am
    Nate Silver provides the antidote to some dubious statistical reasoning on the part of certain conservatives. He was replying in particular to this column from Peggy Noonan. A column, mind you, that opens with, “We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate.” Goodness! Then she presents evidence like this: The second part of the scandal is the auditing of political activists who have opposed the administration. The Journal’s Kim Strassel reported an Idaho businessman named Frank VanderSloot, who’d donated more than a million dollars to groups…

  • A man “emulates” Angelina Jolie by having preventative surgery? Not so fast… [Respectful Insolence]

    Orac
    21 May 2013 | 12:00 am
    Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. OK, I know I use that line entirely too much, but I also don’t really care. When something fits, wear it. And if it doesn’t fit, you must acquit. Sorry, I’ll stop. I’m in a weird mood as I write this. But it’s really hard not to get into a weird mood after reading the lastest bit by that crank to rule all cranks, that quack who tries to rule all quacks, Mike Adams, founder of NaturalNews.com. Last week, he laid down the vile stupid fast and furious to attack Angelina Jolie’s decision to undergo bilateral…

  • Why Global Warming’s Effects Will Be Worse Than You Were Thinking [Greg Laden's Blog]

    Greg Laden
    20 May 2013 | 6:24 pm
    The story of climate change has always been more of worst-case, or at least, worser-case scenarios developing and less about good news showing up out of nowhere and making us unexpectedly happy. A few decades ago, it became clear that the release of fossil Carbon into the atmosphere primarily as CO2 was going to cause a greenhouse effect (yes, dear reader, we’ve known this for looooong time … the idea that this is a recent and still untested idea is a lie you’ve been fed so many times some of you may have begun to believe it). At that time climate scientists thought,…

  • Mary’s Monday Metazoan: How ladylike! [Pharyngula]

    PZ Myers
    20 May 2013 | 5:46 pm
    It’s the lovely Pink Dragon millipede — it’s bright enough to belong in the girl’s aisle at the toy store. It also squirts cyanide at you if you annoy it.

  • Teenagers’ calorie consumption at McDonalds versus Subway [The Pump Handle]

    Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH
    20 May 2013 | 4:57 pm
    I’ve done it myself.   Ask a teenager a healthy place to eat, she’ll respond “Subway or Chipotle.”   What about a less healthy place? Response: “McDonald’s or Burger King.”   But do fast food restaurants that are perceived “healthier” by teens actually translate into fewer calories consumed by them? Researchers in southern California explored that question in a new paper published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.  They teamed up with the community-based group Youth, Family, School and Community Partnership in Action to recruit…
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    Deric Bownds' MindBlog

  • On well-being - An orgy of good energy last week in Madison, Wisconsin.

    20 May 2013 | 2:30 am
    In spite of slightly flippant title for this post, I really do believe this is good stuff. The Dali Lama paid a two day visit to Madison Wisconsin last week, as part of his current world tour “Change Your Mind, Change The World,” speaking at a number of different venues (all under high security screening) under the sponsorship of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds and the Global Health Institute, both at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My colleague Richard Davidson, who was central in arranging his visit, is doing an amazing job of bringing to the general public…

  • On continuing MindBlog - Drawing personal structure from sampling the digital stream.

    18 May 2013 | 5:42 am
    The responses in comments and emails to my ‘scratching my head about mindblog’ post are telling me that my small contributions are valued, with some making it part of the ritual that structures their lives. So, I guess I should listen to that rather than fretting about adding to the digital stream that threatens to overwhelm us all. We all want to understand how our show is run, what is going on with the little grey cells between our ears (and of course, we would like it run it better). We want to ‘see’ in addition to just ‘being.’ Indeed, this distinction is one of the most…

  • Deric’s MindBlog spends time in the past...in the future?

    15 May 2013 | 8:47 am
    The past:  I’ve been spending the past two weeks in a former life. I was in Seattle last week to attend the annual meeting of ARVO (Assoc. for Research in Vision and Opthalmology), at which my last postdoc, Vadim Arshavsky, was awarded the Proctor Prize.   The graphic in this post is from a lecture I just gave on Tuesday to the final seminar this term of the McPherson Eye Research Institute here at U.W., describing the contributions of my laboratory (from 1968 to 1998) to understanding how light changes into a nerve signal in our eyes. (The talk is posted here.) The future:…

  • MindBlog in Seattle this week - hiatus in posts

    6 May 2013 | 7:15 am
    There will be a hiatus in MindBlog posts for awhile. I'm spending this week at an ARVO (Association for Research in Vision and Opthalmology) meeting where a protege of mine, Vadim Arshavsky, who I brought to my lab from the former USSR for post-doctoral training, is being given the field's Proctor Award for work done (mainly after leaving my laboratory) on understanding how the nerve signal initiated by a flash of light in our eyes is rapidly turned off.

  • Riding other people's coattails.

    3 May 2013 | 7:32 am
    Another interesting bit from Psychological Science: Two laboratory experiments and one dyadic study of ongoing relationships of romantic partners examined how temporary and chronic deficits in self-control affect individuals’ evaluations of other people. We suggest that when individuals lack self-control resources, they value such resources in other people. Our results support this hypothesis: We found that individuals low (but not high) in self-control use information about other people’s self-control abilities when judging them, evaluating other people with high self-control more…
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    Brain Blogger

  • Out-Group Discrimination Fuels Anger, Risk-Taking and Vigilance

    Rubeena Shamsudheen, MS, MA, PhD student
    20 May 2013 | 4:00 am
    Discrimination originates in prejudice. It most often takes the form of social rejection, with racial- and gender-based discrimination being two of the most common types. A curious phenomenon about the effects of discrimination is reported in the journal Psychological Science by the team of Wendy Mendes — a senior psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco. It is suggested that we divide the world into them (out-group) and us (in-group), by placing people into social groups. The Wendes study suggests that individuals are more sensitive to discrimination by out-group…

  • Understanding How Color Is Perceived in the Brain

    Daniel Albright, MA
    17 May 2013 | 4:00 am
    Scientists have examined the effects of language on categorical color perception — the idea that color perception is affected by how it is described in language — with behavioral research. Meanwhile, other scholars have looked into this phenomenon using neuroimaging techniques in an attempt to get a better look at the neural processes underlying these results. In 2009, an international group of researchers replicated one of the first studies to show lateralized Whorfian effects in categorical color perception, with the addition of fMRI data. They predicted that the areas of the…

  • Psychopharmacological Drug Development in A Depression?

    Thomas Hartmann, PhD
    14 May 2013 | 4:00 am
    “If you are a mouse and suffer from depression, we can cure you!”. You may have heard similar statements for other diseases, which is a general reflection on the current state of drug development. After spending billions of dollars in pharmaceutical drug development only about 30 new drugs reached the market last year — a number that is higher than in previous years, but still. It’s not good news for patients, especially those suffering from mental illness, for whom the outlook on new drugs is even bleaker. Why the dry pipeline? Mental diseases are difficult to treat. Drug…

  • Teaching the Brain to Calm Itself

    Maria Esposito, MA
    11 May 2013 | 4:00 am
    Estimates of combat-related Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in U.S. veterans since the Vietnam War ranges from approximately 2& to 17%. Additional studies of combat veterans of more recent wars places the range of Iraq War returnees who suffer from PTSD  between 4% and 17%. Currently, there is no one form of treatment that has been found effective in combating this disorder, but can the brain somehow be encouraged to calm itself down? PTSD is classified as an anxiety disorder brought on as the result of witnessing a life-threatening event. The individual repeatedly re-experiences…

  • Horror on Seymour Avenue

    Bulbul Bahuguna, MD
    10 May 2013 | 7:06 pm
    As we get ready to celebrate Mother’s Day this weekend, we have been greeted with news of the liberation of three young women who were held in captivity for nearly 10 years in a ramshackle house located in a rundown neighborhood of Cleveland. Michelle Knight, Gina DeJesus and Amanda Berry, along with her six year daughter born during confinement, were freed from their captor Ariel Castro last Monday. Michelle was only 21 years old in 2002 when her captor brought her into his house and did not let her go. Over the next couple of years she was joined by two teenage girls: Amanda, 17 and Gina,…
 
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    Dana Foundation Blog

  • Social and Emotional Learning

    Dana
    20 May 2013 | 8:35 am
    Formal education often does not address the social and emotional backgrounds of children and their ability to learn, according to Ingrid Wickelgren, moderator at a recent New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) event titled Social and Emotional Learning: Preparing our Children to Excel. She argued that parents and other caregivers send children to school, assuming that the teacher will pour math, reading, and science into their tiny little brains. Bam! Done! In reality, learning is infinitely more complicated—some students are better-behaved, pay closer attention, complete homework assignments,…

  • Dana Newsletter: May

    Dana
    17 May 2013 | 8:50 am
    Below is the latest Dana email newsletter. You can sign up to receive this (and other Dana email alerts and/or print publications) by going here. Sound the Alarm: Fraud in Neuroscience by Stephen G. Lisberger, Ph.D. By all accounts, scientific misconduct over the last decade is on the rise, especially in the area of journal retractions. In neuroscience, our author -- both a leading academic and an experienced neuroscience journal editor -- believes the field is detecting "only the tip of the fraud iceberg." His story addresses the nature, detection, and incentives for fraud, and…

  • Are Genetics the Key to Solving Brain Disorders?

