Paradigms. The Brain: Our Strange, Important, Subconscious Light Detectors | Senses. Studies like Foster’s prompted a number of researchers to look for those missing cells. The first clue came in 2000, when neuroscientist Ignacio Provencio, now at the University of Virginia, found a light- capturing pigment called melanopsin in the ganglion layer of the retina. It was a bizarre discovery, since the ganglion layer was thought only to relay electric signals from the rods and cones, not catch its own light. But in 2002, Samer Hattar of Johns Hopkins University and David Berson of Brown University identified individual retinal ganglion cells containing melanopsin.
They further demonstrated that the cells—called intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, or ipRGCs—could detect light. Like the rods and cones, ipRGCs are most sensitive to a particular color: blue, in this case. Hattar and other scientists then set out to determine exactly what ipRGCs do by creating mirror images of Keeler’s blind rodents.
Another surprise: Not all ipRGCs are the same. Prune bad brain wiring with magnetic pulses - health - 18 February 2012. By Wendy Zukerman ZAPPING the brain with a weak magnetic pulse can wipe out unwanted neural connections in mice at least. The discovery could be turned into a treatment for conditions associated with abnormal neural circuitry, such as schizophrenia. In transcranial magnetic stimulation a magnetic coil induces electric currents in the brain that can strengthen or suppress neural connections. This technique has been shown to improve symptoms in people with brain disorders such as autism and depression. Now, Jennifer Rodger from the University of Western Australia in Crawley and colleagues have found that stimulating the brain at intensities lower than would make a neuron fire can remove unwanted neural connections in mice.
As children, our brains produce too many connections between cells. Rodger’s team used genetically modified mice with abnormal connections in an area of the brain called the superior colliculus (SC), which is involved in motion detection. More on these topics: The myth of the eight-hour sleep. Image copyright Other We often worry about lying awake in the middle of the night - but it could be good for you. A growing body of evidence from both science and history suggests that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.
In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr conducted an experiment in which a group of people were plunged into darkness for 14 hours every day for a month. It took some time for their sleep to regulate but by the fourth week the subjects had settled into a very distinct sleeping pattern. They slept first for four hours, then woke for one or two hours before falling into a second four-hour sleep. Though sleep scientists were impressed by the study, among the general public the idea that we must sleep for eight consecutive hours persists.
In 2001, historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech published a seminal paper, drawn from 16 years of research, revealing a wealth of historical evidence that humans used to sleep in two distinct chunks. Image copyright bbc. Hack Your Brain to Use Cravings To Your Advantage. Study Before Bed for Significantly Better Retention. This has worked for me for my GCSE's, A-levels and my degree: You know how you can always remember the first song you hear in the morning, and it gets stuck in your head for the rest of the day? I tried to apply this to revision. Basically, a month or so before your exams, take 5-6 pages of notes, nothing too in-depth, key stuff, equations, quotes etc, then stick them on the wall next to your bed, try to rotate the pages every couple of days. This way, the first thing you'll see when you wake up is these notes, It doesn't work EVERY day, but most days you will semi-consciously (depending how you are with mornings) pick a single piece of information out of the page, and have it running around your head for the rest of the day, meaning you can't forget it.
Then when you come to revising properly, the building blocks are already in place for you to make sense of the rest of it and remember it. Train Your Brain for Monk-Like Focus. MIT discovers the location of memories: Individual neurons. Update 12/2/15: We've now followed up on this story: The more we learn about memory, the weirder it gets. The original continues below. MIT researchers have shown, for the first time ever, that memories are stored in specific brain cells. By triggering a small cluster of neurons, the researchers were able to force the subject to recall a specific memory. By removing these neurons, the subject would lose that memory. As you can imagine, the trick here is activating individual neurons, which are incredibly small and not really the kind of thing you can attach electrodes to. To do this, the researchers used optogenetics, a bleeding edge sphere of science that involves the genetic manipulation of cells so that they're sensitive to light.
Now, just to temper your excitement, we should note that MIT's subjects in this case are mice -- but it's very, very likely that the human brain functions in the same way. Mapping Human Consciousness. As a clinician and educator, I have used the following map of human consciousness with much success, both in guiding my conceptualizations and interventions with patients and in educating budding clinicians on how to integrate key insights from major perspectives (e.g., experiential, cognitive , psychodynamic ) to understand how people work.
Here is the map. Almost everyone with whom I have shared the conception can easily relate to it. To use your intuitive folk psychology to understand it, imagine the image depicts twin brothers, Chao and Chi. On the left, Chao was first born and favored by his parents . He has just heard that he has gotten in to his first choice for college, and he is telling Chi about it. Imagine Chi is jealous , and think about what might be going through their minds. I will define what the parts of the diagram mean, and then we will return to the specific example. The Three Domains of Human Consciousness Why are certain impulses filtered?