RDF: Bionic eye goes live in world first by Australian researchers. 2012/12/the-top-5-neuroscience-breakthroughs-of-2012/ More than any year before, 2012 was the year neuroscience exploded into pop culture. From mind-controlled robot hands to cyborg animals to TV specials to triumphant books, brain breakthroughs were tearing up the airwaves and the internets. From all the thrilling neurological adventures we covered over the past year, we’ve collected five stories we want to make absolutely sure you didn’t miss.
Now, no matter how scientific our topic is, any Top 5 list is going to turn out somewhat subjective. For one thing, we certainly didn’t cover every neuroscience paper published in 2012 – we like to pick and choose the stories that seem most interesting to us, and leave the whole “100 percent daily coverage” free-for-all to excellent sites like ScienceDaily. As you may’ve also noticed, we tend to steer clear of headlines like “Brain Region Responsible for [X] Discovered!” So on that note, here – in countdown order – are the five discoveries that got us the most pumped up in 2012! 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.
Brain May ‘See’ More Than the Eyes, Study Indicates. Vision may be less important to “seeing” than is the brain’s ability to process points of light into complex images, according to a new study of the fruit fly visual system currently published in the online journal Nature Communications. University of Virginia researchers have found that the very simple eyes of fruit fly larvae, with only 24 total photoreceptors (the human eye contains more than 125 million), provide just enough light or visual input to allow the animal’s relatively large brain to assemble that input into images. “It blows open how we think about vision,” said Barry Condron, a neurobiologist in U.Va.’s College of Arts & Sciences, who oversaw the study.
“This tells us that visual input may not be as important to sight as the brain working behind it. In this case, the brain apparently is able to compensate for the minimal visual input.” The animals apparently saw the writhing motion and were attracted to it, willingly traveling toward it. Pancreatic cancer genomes reveal aberrations in axon guidance pathway genes : Nature. The research network comprising the Australian Pancreatic Cancer Genome Initiative, the Baylor College of Medicine Cancer Genome Project and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research Pancreatic Cancer Genome Study (ABO collaboration) contributed collectively to this study as part of the International Cancer Genome Consortium. Biospecimens were collected at affiliated hospitals and processed at each biospecimen core resource centre. Data generation and analyses were performed by the genome sequencing centres, cancer genome characterization centres and genome data analysis centres. Investigator contributions are as follows: S.M.G., A.V.B., J.V.P., R.L.S., R.A.G., D.A.W., M.
-C.G., J.D.M., L.D.S and T.J.H. (project leaders); A.V.B., S.M.G. and R.L.S. (writing team); A.L.J., J.V.P., P.J.W., J.L.F., C.L., M.A., O.H., J.G.R., D.T., C.X., S.Wo., F.N., S.So., G.K. and W.K. Press release No 20. Making Choices: How Your Brain Decides. Every day, we face thousands of decisions both major and minor — from whether to eat that decadent chocolate cupcake to when to pursue a new romantic relationship or to change careers. How does the brain decide? A new study suggests that it relies on two separate networks to do so: one that determines the overall value — the risk versus reward — of individual choices and another that guides how you ultimately behave. “Cognitive control and value-based decision-making tasks appear to depend on different brain regions within the prefrontal cortex,” says Jan Glascher, lead author of the study and a visiting associate at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, referring to the seat of higher-level reasoning in the brain.
Cognitive control is what keeps this network in check. “To be able to get to the checkout counter with what you planned, you need to maintain a goal in mind, such as perhaps only buying the salad you needed for dinner,” says Adolphs. (MORE: Control Yourself! Consciousness science and ethics: Abortion, animal rights, and vegetative-state debates. Courtesy Daniel Bor. It is easy to view consciousness as a kind of magic. In religion it is represented by the mysterious soul, and in science the concept of consciousness at first appears quite alien. But many fields, such as the study of what distinguishes life from nonlife, had their earlier magical states eroded by careful scientific study. Consciousness is in the midst of a similar revolution. The investigation of our own awareness is a blossoming scientific field, where experiments are illuminating exciting details about this most intimate of scientific subjects.
But the nature of consciousness is not just a vital question for science; it’s also the source of some of society’s thorniest, most fundamental ethical dilemmas. On a personal level, consciousness is where the meaning to life resides. Whether I’m reveling in a glowing pleasure or even if I’m enduring a sharp sadness, I always sense that behind everything there is the privilege and passion of experience.
The Neuroscience of Creativity and Insight | Think Tank. The Internet has a terrible habit of misquoting Einstein on energy and creativity until he sounds like he’s the author of , not the theory of relativity. Here’s something he actually did say . Describing the effect of music on his inner life, he told a friend: “When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come close to the conclusion that the gift of imagination has meant more to me than any talent for absorbing absolute knowledge.”
At times, he explained, “I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason.” Today, what Einstein believed intuitively – that insight was essential to scientific discovery and to the arts – can be observed methodically in the lab. Thanks to the invention of fMRI imaging , neuroscientists are capable of peering into a living, thinking brain in a way that their predecessors never dreamed of, with the potential to test long-standing ideas about how we arrive at novel solutions. Related Content Megan Erickson Associate Editor, Big Think Dr.