    Dana
    17 May 2013 | 7:55 am
    A Dana Foundation-sponsored lecture by Maria Karayiorgou, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University’s Mind Brain Behavior Institute, was a mind boggling, roller coaster ride on the track where neuroscience is pinning much of its hopes: genetics. Karayiorgou’s lecture was a bit like a trip down Alice in Wonderland’s rabbit hole: the more she and her colleagues uncover, it seems, the further away they are from definitive answers. One reason: The average adult human brain has 80 billion neurons; each neuron has multiple connections. Those connections may number in the…

  • The Law to Neuroscience: Hold Up

    Dana
    15 May 2013 | 9:36 am
    If you were unable to attend the Neuroscience and Law event in D.C. in April, you can now watch it in its entirety by viewing the webcast on the Dana Foundation website. Focusing on the use of neuroscience research in the courtroom, the event was part of the Neuroscience & Society series sponsored by American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Dana Foundation. Featured panelists included Dana Alliance and Dana Foundation Board member Steve Hyman, director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; Owen Jonesdirector of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on…

  • Report on Progress: Vision

    Dana
    15 May 2013 | 7:15 am
    In the May edition of the Report on Progress, “Artificial Sight: Restoration of Sight through Use of Argus II, a Bioelectronic Retinal Implant,” Mark S. Humayun, M.D., Ph.D., discusses restoring sight to blind patients through a retinal implant: More than 1 million Americans are legally blind and another 10% cannot detect light. With increased mean lifespan, the frequency of age-related eye disease will double in the next 30 years.A significant percentage of the non-treatable blindness stems from loss of photoreceptors (the rods and cones). Once photoreceptors are lost, restoring…
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    Mind Hacks

  • Did the eyes really stare down bicycle crime in Newcastle?

    tomstafford
    16 May 2013 | 2:33 am
    This is the first fortnightly column I’ll be writing for The Conversation, a creative commons news and opinion website that launched today. The site has been set up by a number of UK universities and bodies such as the Wellcome Trust, Nuffield Foundation and HEFCE, following the successful model of the Australian version of the site. Their plan is to unlock the massive amount of expertise held by UK academics and inject it into the public discourse. My plan is to give some critical commentary on headlines from the week's news which focus on neuroscience and psychology. If…

  • A world of swearing

    vaughanbell
    15 May 2013 | 11:19 am
    The Boston Globe has a short but fascinating interview on the history of swearing where author Melissa Mohr describes how the meaning of the act of swearing has changed over time. IDEAS: Are there other old curses that 21st-century people would be surprised to hear about? MOHR: Because [bad words] were mostly religious in the Middle Ages, any part of God’s body you could curse with. God’s bones, nails, wounds, precious heart, passion, God’s death—that was supposedly one of Queen Elizabeth I’s favorite oaths. IDEAS: Have religious curses like that lost their power as the culture…

  • The ‘unnamed feeling’ named ASMR

    tomstafford
    13 May 2013 | 7:03 am
    Here’s my BBC Future column from last week. It’s about the so-called Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, which didn’t have a name until 2010 and I’d never heard of until 2012. Now, I’m finding out that it is surprisingly common. The original is here. It’s a tightening at the back of the throat, or a tingling around your scalp, a chill that comes over you when you pay close attention to something, such as a person whispering instructions. It’s called the autonomous sensory meridian response, and until 2010 it didn’t exist. I first heard about…

  • Disaster response psychology needs to change

    vaughanbell
    12 May 2013 | 3:54 am
    I’ve got an article in today’s Observer about how disaster response mental health services are often based on the erroneous assumption that everyone needs ‘treatment’ and often rely on single-session counselling sessions which may do more harm than good. Unfortunately, the article has been given a rather misleading headline (‘Minds traumatised by disaster heal themselves without therapy’) which suggests that mental health services are not needed. This is not the case and this is not what the article says. What it does say is that the common idea of disaster…

  • 2013-05-03 Spike activity

    vaughanbell
    4 May 2013 | 5:41 am
    Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news: I can’t recognise my own face! In my case, it’s because the Botox has worn off but for person described in the New Scientist article it’s because of prosopagnosia. The Guardian reports that the UK Government’s ‘Nudge Unit’ is set to become a commercial service. Nudge mercenaries! A greater use of “I” and “me” as a mark of interpersonal distress. An interesting study covered by the BPS Research Digest. Pacific Standard has an interesting piece about gun registers, felons and…
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    Neuroethics & Law Blog

  • "Cognitive Enhancement, Rational Choice and Justification"

    NELB Staff
    20 May 2013 | 6:50 am
    Cognitive Enhancement, Rational Choice and Justification by Veljko Dubljević has been published in the most recent issue of Nueroethics: Abstract This paper examines the claims in the debate on cognitive enhancement in neuroethics that society wide pressure to enhance can...

  • "Treating Yourself as an Object: Self-Objectification and the Ethical Dimensions of Antidepressant Use"

    NELB Staff
    17 May 2013 | 6:48 am
    Treating Yourself as an Object: Self-Objectification and the Ethical Dimensions of Antidepressant Use by Ginger A. Hoffman has been published in the most recent issue of Neuroethics: Abstract In this paper, I offer one moral reason to eschew antidepressant medication...

  • "Ideals of Student Excellence and Enhancement"

    NELB Staff
    15 May 2013 | 6:42 am
    Ideals of Student Excellence and Enhancement by Gavin G. Enck has been published in the most recent issue of Nueroethics: Abstract Discussions about the permissibility of students using enhancements in education are often framed by the question, “Is a student...

  • "‘The Thorny and Arduous Path of Moral Progress’: Moral Psychology and Moral Enhancement"

    NELB Staff
    14 May 2013 | 5:00 am
    ‘The Thorny and Arduous Path of Moral Progress’: Moral Psychology and Moral Enhancement by Chris Zarpentine has been published in the most recent issue of Neuroethics: Abstract The moral enhancement of humans by biological or genetic means has recently been...

  • PEBS Neuroethics Roundup (JHU)

    NELB Staff
    9 May 2013 | 3:58 pm
    Last Edition's Most Popular Article: Why Sleep Deprivation Eases Depression, Scientific American In The Popular Press Envisioning The Future With Inventor Cori Lathan, National Public Radio How Slot Machines Use Psychology and Design to Keep You Coming Back, Gizmodo Social...
 
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    Neuromarketing

  • Brilliant Billboard Traps 230,000 Real Bugs

    Roger Dooley
    14 May 2013 | 5:32 am
    How do you promote a new outdoor insect spray, Orphea, on a billboard in Milan? This clever effort turned the portion of the corresponding to the “spray” from a pictured can into a giant piece of fly paper. Over a period of days, the sticky trap captured hundreds of thousands of real insects. Watch the [...]

  • Neuromarketing Meets Conversion Optimization: Free Webinar

    Roger Dooley
    9 May 2013 | 6:20 am
    Next week, conversion optimization expert Chris Goward and I will be doing a joint webinar: Neuromarketing Meets Conversion Optimization: Brainy Profit Boosters. I was excited to set this up with Chris, who’s the author of You Should Test That. Testing is critical. In nearly every speech I give, I include a quote from ad legend [...]

