Our brains are wired so we can better hear ourselves speak, new study shows
Like the mute button on the TV remote control, our brains filter out unwanted noise so we can focus on what we’re listening to. But when it comes to following our own speech, a new brain study from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that instead of one homogenous mute button, we have a network of volume settings that can selectively silence and amplify the sounds we make and hear. Activity in the auditory cortex when we speak and listen is amplified in some regions of the brain and muted in others. In this image, the black line represents muting activity when we speak. (Courtesy of Adeen Flinker) Neuroscientists from UC Berkeley, UCSF and Johns Hopkins University tracked the electrical signals emitted from the brains of hospitalized epilepsy patients. Their findings, published today (Dec. 8, 2010) in the Journal of Neuroscience, offer new clues about how we hear ourselves above the noise of our surroundings and monitor what we say.
Mind-Controlled Musical Instrument Helps Paralysis Patients Rehabilitate
Music Through the Mind Eduardo Miranda Paralysis patients could play music with their minds , using a new brain-control interface that senses brain impulses and translates them into musical notes. Users must teach themselves how to associate brain signals with specific tasks, causing neuronal activity that the brain scanners can pick up. Then they can make music. It’s a pretty unique use of brain-computer interfaces, which are already being used to do things like drive cars , control robots and play video games. The device was developed by Eduardo Miranda , a composer and computer-music specialist at the University of Plymouth, UK. Patients with neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s can use music to walk to a rhythm or even to trigger memories or emotions. Like other brain-computer interfaces, a user calibrates the system — and his or her brain — by learning to associate certain brain signals with a stimulus. The work is reported in the journal Music and Medicine .
Morality Study Narrows Gap Between Mind And Brain
What Is CogniFit? - Mind Training Program
Paul Thompson's Research Publications
The brain's center of reasoning and problem solving is among the last to mature, a new study graphically reveals. The decade-long magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study of normal brain development, from ages 4 to 21, by researchers at NIH's National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) shows that such "higher-order" brain centers, such as the prefrontal cortex, don't fully develop until young adulthood. A time-lapse 3-D movie that compresses 15 years of human brain maturation, ages 5 to 20, into seconds shows gray matter - the working tissue of the brain's cortex - diminishing in a back-to-front wave, likely reflecting the pruning of unused neuronal connections during the teen years. Cortex areas can be seen maturing at ages in which relevant cognitive and functional developmental milestones occur. The researchers scanned the same 13 healthy children and teens every two years as they grew up, for 10 years. [1] Nitin Gogtay MD, Jay N.
How to train your mind to remember anything
Josha Foer observed the 2005 USA Memory Championship and won it in 2006He says you can teach yourself to remember a lot of information effectively One of the keys is to associate a word or a fact with other things you remember, Foer saysFoer: "If you want to make something memorable, you first have to make it meaningful" Editor's note: Joshua Foer is a writer and the author of "Moonwalking With Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything." In 2005, he attended the USA Memory Championship as an observer. (CNN) -- Once upon a time, the idea of having a trained, disciplined, cultivated memory was not nearly so strange a notion as it might seem to be today. Over the last few millennia, we've invented a series of technologies -- from the alphabet to the printed book to the photograph to the iPhone -- that have made it easier and easier for us to externalize our memories and essentially outsource this fundamental human capacity. Watch Joshua Foer's TED Talk
Human Connectome Project | Mapping the human brain connectivity
15 Years of Cutting-Edge Thinking on Understanding the Mind
by Maria Popova What mirror neurons have to do with Abu Ghraib, the science of religion, and how happiness flourishes. For the past 15 years, literary-agent-turned-crusader-of-human-progress John Brockman has been a remarkable curator of curiosity, long before either “curator” or “curiosity” was a frivolously tossed around buzzword. While there’s no doubt about the value of online presentations, the role of books, whether bound and printed or presented electronically, is still an invaluable way to present important ideas. Here’s a small sampling of the treasure chest between The Mind’s covers: In “Eudaemonia: The Good Life” (2004), Martin Seligman, father of positive psychology whom you might recall as the author of Flourish and Learned Optimism, one of our 7 essential books on optimism, explores what he calls the “third form of happiness,” which lies in: knowing what your highest strengths are and deploying those in the service of something you believe is larger than you are.
