Neurology
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How Rain Man's brain REALLY worked: New scans reveal the makeup of patients with similar condition
Researchers use brain scans and network analysis to map the brains of patients with agenesis of the corpus callosum People with this condition, which affected real-life Rain Man Kim Peek, are lacking the neurological structure which connects the left and right brains Scientists hope their findings will shed light on why some people with the condition develop autism and others do not By Damien GayleFeb. 13, 2013 — When faced with a difficult decision, it is often suggested to "sleep on it" or take a break from thinking about the decision in order to gain clarity. But new brain imaging research from Carnegie Mellon University, published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience , finds that the brain regions responsible for making decisions continue to be active even when the conscious brain is distracted with a different task. The research provides some of the first evidence showing how the brain unconsciously processes decision information in ways that lead to improved decision-making. "This research begins to chip away at the mystery of our unconscious brains and decision-making," said J. David Creswell, assistant professor of psychology in CMU's Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences and director of the Health and Human Performance Laboratory.
How unconscious processing improves decision-making
Lecturers at the last Society for Neuroscience annual meeting offer an overview of advances in understanding the underlying neuropathological substrates in impairments in speech processing. Broca's area and “language genes” play a role, of course, but they barely begin to explain the human ability to produce and comprehend speech. That requires an understanding — just beginning to emerge — of brain-wide networks that combine memory, muscle coordination, executive planning, and other neural feats into a complex ballet that can be disrupted in multiple ways, according to new research. “A lot of talk about language is woefully out of date,” said David Poeppel, PhD, professor of psychology and neural science at New York University who has spent his career trying to unravel the complexities of spoken language.
NEWS FROM THE SOCIETY OF NEUROSCIENCE ANNUAL MEETING: The Gi... : Neurology Today
Scientists construct first detailed map of how the brain organizes everything we see
Dec. 19, 2012 — Our eyes may be our window to the world, but how do we make sense of the thousands of images that flood our retinas each day? Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that the brain is wired to put in order all the categories of objects and actions that we see. They have created the first interactive map of how the brain organizes these groupings. The result -- achieved through computational models of brain imaging data collected while the subjects watched hours of movie clips -- is what researchers call "a continuous semantic space."The Human Brain
Sagittal view Frontal Lobe thinking, planning, & central executive functions; motor execution Parietal Lobe somatosensory perception integration of visual & somatospatial information
Ever noticed a bruise that you have absolutely no recollection of getting? Rebecca Partington Everybody hurts, but not everybody keeps hurting.
Pain really is in the mind, but not in the way you think
An image of Golgi stained neurons in the dentate gyrus of an epilepsy patient. Image: wikipedia/MethoxyRoxy (Medical Xpress) -- The brain has billions of neurons, arranged in complex circuits that allow us to perceive the world, control our movements and make decisions.
Simple mathematical computations underlie brain circuits
"When we perform a task which demands processing a high information load, it takes up most or all of our brain capacity for perception of any other information, so our processing becomes selective. We’re able to continue attending to the relevant task, but our brain no longer responds to irrelevant information." Professor Nilli Lavie, UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (Medical Xpress) -- When we focus intently on one task, we often fail to see other things in plain sight - a phenomenon known as ‘inattention blindness’. Scientists already know that performing a task involving high information load - a ‘high load’ task - reduces our visual cortex response to incoming stimuli. Now researchers from UCL have examined the brain mechanisms behind this, further explaining why our brain becomes ‘blind’ under high load.
'Inattention blindness' due to brain load
Mind & Brain :: Mind Matters :: April 3, 2012 :: :: Email :: Print The brain uses a fundamentally different circuit for paying attention to the internal world, and this could have important implications for stress and mental illness. By Emma Seppala The neuroscience of body awareness Image: iStock / Nikola Miljkovic
Decoding the Body Watcher
A Single Brain Structure May Give Winners That Extra Physical Edge
Mind & Brain :: Features :: July 24, 2012 :: :: Email :: Print An extraordinary insula helps elite athletes better anticipate their body's upcoming feelings, improving their physical reactions By Sandra Upson Image: Courtesy of Richard Giles on Wikimedia Commons All elite athletes train hard, possess great skills and stay mentally sharp during competition. But what separates a gold medalist from an equally dedicated athlete who comes in 10th place?
Often we think not. For example, research now suggests that the brain’s frontal lobes, which are crucial for self-control, are not yet mature in adolescents. This finding has helped shape attitudes about whether young people are fully responsible for their actions. In 2005, when the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty for juveniles was unconstitutional, its decision explicitly took into consideration that “parts of the brain involved in behavior control continue to mature through late adolescence.”
Neuroscience and Moral Responsibility
From NeuronBankWiki Figure 1. Photomicrographs of soma and proximal dendrites of (a) a pyramidal and (b) the VENs stained with the Golgi method. Photomicrogaphs are montages taken of several planes and/or fields of view.
Von Economo neuron - NeuronBankWiki
By decoding brain activity, scientists read monkeys' inner thoughts
In the classic center-out reaching task, a monkey reaches from a central location to targets on a circle surrounding the starting position. This task does not allow the neural encoding for hand position to be separated from the neural encoding for hand velocity. If the starting position varies, however, as in the task shown here, hand position and initial hand velocity can be disambiguated.Short Sharp Science: Out-of-body experience highlights clues to consciousness
Liz Else, associate editor You and your family are on holiday, driving round a mountainous part of Greece, when suddenly a tyre bursts. You roll over and over down some 100 metres before a large olive tree blocks your fall. Amazingly, you all emerge from the battered heap. Some days later, at work, you recount the tale, struggling to capture for your colleagues one of the odder aspects of the experience. It was, you say, a bit like a dream - or maybe a slow-motion movie , it was like being outside yourself, unreal...Study Reveals How Brain Performs Motor Chunking Tasks
You pick up your cell phone and dial the new number of a friend. Ten numbers. One. Number. At. A.Mouse brain, animated visualization
Multi-scale visualization of mouse brain by Mar 29
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