  • Persuade with Visual Metaphors

    Roger Dooley
    8 May 2013 | 11:37 am
    While we think of metaphors as mainly word-based, visual metaphors can be a potent selling tool. They can both engage the brain like text metaphors and stimulate the viewer’s senses in a way that words alone may not. I ran across an ad for Austin-based Elements Laser Spa that includes both a visual metaphor and [...]

  • Do Your Customers Feel Ignored?

    Jane Bromley
    30 Apr 2013 | 5:21 am
    No business intentionally ignores its customers. In fact, most managers think they do a reasonably good job of listening. But, if a customer feels ignored, big trouble lies ahead.

  • Brainfluence in Korean

    Roger Dooley
    29 Apr 2013 | 5:28 am
    I returned from my speaking swing through South America last week to find a nice surprise from Wiley, my publisher: a few sample copies of Brainfluence in Korean. The cover, amusingly enough, features a brain in a bottle! I neither speak nor read Korean, so to find out how the title might read, I turned [...]
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    SharpBrains

  • Six tips to build resilience and prevent brain-damaging stress

    SharpBrains
    20 May 2013 | 11:27 am
    These days, we all live under considerable stress — economic challenges, job demands, family tensions, always-on technology and the 24-hour news cycle all contribute to ceaseless worry. While many have learned to simply “live with it,” this ongoing stress can, unless properly managed, have a serious negative impact on our ability to think clearly and make good decisions, in the short-term, and even harm our brains in the long-term. Recent studies show that chronic stress can also lead to depression, and even to a higher risk of cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease symptoms. Why?

  • Cognitive enhancement in the future: electric brain stimulation plus cognitive training?

    SharpBrains
    17 May 2013 | 5:48 am
    Electrical Brain Stimulation Helps People Learn Math Faster (Wired): “…scientists stimulated volunteers’ brains with mild electric current while they learned new arithmetic operations based on made-up symbols. People who received brain stimulation during training sessions on five consecutive days learned two to five times faster than those who received sham stimulation, and they retained a 30 to 40 percent performance edge six months later…The researchers applied TRNS to a different brain region thought to play a role in mathematical cognition, the left dorsolateral prefrontal…

  • Brain fitness matters in Canada: Upcoming talks in Toronto and Victoria

    Alvaro Fernandez
    14 May 2013 | 6:33 am
    Heads up: I’ll be in Toronto this Wednesday and Thursday to speak  on “The Web as a Gym for the Brain” at mesh13, and to present our new book on How to Optimize Brain Health and Performance at Any Age at MaRS Discovery District. If you’re attending either, please say Hello! Will be back up in Canada on June 12th, in Vic­to­ria, BC, to deliver a keynote on How Can We Invest In Our Brains To Boost Inno­va­tion and Resilience, at the Con­fer­ence Board of Canada’s Annual Coun­cil of Human Resource Executives. It’s been fascinating to observe the growing interest in Canada…

  • The future of intuitive technology and neurocognitive care?

    SharpBrains
    10 May 2013 | 1:21 pm
    Envisioning The Future With Inventor Cori Lathan (NPR): “Computers were created to be useful tools, but all too often it’s still a chore to get technology to do our bidding…For example, working as an engineer with astronauts at NASA, Lathan realized that the physical challenges of living in space in some ways mirror the challenges of living with a disability on Earth.Building on that insight, she invented a playful robot that could help make it easier for children with cerebral palsy to get through physical therapy. She and her team also came up with a glove-based interface so that…

  • Time to revamp psychiatry and mental health in light of modern neuroscience?

    SharpBrains
    8 May 2013 | 12:34 pm
    Transforming Diagnosis (article by Thomas Insel, Director of the NIMH): “In a few weeks, the American Psychiatric Association will release its new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)…While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity. Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart…
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    BSP Show Notes - Brain Science Podcast

  • Robert Burton's "Skeptic's Guide to the Mind" (BSP 96)

    Ginger Campbell, MD
    26 Apr 2013 | 10:32 am
    Robert Burton, MDIn On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not Robert Burton showed that the feeling of certainty, which is something we all experience, has its origin in brain processes that are both unconscious and inaccessible to consciousness. Now in his new book A Skeptic's Guide to the Mind: What Neuroscience Can and Cannot Tell Us About Ourselves he extends these ideas to other mental sensations such as our feeling of agency and our sense of causation. The idea that much of what our brain does is not accessible to our conscious awareness is NOT new, but Dr. Burton…

  • Understanding Pain (BSP 95)

    Ginger Campbell, MD
    28 Mar 2013 | 2:37 pm
    In Understanding Pain: Exploring the Perception of Pain,  Dr. Fernando Cervero does a wonderful job of condensing his 40+ years of research and immersion in the field of pain research into a concise but readable account.  It's a great introduction, and it's bound to inspire a new generation of physicians and researchers. I interviewed Dr. Cervero in BSP 93, and this month's podcast (BSP 95) is the promised second part of our discussion of pain.  I focus on some of the topics that Dr. Cervero and I did not have time to discuss, including a look at how the mechanisms of…

  • How the Brain Makes Meaning (BSP 94)

    Ginger Campbell, MD
    25 Feb 2013 | 1:00 am
    In his first book, Louder Than Words: The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning, linguist Benjamin K. Bergen manages to make a large amount of scientific research both accessible and entertaining.  Dr. Bergen is one of the new breed of linguists who are working with neuroscientists to explore some of the key questions about language and the brain.  When I interviewed him recently (BSP 94), we talked about the challenges of writing about how science is really done, but we focused on one of the key questions facing cognitive neuroscience: how does the brain understand…

  • Pain is a Complex Emotional and Sensory Experience (BSP 93)

    Ginger Campbell, MD
    25 Jan 2013 | 2:00 am
    Dr. Fernando Cervero  Dr. Fernando Cervero of McGill University has been studying pain since the beginning of his career back in the 1960s.  These decades have seen tremendous advances in our neuroscientific understanding of what causes different types of pain, as well as changing attitudes.  Pain was once regarded as something that most people had to endure, but now most of us demand adequate pain relief, sometimes even to the point of not tolerating minor pain.  Dr. Cevero's new book, Understanding Pain, provides an accessible account of both the history of pain…

  • Neuroscience Highlights for 2012 (BSP 92)

    Ginger Campbell, MD
    28 Dec 2012 | 4:35 am
    The Brain Science Podcast recently passed 4 million downloads and it remains entrenched at or near the top of the iTunes rankings for Science and Medicine. So now it's time for our 6th Annual Review Episode. The purpose of this year-ending podcast is to review some of the year's highlights and key ideas. As I reviewed the transcripts of this year's episodes, I was struck by the fact that although each episode stands alone, they also inform one another. One unifying theme was the importance of taking an evolutionary approach to understanding how the human brain…
 
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    Neuronarrative

  • How Uncertainty Overpowers Evidence in Matters of Health

    David DiSalvo
    12 May 2013 | 1:17 pm
    Few of us are comfortable with uncertainty in any form, least of all when the status of our health is branded with the scarlet question mark. A new study in the journal JAMA suggests that fear of uncertainty is fueling a psychological dynamic that's leading to more and more invasive procedures--whether or not we need them.read more

  • Disruptive Technology Meets the Immigration Imagination

    David DiSalvo
    30 Apr 2013 | 6:22 pm
    One can look around any city or town in America and find evidence to support the argument that new digital technology is truly dangerous to the human condition. Good examples range from obesity and onset diabetes linked to the sedentary entertainment habits of young children who incessantly play video games, to incidents of texting drivers causing fatal collisions.read more

  • Extroverts and Introverts, Make Way for the Ambiverts!

    David DiSalvo
    21 Apr 2013 | 3:06 pm
    We like to think that personality is a game of extremes, but the truth is quite the opposite.read more

  • 10 Reasons Why We Struggle With Creativity

    David DiSalvo
    26 Mar 2013 | 2:46 pm
    Anyone who says “I don’t have a creative bone in my body” is seriously underestimating their skeleton. More to the point, they are drastically undervaluing their brain.read more

  • Love in the Time of Neuroscience

    David DiSalvo
    11 Mar 2013 | 11:26 am
    What do the neurobiological underpinnings of love got to do with it? Quite a lot. But, understanding the nuts and bolts of love need not drain it of its power and magic. read more
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    "On the Brain" with Dr. Mike Merzenich, Ph.D.