Mathematics or memory? Study charts collision course in brain. Josef Parvizi You already know it’s hard to balance your checkbook while simultaneously reflecting on your past. Now, investigators at the Stanford University School of Medicine — having done the equivalent of wire-tapping a hard-to-reach region of the brain — can tell us how this impasse arises. The researchers showed that groups of nerve cells in a structure called the posterior medial cortex, or PMC, are strongly activated during a recall task such as trying to remember whether you had coffee yesterday, but just as strongly suppressed when you’re engaged in solving a math problem. The PMC, situated roughly where the brain’s two hemispheres meet, is of great interest to neuroscientists because of its central role in introspective activities. Courtesy of Josef Parvizi The area in red is the posterior medial cortex, the portion of the brain that is most active when people recall details of their own pasts.
A new type of nerve cell found in the brain. Public release date: 21-Dec-2012 [ Print | E-mail Share ] [ Close Window ] Contact: Press Officepressinfo@ki.se 46-852-486-077Karolinska Institutet Scientists at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, in collaboration with colleagues in Germany and the Netherlands, have identified a previously unknown group of nerve cells in the brain. The nerve cells regulate cardiovascular functions such as heart rhythm and blood pressure. It is hoped that the discovery, which is published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, will be significant in the long term in the treatment of cardiovascular diseases in humans. The scientists have managed to identify in mice a previously totally unknown group of nerve cells in the brain. These nerve cells, also known as 'neurons', develop in the brain with the aid of thyroid hormone, which is produced in the thyroid gland.
Publication: 'Thyroid hormone is required for hypothalamic neurons regulating cardiovascular functions', Jens Mittag, David J. . [ Print | E-mail. Neural Crest. Avian Hindbrain Neural Crest Migration Hindbrain neural crest cells emerge from the dorsal neuroepithelium and migrate ventrally along stereotypical pathways into the branchial arches. These cells contribute to the development of cranial ganglia, the thyroid and parathyroid glands, the craniofacial skeleton, and the cardiac outflow tract. Failure of these cells to migrate, or to differentiate is thought to be a common cause of congenital heart defects. This chick embryo has been stained with an antibody (HNK-1) that is used to identify migrating neural crest cells. The dark blue regions (arrows) are streams of neural crest cells. What guides the migration of neural crest cells? In situ hybridizaiton with an EphB1 probe shows that neural crest in the streams destined for branchial arches II and III express this receptor.
The Neuroscience of Barbie. In science fiction and fantasy tales, there is a long running fascination with the idea of dramatically diminishing or growing in stature. In the 1989 classic, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Rick Moranis invents a device which accidentally shrinks both his own and the neighbor’s children down to a quarter-of-an-inch tall. Preceding this by more than 100 years, Lewis Carroll wrote about a little girl who, after tumbling down a rabbit hole, nibbles on some cake and then grows to massive proportions.
Nearly 300 years ago, Jonathan Swift described the adventures of Gulliver while on the island of Lilliputan, on which he is a giant, and then on the island of Brobdingnag, where everyone else is a giant. These kinds of experiences, however, have been limited to the world of fictional stories. The world around us does not actually change in size. Or at least, they were mythical until recently. The researchers used a number of measures to answer this question. Where thinking about thinking happens in the brain. We evaluate and alter the cognitive functions we perform, as when we revise or edit our writing or speaking.
This monitoring and controlling is usually referred to as metacognition. Middlebrooks and Sommer have recently done an elegant study of metacognition in Macaque monkeys, using a simple betting paradigm: Humans are metacognitive: they monitor and control their cognition. Our hypothesis was that neuronal correlates of metacognition reside in the same brain areas responsible for cognition, including frontal cortex. Highlight points: -Monkeys made decisions and wagered on their performance in a metacognitive task -Single neurons were recorded in three frontal cortical region -Only supplementary eye field (SEF) neuronal activity correlated with metacognition -The SEF metacognitive signal provided a temporal “bridge” between decision and bet. Nervous System: Facts, Function & Diseases. Biology and ideology: The anatomy of politics.
A popular political advertisement from early this summer begins with US President Barack Obama addressing a crowd of moon-eyed supporters. Suddenly, the screen goes dark to a crescendo of minor chords. Phrases such as “Fear and Loathing”, “Nauseating” and “Divide and Conquer” flash onto the screen, along with video clips of commentators complaining that Obama has used scare tactics to manipulate voters. In the final scene, the iconic poster from Obama's 2008 election campaign appears, the word HOPE transforming into FEAR as it bursts into flames.
The advertisement, produced by the conservative organization American Crossroads in Washington DC, is typical of those that have come to dominate the US airwaves and YouTube in preparation for next month's presidential election. Emerging from both the right and the left, these commercials increasingly resemble horror films as they seek to sway voters by triggering basic emotions such as fear, anger and disgust. Nature Podcast Innate ideology. The Neuroscience of Barbie.