Home
Rudy Garns's Library tagged → View Popular
Oxytocin Receptor Variants Linked To Empathy
Researchers have discovered a genetic variation that may contribute to how empathetic a human is, and how that person reacts to stress. In the first study of its kind, a variation in the hormone/neurotransmitter oxytocin's receptor was linked to a person's ability to infer the mental state of others.
Michael Gazzaniga: Split brains and other heady tales
Beyond the hype of left brain versus right brain lies the work of acclaimed neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga. His career was forged in the lab of Nobel laureate Roger Sperry, and together their trailblazing experiments have illuminated the differences between the brain's two hemispheres. All In The Mind - 14 November 2009 -
A Molecule of Motivation, Dopamine Excels at Its Task - NYTimes.com
In the communal imagination, dopamine is about rewards, and feeling good, and wanting to feel good again, and if you don’t watch out, you’ll be hooked, a slave to the pleasure lines cruising through your brain.
Dopaminergic Aesthetics : The Frontal Cortex
The caricature of dopamine as the chemical of hedonism and pleasure - it's what drives us to enjoy sex, drugs and rock and roll - was always mostly misleading. While dopamine does predict the arrival of rewards, the neurotransmitter is much more important that.
UCLA Study: The Internet Is Altering Our Brains
Adults with little Internet experience show changes in their brain activity after just one week online, a new study finds.
Creature Consciousness
Animal studies tests the boundary between human and animal—and between academic and advocate
The Young and the Neuro
The hard sciences are interpenetrating the social sciences. This isn’t dehumanizing. It shines attention on the things poets have traditionally cared about: the power of human attachments. It may even help policy wonks someday see people as they really are. (Brooks - NYTimes.com)
-
social cognitive neuroscience
-
Matthew Lieberman of U.C.L.A
- 7 more annotations...
Adult neurogenesis - Scholarpedia
Adult neurogenesis is the process of generating new neurons which integrate into existing circuits after fetal and early postnatal development has ceased. In most mammalian species, adult neurogenesis only appears to occur in the olfactory bulb and the hippocampus.
michael specter--rethinking the brain
To study the environmental effects, Nottebohm compared the brains of birds kept in cages with those of birds that lived in the wild. Again, the differences were striking: a free-ranging chickadee, which has to avoid predators and forage for its food, produced larger numbers of new neurons in the hippocampus--the part of the brain that plays an essential role in the storage of memories--than a caged chickadee. In cold weather, a chickadee becomes desperate for calories; it must eat before it sleeps or it will die. So remembering the many places where it stashes seeds is of urgent importance.
Lobes of Steel - New York Times
Scientists have suspected for decades that exercise, particularly regular aerobic exercise, can affect the brain. But they could only speculate as to how. Now an expanding body of research shows that exercise can improve the performance of the brain by boosting memory and cognitive processing speed. Exercise can, in fact, create a stronger, faster brain.
Is More Neurogenesis Always Better?
For decades, it was believed that the adult mammalian brain could not generate new neurons, but during the 1990s, that concept changed. Evidence of the birth of new neurons in adult mammals, including humans, raised expectations for improved treatment for patients with central nervous system injury or illness. But this enthusiasm has been tempered since then, as more recent studies indicate that excess adult neurogenesis can be as detrimental as a deficit. In some cases, the clinical relevance of increasing neurogenesis may need to be reconsidered.
Stages of Brain Development
From a single fertilised egg of about 0.14 millimetres in diameter, to an adult human being, the neurophysiology of development of the brain and nervous system is nothing short of remarkable. We are born with around 100 billion neurons, and the development of the brain continues long after birth, with dendrites of some neurons in the neocortex continuing to grow well into old age
Researchers Identify Critical Gene For Brain Development, Mental Retardation
In laying down the neural circuitry of the developing brain, billions of neurons must first migrate to their correct destinations and then form complex synaptic connections with their new neighbors.
-
establishing the neural wiring necessary to function normally depends on the ability of neurons to make finger-like projections of their membrane called filopodia.
-
brain protein srGAP2 can also impose cell shape by directly bending membranes, forming filopodia as a mean to control the migration and branching of neurons during brain development
How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect - NYTimes.com
Now a study suggests that, paradoxically, this same sensation may prime the brain to sense patterns it would otherwise miss — in mathematical equations, in language, in the world at large.
Neuroskeptic: How Brain Cells Avoid Getting All Tied Up
During the development of the brain, young neurones need to form connections with other cells. But equally important, they need to avoid making connections with themselves.
Concepts are born in the hippocampus
Forming a concept involves selecting the important characteristics of our experiences and categorising them. The degree to which we are able to do this effectively is a defining characteristic of human intelligence. Yet little is known about how conceptual knowledge is created and used in the brain. (28 September 2009 - New Scientist)
Two Monkeys Get the Gift of Color
The Neitzes, with Katherine Mancuso and other colleagues, used the technique of gene therapy to introduce the gene for the missing red pigment into the cone cells of the monkeys’ retinas. Several months after the therapy, Dalton and Sam were able to see a world in which red hues were visible and oranges no longer looked like lemons, the researchers say in the current issue of Nature.
Evidence Points To Conscious 'Metacognition' In Some Nonhuman Animals
there is growing evidence that animals share functional parallels with human conscious metacognition -- that is, they may share humans' ability to reflect upon, monitor or regulate their states of mind.
Selected Tags
Related Tags
Sponsored Links
Top Contributors
Groups interested in cogsci
Diigo is about better ways to research, share and collaborate on information. Learn more »
Join Diigo