  • Study: Posit Science Brain Training Shows Significant, Lasting Gains in Cognitive Function

    Dr. Michael Merzenich
    2 May 2013 | 2:05 pm
    I woke up in a cheerful mood this morning because yesterday the results of a scientific study were published and they once again demonstrated that very strong benefits can be achieved through only 10 hours of Posit Science brain training. The cognitive benefits were not just seen in the tasks themselves, but in measures of everyday activities. What’s more, the … Continue reading →The post Study: Posit Science Brain Training Shows Significant, Lasting Gains in Cognitive Function appeared first on "On the Brain" with Dr. Mike Merzenich, Ph.D..

  • Promising Results in Controlling Tinnitus with Brain Training

    Dr. Michael Merzenich
    4 Apr 2011 | 11:46 am
    I had the great pleasure of visiting a wonderful research team studying the neurological origins and treatment of tinnitus at Washington University Medical School in St. Louis last week.  About 30 million U.S. citizens have tinnitus.  For about 4 million of them, the tinnitus is identified as “severe” – which means that it is continuously disturbing and intrusive, makes normal … Continue reading →The post Promising Results in Controlling Tinnitus with Brain Training appeared first on "On the Brain" with Dr. Mike Merzenich, Ph.D..

  • Lessons from the Hand and Mind Symposium

    Dr. Michael Merzenich
    26 May 2010 | 1:27 pm
    I had the great pleasure of attending a symposium held in the College of Education at my alma mater, the University of Portland, focused on this interesting subject, and the implications that it bears for effective learning and teaching. My co-participants were distinguished professors in linguistics and education science (Ellyn Arwood and Richard Christen), and two wonderful educators working on … Continue reading →The post Lessons from the Hand and Mind Symposium appeared first on "On the Brain" with Dr. Mike Merzenich, Ph.D..

  • Visual training to retain driving competence — and your independence!

    Dr. Michael Merzenich
    13 Jul 2009 | 9:00 am
    Today, Posit Science announced the release of a new computer-based visual training tool, DriveSharp, specifically designed to improve the performance abilities of adult automobile drivers to a degree that can be expected to very substantially impact their driving safety. This training employs two very important brain plasticity-based strategies to improve your visual assets that support safe driving. The first is … Continue reading →The post Visual training to retain driving competence — and your independence! appeared first on "On the Brain" with Dr. Mike…

  • The brain plasticity revolution

    Dr. Michael Merzenich
    6 Jul 2009 | 2:08 pm
    I delivered a lecture at the University of Konstanz in Germany two weeks ago, as a part of the celebration of the 100th Anniversary of the Heidelberg Akademie. This is one of 7 scientific academies in Germany. Because Germany was created as an amalgamation of powerful states in the 19th Century, its scientific academies originate with and are still identified … Continue reading →The post The brain plasticity revolution appeared first on "On the Brain" with Dr. Mike Merzenich, Ph.D..
 
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    ScienceBlogs

  • A Lesson in Applied Probability [EvolutionBlog]

    jrosenhouse
    21 May 2013 | 12:50 am
    Nate Silver provides the antidote to some dubious statistical reasoning on the part of certain conservatives. He was replying in particular to this column from Peggy Noonan. A column, mind you, that opens with, “We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate.” Goodness! Then she presents evidence like this: The second part of the scandal is the auditing of political activists who have opposed the administration. The Journal’s Kim Strassel reported an Idaho businessman named Frank VanderSloot, who’d donated more than a million dollars to groups…

  • A man “emulates” Angelina Jolie by having preventative surgery? Not so fast… [Respectful Insolence]

    Orac
    21 May 2013 | 12:00 am
    Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. OK, I know I use that line entirely too much, but I also don’t really care. When something fits, wear it. And if it doesn’t fit, you must acquit. Sorry, I’ll stop. I’m in a weird mood as I write this. But it’s really hard not to get into a weird mood after reading the lastest bit by that crank to rule all cranks, that quack who tries to rule all quacks, Mike Adams, founder of NaturalNews.com. Last week, he laid down the vile stupid fast and furious to attack Angelina Jolie’s decision to undergo bilateral…

  • Why Global Warming’s Effects Will Be Worse Than You Were Thinking [Greg Laden's Blog]

    Greg Laden
    20 May 2013 | 6:24 pm
    The story of climate change has always been more of worst-case, or at least, worser-case scenarios developing and less about good news showing up out of nowhere and making us unexpectedly happy. A few decades ago, it became clear that the release of fossil Carbon into the atmosphere primarily as CO2 was going to cause a greenhouse effect (yes, dear reader, we’ve known this for looooong time … the idea that this is a recent and still untested idea is a lie you’ve been fed so many times some of you may have begun to believe it). At that time climate scientists thought,…

  • Mary’s Monday Metazoan: How ladylike! [Pharyngula]

    PZ Myers
    20 May 2013 | 5:46 pm
    It’s the lovely Pink Dragon millipede — it’s bright enough to belong in the girl’s aisle at the toy store. It also squirts cyanide at you if you annoy it.

  • Teenagers’ calorie consumption at McDonalds versus Subway [The Pump Handle]

    Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH
    20 May 2013 | 4:57 pm
    I’ve done it myself.   Ask a teenager a healthy place to eat, she’ll respond “Subway or Chipotle.”   What about a less healthy place? Response: “McDonald’s or Burger King.”   But do fast food restaurants that are perceived “healthier” by teens actually translate into fewer calories consumed by them? Researchers in southern California explored that question in a new paper published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.  They teamed up with the community-based group Youth, Family, School and Community Partnership in Action to recruit…
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    NeuroLogica Blog

  • Consensus on Climate Change

    Steven Novella
    20 May 2013 | 5:19 am
    A recent review finds that over 97% of scientists believe that human activity is contributing to climate change. That is a very solid consensus of scientific opinion. This, of course, does not mean that the consensus must be correct, but (along with other data) it makes it unreasonable to claim that there is no consensus, or that there is significant scientific controversy on this topic. In fact, the 97% figure exactly matches prior surveys. Many scientific organizations have also officially endorsed this consensus. One of the common methods of deniers is to pretend as if there is a raging…

  • An Interview with Don McLeroy, Part IV

    Steven Novella
    17 May 2013 | 5:10 am
    This is the fourth is a series of posts analyzing the claims of Don McLeroy, former chairman of the Texas School Board of Education and young Earth creationist. I recently interviewed Don on the SGU about his successful insertion into the Texas science textbook standards language requiring books to address stasis and suddenness in the fossil record and the complexity of the cell. In parts 2 and 3 I addressed Don’s stasis and suddenness arguments. They are classic denialist fallacies – focusing on lower order details as if they call into question higher order patterns (they…

  • An Interview with Don McLeroy, Part III

    Steven Novella
    16 May 2013 | 4:48 am
    This week I am posting a discussion with Don McLeroy, a young Earth creationist and former chairman of the Texas Board of Education during the recent controversy over the science textbook standards. This is a follow up to an interview I did with him on the SGU. Don has been traveling a bit this week, so our e-mail conversation has been slow, but we have had a few exchanges. For today’s post I want to simply reprint that exchange and then add a few thoughts, before I go onto new territory, which I will do in tomorrow’s post. Here is Don’s response to my prior posts: Steven, I…

  • An Interview with Don McLeroy, Part II

    Steven Novella
    14 May 2013 | 5:14 am
    In part I of my analysis of a recent interview with Don McLeroy on the SGU I discussed his assertion that those of faith are more free to accept or reject the evidence for evolution, while strict materialists can only accept it as it is the only materialist option. I mentioned in that post that I would invite Don to respond – I did and he did. In this post I will include Don’s response and then my further analysis of his response. I will then extend the discussion to other points that Don raised during the SGU interview. Don McLeroy Responds to Part I Steven, Thank you for this…

  • An Interview with Don McLeroy, Part I

    Steven Novella
    13 May 2013 | 5:21 am
    On the SGU this week we did an interview with Don McLeroy, the former chairman of the Texas School Board of Education, famous for his (successful) attempts to insert wording into the science textbook standards that would open the door for creationist arguments. The interview was very enlightening. In my opinion it was an excellent example of the power of motivated reasoning – if we have a conclusion in mind, people are very good at finding a mental path to get there. We rarely do confrontational interviews on the SGU, but the few we have done I am generally happy with. The risk is that…
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    neuroscience « WordPress.com Tag Feed

  • On Neuro-Occultism: Time and Consciousness

    the Phoeron
    20 May 2013 | 9:23 am
    Most people walk through the world, living their lives from birth to death without ever questioning

  • The Sense of Being Stared at: And Other Aspects of the Extended Mind ~ Rupert Sheldrake

    evolutionarymystic
    20 May 2013 | 7:03 am
    Most of us know it well – the almost physical sensation that we are the object of someone’s at

  • The Zen of Neuroscience

    astudyinazul
    20 May 2013 | 6:01 am
    .. Zen painting has a lot of randomness and spontaneity to it. These forms are really preserved across different scales, and the behavior of growing processes in the brain (the branching of neurons) is very similar in the way a branch grows or a lightning bolt comes. They take the path of least resistance. In the case of a lightning bolt, there is all sorts of temperature fluctuations and molecular movements. And the electricity will want to come down and hit the earth in the easiest way possible. It is going to at every point find the path of least resistance. And this is happening on the…

  • High Price by Neuroscientist Dr. Carl Hart

    thewritelifeshow
    20 May 2013 | 6:00 am
    Click here to purchase your copy of High Price.

  • Conference at Koç University (Beyoglu - RCAC)

    dilekhuseyinzadegan
    20 May 2013 | 3:32 am
    Conference Program May 25th  Saturday 9.30 Opening 9.45-11.45 First Session Hilmi Demir: “A Recent History of Philosophy of Mind: Convergence Points Between Cognitive Sciences and Phenomenology” Barış Korkmaz: “Self: Neuroscience and Psychoanalysis” Aziz Zambak: “Plasticity: The Forgotten Principle of Artificial Intelligence” 11:45-12:00 Coffee Break 12:00-13:00  Second Session Bernard Stiegler: “From Neuropower to Noopolitics” 13:00-14:30 Lunch Break 14:30:16:30 Third Session Patrick Roney: “On the Advantages and Disadvantages of…
 
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    Journal of Neuroscience current issue

  • The Synchronous Activity of Lateral Habenular Neurons Is Essential for Regulating Hippocampal Theta Oscillation

    Aizawa, H., Yanagihara, S., Kobayashi, M., Niisato, K., Takekawa, T., Harukuni, R., McHugh, T. J., Fukai, T., Isomura, Y., Okamoto, H.
    15 May 2013 | 9:01 am
    Lateral habenula (LHb) has attracted growing interest as a regulator of serotonergic and dopaminergic neurons in the CNS. However, it remains unclear how the LHb modulates brain states in animals. To identify the neural substrates that are under the influence of LHb regulation, we examined the effects of rat LHb lesions on the hippocampal oscillatory activity associated with the transition of brain states. Our results showed that the LHb lesion shortened the theta activity duration both in anesthetized and sleeping rats. Furthermore, this inhibitory effect of LHb lesion on theta maintenance…

  • Most Vesicles in a Central Nerve Terminal Participate in Recycling

    Xue, L., Sheng, J., Wu, X.-S., Wu, W., Luo, F., Shin, W., Chiang, H.-C., Wu, L.-G.
    15 May 2013 | 9:01 am
    Studies over the last decade using FM dyes to label vesicles at many terminals, including the calyx-type nerve terminal, led to a well accepted "principle" that only a small fraction of vesicles (~5–20%) participate in recycling under physiological conditions. This principle imposes a large challenge in maintaining synaptic transmission during repetitive firing, because the small recycling pool may limit the number of available vesicles for release and nerve terminals would have to distinguish the recycling pool from the reserve pool and keep reserve pool vesicles from being used. By…

  • Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells and Motor Neuron Disease: Toward an Era of Individualized Medicine

    Cashman, C. R., Lazzerini Ospri, L.
    15 May 2013 | 9:01 am

  • The Ventral Midline Thalamus Contributes to Strategy Shifting in a Memory Task Requiring Both Prefrontal Cortical and Hippocampal Functions

    Cholvin, T., Loureiro, M., Cassel, R., Cosquer, B., Geiger, K., De Sa Nogueira, D., Raingard, H., Robelin, L., Kelche, C., Pereira de Vasconcelos, A., Cassel, J.-C.
    15 May 2013 | 9:01 am
    Electrophysiological and neuroanatomical evidence for reciprocal connections with the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the hippocampus make the reuniens and rhomboid (ReRh) thalamic nuclei a putatively major functional link for regulations of cortico-hippocampal interactions. In a first experiment using a new water escape device for rodents, the double-H maze, we demonstrated in rats that a bilateral muscimol (MSCI) inactivation (0.70 vs 0.26 and 0 nmol) of the mPFC or dorsal hippocampus (dHip) induces major deficits in a strategy shifting/spatial memory retrieval task. By way of…

  • Neural Context Reinstatement Predicts Memory Misattribution

    Gershman, S. J., Schapiro, A. C., Hupbach, A., Norman, K. A.
    15 May 2013 | 9:01 am
    What causes new information to be mistakenly attributed to an old experience? Some theories predict that reinstating the context of a prior experience allows new information to be bound to that context, leading to source memory confusion. To examine this prediction, we had human participants study two lists of items (visual objects) on separate days while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. List 1 items were accompanied by a stream of scene images during the intertrial interval, but list 2 items were not. As in prior work by Hupbach et al. (2009), we observed an asymmetric…
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    Sports Are 80 Percent Mental

  • How Tim Hardaway Sr. Learned To Be A Better Sports Dad

    16 May 2013 | 7:28 am
    This guest post comes to us from Dr. Andrea Corn, youth sports psychologist and Ethan Skolnick, a sportswriter for the Palm Beach Post covering the Miami Heat: How does an athletic parent motivate their child? Frequently, with the same tactics that worked with them when they were young. In Raising Your Game: Over 100 Accomplished Athletes Help You Guide Your Girls and Boys Through Sports, Tim Hardaway Sr., acknowledges that, as a child, he took constructive criticism well. He turned others' doubts into the motivation, “to show you I could do it,” he says. His toughness in the face of…

  • Using Training Data For Long Term Player Development

    14 May 2013 | 6:50 pm
    Imagine if you were given the task to find the next John Terry, Andy Murray or Katie Taylor.  You know that they’re out there somewhere kicking a ball, returning a serve or winning a bout among thousands of other kids their age.  While some look like future champions at age 7, it’s unknown what they’ll be like at 17. Finding a group with some genetic gifts and then developing them through years of physical and mental growth demands access to new tools with one secret ingredient, data.  Just ask Ben Smith and Marco Cardinale. In a recent interview with the Big Data…

  • How Football Players React To Sound On The Field

    10 May 2013 | 11:59 am
    For as much as we hear about the importance of vision on the football field, there are quite a few phrases emphasizing the sounds of the game, such as “he heard footsteps coming”, “listen for the audible at the line”, “play until you hear the whistle” and even the backhanded compliment to the ears, “he has eyes in the back of his head.” Listening is a skill to be exploited for better anticipation, reactions and decision-making.  Now, neuroscience researchers have filled in some missing details of how we actually use the sounds around us to instantly direct our…

  • To Know Where You're Going, You Have To Know Where You've Been

    6 May 2013 | 7:51 pm
    What happened out there? You thought you were ready. You thought your training went well last week. You thought your pre-competition routine was the same as always. Now you’re wondering why you hit the wall early and just had an off day.  Consistently performing at a high level depends on creating the right combination and pattern of training that yields the best outcome. Even a small change to that ideal routine can result in a poor performance. Finding that wrong turn requires retracing your steps through your recent training sessions. Unfortunately, many athletes lack a system to…

  • The Neuroscience Of Pitch Recognition

    3 May 2013 | 1:11 pm
    When asked to describe Greg Maddux, the retired 4-time Cy Young award-winning pitcher, Wade Boggs, a Hall of Fame hitter with a .328 lifetime batting average, once said, “It seems like he's inside your mind with you. When he knows you're not going to swing, he throws a straight one. He sees into the future. It's like he has a crystal ball hidden inside his glove.”  So, what did Maddux know that other pitchers don’t?  Neuro-engineers from Columbia University decided to actually look inside some hitters' brains to try to find out. Maddux, who seems to be a lock for the 2014 Hall…
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    The Brain Understanding Itself

  • ISQRMM Music and Medicine Conference Presentation

    Alex Doman
    8 May 2013 | 7:42 pm
    I just received confirmation that the Interdisciplinary Society for Quantitative Research in Music and Medicine (ISQRMM) has accepted our abstract entitled “Cross-Cultural Sound and Music: A Novel Rhythmic Approach for Improving Brain Function” to be presented as a workshop session during the 2013 conference to be held on July 26-27, 2013, at the University of Georgia Hugh Hodgson School of Music in Athens, Georgia!  I’ll be presenting along with my colleagues, occupational therapist Sheila Allen, and master ethnic percussionist and composer Nacho Arimany. If you follow or are…

  • Cheers to you Richard Lawrence!

    Alex Doman
    7 May 2013 | 10:44 am
    Each of us has a person in their life that has left a permanent impression on them, impacting them on such a level that their presence remains, even in their absence.  For me, Richard Lawrence is one of these people. Richard was a friend and colleague whose presence in my life will forever influence who I am.  A gifted composer and musician, Richard could connect with you with the first note to emanate from his violin.  As the Music Director of the Arcangelos Chamber Ensemble and founding Music Director for Advanced Brain Technologies I had the honor of working with this man for many…

  • Learning Made Easy with Sound Solutions

    Alex Doman
    29 Apr 2013 | 3:39 pm
    Understanding how sound and music effect learning is often the key to reaching challenged and discouraged learners.  Music reaches parts of the brain that words, touch, and movement cannot.  Our role as parent or professional is empowered when we understand how to use music to increase a person’s ability to learn and achieve. This Wednesday I’ll be exploring the sound—learning connection on the Sound Brain Fitness Teleseminar Series with my dear friend Gayle Moyers, creator of Learning Ears®. Gayle is a renowned educational therapist and expert in helping challenged learners. She and…

  • The Listening Program Autism Giveaway

    Alex Doman
    25 Apr 2013 | 6:25 pm
    Last month the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new findings revealing the prevalence of diagnosed autism spectrum disorder has risen to epidemic proportions.  1 in 50! With the average cost of autism over the lifespan being $3.2 million dollars per person families need all the help they can get.  I’m happy to share that we are going to give one of these families a little support. Using The Listening Program® (TLP) for just 15 minutes each day has been making a huge difference in the lives of families affected by autism. TLP has been voted Best Product at Autism One,…

  • Jell-O Brain

    Alex Doman
    11 Apr 2013 | 2:14 pm
    JELL-O is practically considered a food group in Utah, the state I have called home for the past twenty years.  Green JELL-O with carrots being a potluck favorite.  I never acquired a taste for the viscose substance, but it seems to have inspired a group of scientists at Stanford to help make the brain transparent so it can be viewed in all its three-dimensional splendor. According to an article in the Science section of yesterday’s New York Times, they have created a process called Clarity, that preserves the biochemistry of the brain so researchers can study specific structures that…
 
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    Brain Posts

  • Epidemiology of Childhood Brain Disorders: ADHD and Autism

    20 May 2013 | 8:55 am
    The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has published a comprehensive summary of the epidemiology of childhood brain disorders in the most recent Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.This report produced some sensationalized headlines that up to 20% of children suffer from a mental disorder.  However, I was more interested in looking at the prevalence estimates for some of the individual disorders from the report.The report collates data collected from a variety of surveys and data sets including the NHANES, NHIS and the National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH).  These surveys…

  • Insula Activation as a Biomarker for Depression Risk

    10 May 2013 | 7:33 am
    Right and Left Insula Cortex Highlighted in TealBiomarker research in brain disorders including schizophrenia and mood disorders is an important pathway to early identification and prevention.In a previous post, I reviewed a summary of current biomarker research in schizophrenia.  This summary suggested that accelerated brain gray matter volume decline during childhood and adolescence is a candidate biomarker in schizophrenia.In this post, I will look at a similar imaging biomarker study in bipolar and unipolar mood disorder.  Heather Whalley and colleagues from the Division of…

  • Biomarkers for Psychosis and Schizophrenia Risk

    9 May 2013 | 8:21 am
    Prefrontal Cortex Highlighted in RedIdentifying valid biomarkers for psychosis and schizophrenia is an active focus in brain research.Tyronne Cannon, Ph.D. from Yale University recently presented a summary of research on this topic at the William K. Warren Neuroscience Symposium in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Here are my notes from his presentation along with related free full-text research references.Biomarker research in psychosis is important because current treatment for psychosis with the antipsychotic drugs is limited by:discovery by serendipity without a specific molecular mechanismabsence…

  • Redefining Mental Disorders as Brain Disorders: TED Talk of Thomas Insel

    2 May 2013 | 7:33 am
    Components of Brain Limbic SystemAdvances in the diagnosis and treatment of brain disorders like bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and autism are a public health priority.Dr. Thomas Insel, director at NIMH recently presented a TED talk that emphasized the need to rethink how we conceptualize and study these types of disorders.  He argues for a need to redefine mental disorders as brain disorders.  Advances in brain research tools are likely to provide improvements in early diagnosis and early treatment to reduce the morbidity and mortality of these brain disorders.I am posting my…

  • Advances In Parkinson's Disease Treatment: Part II

    1 May 2013 | 8:54 am
    Globus Pallidus Region of Brain Targeted in DBS in YellowIn a previous post, I summarized some of the highlights of a recent review of Parkinson's disease management by the German neurologists Pedrosa and Timmerman.The first post can be located here and was limited to the drug treatment of the motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease.In part II, I want to focus on deep brain stimulation and the treatment of non-motor symptoms.The authors of the review note the following key points regarding deep brain stimulation:Deep brain stimulation (DBS) therapy for Parkinson's disease is considered most…
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    Psychology Headlines Around the World

  • Men with High-Testosterone More Likely to Choose Red in Competitions

    Medical News Today
    20 May 2013 | 11:32 pm
    Source: Medical News TodayWhy do so many sports players and athletes choose to wear the color red when they compete? A new study to be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that it may have to do with their testosterone levels. The new study, conducted by psychological scientist Daniel Farrelly of the University of Sunderland and colleagues, demonstrated that males who chose red as their color in a...

  • Church of Scotland Votes to Allow Gay Ministers

    The Guardian
    20 May 2013 | 11:32 pm
    Source: The GuardianThe Church of Scotland, the country's largest Protestant church, has narrowly voted to admit gay and lesbian ministers after traditionalists agreed to compromise after four years of division.

  • Human-Like Opponents Lead to More Aggression in Video Game Players

    ScienceDaily
    20 May 2013 | 11:32 pm
    Source: ScienceDailyVideo games that pit players against human-looking characters may be more likely to provoke violent thoughts and words than games where monstrous creatures are the enemy, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Connecticut and Wake Forest University .

  • Anabolic Steroids May Affect Future Mental Health

    ScienceDaily
    20 May 2013 | 11:31 pm
    Source: ScienceDailyThere is a link between use of anabolic-androgenic steroids and reduced mental health later in life. This is the main conclusion of a new study on elite male strength athletes that researchers from the University of Gothenburg recently published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

  • U.S. Names Envoy to Combat Anti-Semitism, Warns of Rising Incidents

    Reuters - US News
    20 May 2013 | 11:31 pm
    Source: Reuters - US NewsThe United States on Monday appointed a special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism as a new State Department report warned about incidents in Venezuela, Egypt and Iran.
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    The Neurocritic

  • What RDoC Research Might Look Like

    15 May 2013 | 11:22 am
    The month of May is a violent thingIn the city their hearts start to singWell, some people sing, it sounds like they're screamingI used to doubt it, but now I believe itMonth Of May   ------The Arcade FireToday is Mental Health Month Blog Day, sponsored by the American Psychological Association (APA). It's designed to:...educate the public about mental health, decrease stigma about mental illness, and discuss strategies for making lasting lifestyle and behavior changes that promote overall health and wellness.If the public has been following the recent hullabaloo about how to…

  • RDoC Dimensional Approach for Research vs. DSM-5 for Diagnosis

    5 May 2013 | 4:34 pm
    Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in the U.S., recently announced that NIMH will be re-orienting its research away from DSM categories:...While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity. Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are…

  • Want to remember something? Clenching your fist doesn't help!

    28 Apr 2013 | 4:50 am
    Image Credits: fist and brain.You might have seen this news story the other day:Want to remember something? Clench your fists!Giving a speech and need to remember what to say? Just clench your right fist while rehearsing. Then, when it's time to give the speech, clench your left fist, and voila, you’ll recall what you rehearsed! That's what a new study found, which was published April 24 online at PLOS ONE. Sounds too easy now, doesn't it? And if you're exclaiming, "that's just too good to be true!" then you'd be correct.The new study by Propper et al. (2013) has unleashed a torrent of…

  • Does Tylenol Exert its Analgesic Effects via the Spinal Cord?

    19 Apr 2013 | 4:43 pm
    What do we (not) know about how paracetamol (acetaminophen) works? (Toussaint et al., 2010). . .From the beginning, the focus of the search for paracetamol’s analgesic mechanism has concentrated on the central nervous system. When administered intraventricularly [i.e., directly into the ventricular systemof the brain], acetaminophen produces no significant analgesia (115, 132). This finding lead to attempts to inject acetaminophen into the spinal cord (i.t.), which produced marked dose-related antinociception (132).Yesterday’s post about Tylenol as a cure for mortality salience and…

  • Existential Dread of Absurd Social Psychology Studies

    18 Apr 2013 | 2:20 pm
    Scene from Rabbits by David Lynch“In a nameless city, deluged by a continuous rain, three rabbits live with a fearful mystery.”The latest "elegant and breathtaking"1 paper in Psychological Science presents a rather muddled view of film aesthetics, continental philosophy, surrealism, mortality salience, and stigmatizing attitudes towards sex work (Randles et al., 2013). Oh, and how Tylenol® brand acetaminophen can ease the existential dread evoked by all of these modern horrors.The authors explained the purpose and implications of their study in the APS press release:According to lead…
 
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    The Beautiful Brain

  • What We Talk About When We Talk About Genius

    Ben Ehrlich
    25 Apr 2013 | 8:35 pm
    In a famous scene from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s drama Faust, two new lovers, Gretchen and Faust, sit together in a garden. “Tell me the truth . . .” Gretchen says. “As best I can!” Faust replies. Gretchen, a pure-hearted virgin, needs to know if her man can be trusted. “Do you believe in God?” she asks. The consummate academic, Faust responds with long-winded sophistry and rhetorical aplomb; he is more or less trying to get laid without lying. The reader remembers, however, that Faust has promised his soul to the devil Mephistopheles in exchange…

  • 2013 Brain Art Competition Announced

    Noah Hutton
    10 Apr 2013 | 8:45 am
    This just in from the Neuro Bureau, who organize the annual Brain Art Competition, as well as a bunch of other projects around the philosophy of “open neuroscience.” Here’s the text announcing the open call for submissions to the competition: Countless hours are devoted to the creation of informative visualizations for communicating neuroscientific findings. The Brain-Art Competition aims to recognize this often unappreciated aspect of the publication process, and highlight the artistic creativity of our community. We are inviting researchers to submit their favorite…

  • Affecting Perception: Interview + Gallery

    Noah Hutton
    6 Mar 2013 | 1:00 pm
    An exploration of art and neuroscience has taken over Oxford Castle’s O3 Gallery this month. The exhibition is titled Affecting Perception, and it features the work of artists “affected by neurological conditions, and contemporary art inspired by discoveries in neuroscience.” The show was devised by an intrepid, forward-thinking group of recent graduates from the arts and sciences known as the AXNS Collective. Their eclectic roots and can-do spirit has yielded a first-of-its-kind show in Oxford, funded by grants that the AXNS Collective secured from the Wellcome Foundation…

  • Money on the Brain

    Ben Ehrlich
    25 Feb 2013 | 6:27 am
    The Blue Brain Project (now The Human Brain Project) was awarded €1 billion by the European Union. President Obama recently committed over $300 million a year for 10 years to a proposed Brain Activity Map (BAM) project modeled after the Human Genome Project. The Decade of the Brain was supposed to last from 1990-1999, according to President George H.W. Bush. Now some scientists question or even object to the new funding. There would seem to be a number of entangled implications —political, intellectual, social, economic, etc. One can think of our life, as the brain, as an…

  • Artists and Scientists in Dialogue at the Rubin Museum of Art

    Noah Hutton
    16 Feb 2013 | 9:13 am
    The sixth annual Brainwave series kicked off on February 6 at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City, and will run through April. François Girard and Carl Schoonover at Brainwave. (Photo: Michael Palma for RMA) Just before neuroscientist Carl Schoonover and director François Girard took the stage last Wednesday at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City for a one-hour public dialogue, series curator Tim McHenry told the crowd that the two had never met before. A murmor of surprised excitement spread through the Rubin’s basement auditorium– we were about to witness that first…
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    The Neurocritic

  • What RDoC Research Might Look Like

    The Neurocritic
    15 May 2013 | 11:22 am
    The month of May is a violent thingIn the city their hearts start to singWell, some people sing, it sounds like they're screamingI used to doubt it, but now I believe itMonth Of May   ------The Arcade FireToday is Mental Health Month Blog Day, sponsored by the American Psychological Association (APA). It's designed to:...educate the public about mental health, decrease stigma about mental illness, and discuss strategies for making lasting lifestyle and behavior changes that promote overall health and wellness.If the public has been following the recent hullabaloo about how to…

  • RDoC Dimensional Approach for Research vs. DSM-5 for Diagnosis

    The Neurocritic
    5 May 2013 | 4:34 pm
    Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in the U.S., recently announced that NIMH will be re-orienting its research away from DSM categories:...While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity. Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are…

  • Want to remember something? Clenching your fist doesn't help!

    The Neurocritic
    28 Apr 2013 | 4:50 am
    Image Credits: fist and brain.You might have seen this news story the other day:Want to remember something? Clench your fists!Giving a speech and need to remember what to say? Just clench your right fist while rehearsing. Then, when it's time to give the speech, clench your left fist, and voila, you’ll recall what you rehearsed! That's what a new study found, which was published April 24 online at PLOS ONE. Sounds too easy now, doesn't it? And if you're exclaiming, "that's just too good to be true!" then you'd be correct.The new study by Propper et al. (2013) has unleashed a torrent of…

  • Does Tylenol Exert its Analgesic Effects via the Spinal Cord?

    The Neurocritic
    19 Apr 2013 | 4:43 pm
    What do we (not) know about how paracetamol (acetaminophen) works? (Toussaint et al., 2010). . .From the beginning, the focus of the search for paracetamol’s analgesic mechanism has concentrated on the central nervous system. When administered intraventricularly [i.e., directly into the ventricular systemof the brain], acetaminophen produces no significant analgesia (115, 132). This finding lead to attempts to inject acetaminophen into the spinal cord (i.t.), which produced marked dose-related antinociception (132).Yesterday’s post about Tylenol as a cure for mortality salience and…

  • Existential Dread of Absurd Social Psychology Studies

    The Neurocritic
    18 Apr 2013 | 2:20 pm
    Scene from Rabbits by David Lynch“In a nameless city, deluged by a continuous rain, three rabbits live with a fearful mystery.”The latest "elegant and breathtaking"1 paper in Psychological Science presents a rather muddled view of film aesthetics, continental philosophy, surrealism, mortality salience, and stigmatizing attitudes towards sex work (Randles et al., 2013). Oh, and how Tylenol® brand acetaminophen can ease the existential dread evoked by all of these modern horrors.The authors explained the purpose and implications of their study in the APS press release:According to lead…
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    Better Brain Better Life

  • A Fiber Optic Brain

    master
    19 May 2013 | 3:38 pm
    Posted by Paddy Kamen Computer Model of Laser Behaving Like a Neuron The beautiful image to the left is the work of Princeton University graduate student, Mitchell A. Nahmias and faculty member Paul R. Prucnal. The image is an entry in the  Art of Science exhibition hosted by the university. The images entered into the competition were produced in the process of scientific research. Of this image, the Princeton website says: Fiber optic networks have transformed global communications by moving digital bits of information around the planet at the speed of light. By combining lasers with…

  • Obesity: The Latest Brain Research

    master
    9 May 2013 | 9:11 am
    Brain Research Offers Hope for Obesity By Paddy Kamen The cost associated with obesity in our world is enormous. Being somewhat zaftig myself, I know. Recently, two women friends told me that they wear too-tight clothes in order to remind themselves not to eat too much. My way is to wear loose clothing so that I’m comfortable and happy. My weight has been quite stable for several years…well, actually it has declined, very slowly, by about 15 pounds.  Would I like to be slim and willowy? You bet! And if I could wire up my brain for that I would do it in a heartbeat. Adipose fat (or fat…

  • Is Mannitol Manna from Heaven for Parkinson’s Disease

    master
    19 Apr 2013 | 10:15 am
    By Guest Writer Samantha Zhang, Ph.D.   Parkinson’s is a terrible disease that eats away at the control of one’s body movements. As the dopamine-generating cells in the midbrain die, sufferers may continue to lose more of themselves with cognitive and behavioral issues such as dementia setting in. No one knows what causes the death of these cells. Public figures such as Michael J. Fox and Muhammad Ali have increased awareness of the disease, which was first described in 1817. But while it’s been almost 200 years since English scientist Dr. James Parkinson published An Essay in the…

  • Music, the Mind and Sensory Deprivation: Musician’s Device Wins Coveted Spot at TED Conference

    master
    25 Feb 2011 | 5:58 pm
    By Paddy Kamen   Jay Vidyarthi, Inventor of the Sonic Cradle   What if the brain gains associated with meditation practice could be married to the soothing elements of music in an incredibly comfortable cocoon of darkness? What if technology can be used to foster positive mood and mind states? Jay Vidyarthi says he’s a dreamer, because he “wants to help people achieve a state of peace and then apply their happiness forward to generate more positivity.” But he’s also one heck of a practical guy who has woven his interest and expertise in brain function, music and technology…

  • Back to the Cradle? Rocking the Brain to Sleep

    master
    28 Jan 2011 | 5:27 pm
    By Guest Writer Rosemary Frei   Sleeping in a hammock is good for the brain. Scientists have confirmed what many mothers have known for eons: you can get the best rest by dozing in a hammock or on another gently swinging surface. A study by Swiss researchers showed that napping on a slowly swinging surface activates the parts of the brain involved in sleep. The swinging motion propelled healthy male subjects in the study more rapidly into sleep and gave them longer-lasting deep sleep than sleeping on a non-rocking surface. Read more about this exciting research in my book: Better Brain…
 
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    Generally Thinking

  • My to-do list for tomorrow

    Warren Davies
    7 May 2013 | 8:42 am
    I just bought a white board for to-do list purposes. Here is my to do list for tomorrow:

  • How much active ingredent is there inside a homeopathic remedy?

    Warren Davies
    10 Apr 2013 | 6:09 am
    There are many things in life that, despite being completely ridiculous, are extremely popular and widely believed. If you thought that people channeling aliens from alternate dimensions to help our species join the interstellar alliance was strange, wait until you get a load of homeopathy. The point here isn’t that homeopathy can’t have clinical outcomes, rather, that any outcome that occurs from homeopathy cannot be caused by the mechanisms that are claimed to be in effect. They defy the known laws of physics and generally, are just completely ridiculous. If you’re not…

  • Richard Feynman on thinking processes. Did he know nothing about psychology?

    Warren Davies
    9 Apr 2013 | 6:42 am
    Feynman said that there are no miracle people, and anyone can do what he did if they put their mind to it (my thoughts here). Yet there’s one domain in which Feynman clearly had a natural gift in — curiosity! This is exemplified by the little experiments he describes in the video below, where he learned how accurate his sense of time was and what things affected this sense. He’d count to a minute in his head and learn that when he got to 48, a minute had passed. Then he tested what else he could do while doing this, and he could read but not talk. At the end of the video he…

  • Alan Wallace on scientific dogmatism and materialism

    Warren Davies
    8 Apr 2013 | 8:26 am
    Alan Wallace, a Buddhist and writer on consciousness and meditation, talks about what he sees as the dogmatism and idolatry of the current, materialistic scientific paradigm. While I have some questions about materialism that no one has been able to answer, I don’t agree that the focus materialism is a form of idolatry. It’s just the framework into which all the other empirical data best fits. If another model came along that fit the data better, or data came along that did not fit the model, the prevailing paradigm would change. It would change slowly I’m sure, because…

  • The case for a strengths-based approach in the workplace

    Warren Davies
    8 Apr 2013 | 6:14 am
    Marcus Buckingham says there is a question that you can use to predict, with a high degree of accuracy, whehter a person is on a high performing team or a poor performing team in the workplace. This is: “At work, do you have an opportunity to do what you do best?” This is the essence of the strengths movement. This line of thinking says that the way to become more productive and efficient at work, is to find ways to use your personal strengths. Likewise, the area in which we have the most potential to improve is, paradoxically, our strengths, as opposed to fixing our weaknesses.
 
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    The Brain from Top to Bottom Blog - Intermediate Level

  • Humans Have No Monopoly on Empathy

    Bruno Dubuc
    14 May 2013 | 7:01 am
    One rat springs another rat from prison, then shares some chocolate with him. Sounds like a Saturday-morning cartoon, but that’s what actually happened in a laboratory experiment showing that real live rats can display empathetic behaviour. These findings, published in the December 7, 2011 issue of the journal Science by Peggy Mason and her colleagues, got a huge amount of media play, because this was the first time that scientists had shown that an animal other than a primate can take action to relieve the distress of a member of its own species. And this suggested the possibility that…

  • What Are People’s Deepest Motivations?

    Bruno Dubuc
    6 May 2013 | 11:34 am
    Economists have long regarded financial gain as one of the primary motives that drive human beings. But research in the cognitive sciences increasingly shows that while money may induce people to work harder physically, it seems to have no effect at all where mental tasks are concerned. As author Daniel Pink describes in an illustrated talk to which a link is provided below, studies in various countries have shown that giving people more money does not stimulate creative thought, even when the amounts offered are the equivalent of several weeks’ pay. So if money does not motivate people to…

  • A Microprocessor That Simulates a Synapse

    Bruno Dubuc
    29 Apr 2013 | 1:15 pm
    For decades now, cognitive scientists across the entire range from cognitivists to connectionists have been trying to use computers to model the learning abilities of the human brain. A team at MIT, headed by Dr. Chi-Sang Poon, has just taken a major step in this direction by designing a microprocessor that can simulate the functioning of a single synapse in the part of the human brain known as the hippocampus. Learning and the memories that result from it depend on changing the efficiency of the synapses between the neurons in the brain’s circuits. There are two classic paradigms that…

  • “I have it at the tip of my tongue!”

    Bruno Dubuc
    22 Apr 2013 | 12:37 pm
    Having a word “at the tip of your tongue” is a familiar but frustrating sensation. There it is, not very far, you know it, you can feel it, but you can’t find it! To make matters worse, very often another word keeps popping into your mind—you know it’s not the right one, but it keeps getting in the way so that you can’t find the one you’re looking for.   Scientists say that all of us experience this phenomenon at least once per week, and more often as we get older. They also know that more than 9 times out 10, we end up finding the right word, although often in unexpected…

  • The Harmful Effects of Television on Young Children

    Bruno Dubuc
    15 Apr 2013 | 12:14 pm
    First of all, I want to say a very big “Thank you” to everyone who has already sent in a donation to help fund our web site. In one week, we have already raised $1750, which is almost enough to pay for all of the basic upkeep on this site for our current fiscal year (April 2013 to March 2014)! This is a very encouraging start. Please pass the word to anyone else you know who enjoys this site and may want to give us some financial support. Just to get a few minutes to breathe, tired parents can be strongly tempted to sit their kids down in front of the television. But a joint study by…
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