Cool Brain Art Last month was the conclusion of Brain-Art Competition 2011, and some of the entries are really intriguing. There were four categories of entry: Best 3-Dimensional Brain RenderingBest Representation of the Human ConnectomeBest Abstract Brain IllustrationBest Humorous Brain Illustration The winner in the 3-D category was Rebrain by Robert Toro (above). More brain art: The Brain Tree by Silje Soeviknes Andy Warhol for Neuroscientists I by Valerie van Mulukom View the entire gallery of entries in this year’s competition here. art, brain art
The neuroscience of happiness They say money can’t buy happiness. But can a better understanding of your brain? As recent breakthroughs in cognitive science break new ground in the study of consciousness — and its relationship to the physical body — the mysteries of the mind are rapidly becoming less mysterious. But does this mean we’ll soon be able to locate a formula for good cheer? Shimon Edelman, a cognitive expert and professor of psychology at Cornell University, offers some insight in “The Happiness of Pursuit: What Neuroscience Can Teach Us About the Good Life.” Salon spoke with Edelman over the phone about the brain as computer, our cultural investment in happiness, and why knowing how our brains work might make us happier. In the book, you approach neuroscience from a popular perspective, using language and allegories laypeople can understand. Well, I think the principles in question are actually pretty accessible on what you call a superficial level. That’s a really good question.
NEURONS V FREE WILL Our Top 12 of 2012. No. 4: The notion of free will is under attack again, this time from the advance of neuroscience. Anthony Gottlieb explains... From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, March/April 2012 On the evening of October 10th 1769, in one of his typically curt dismissals of a philosophical problem, Dr Johnson silenced Boswell, who wanted to talk about fate and free will, by exclaiming: “Sir...we know our will is free, and there’s an end on’t.” Nearly two and a half centuries later, free will and responsibility are debated as much as ever, and the issue is taking some new twists. Every age finds a fresh reason to doubt the reality of human freedom. In the 20th century, the new science of psychology also seemed to undermine the idea of free will: Freud’s theory of unconscious drives suggested that the causes of some of our actions are not what we think they are. Really? That may be an understatement as far as experiments on thinking, emotion and personality are concerned.
Neuroscience and Marketing Books Subliminal Messages, SXSW Neuromarketing, Formula for a Bestseller, More – Roger’s Picks Another week, another batch of content for your reading pleasure. Whether you want to turn your book into a bestseller or develop an app that’s as addictive as an illegal drug, we’ve got something for you! Continue Reading... Hooked by Nir Eyal Book Review: Hooked: A Guide to Building Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal and Ryan Hoover Were you surprised when Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion? Continue Reading... Everyday Stress Can Shut Down the Brain's Chief Command Center The entrance exam to medical school consists of a five-hour fusillade of hundreds of questions that, even with the best preparation, often leaves the test taker discombobulated and anxious. For some would-be physicians, the relentless pressure causes their reasoning abilities to slow and even shut down entirely. The experience—known variously as choking, brain freeze, nerves, jitters, folding, blanking out, the yips or a dozen other descriptive terms—is all too familiar to virtually anyone who has flubbed a speech, bumped up against writer’s block or struggled through a lengthy exam. For decades scientists thought they understood what happens in the brain during testing or a battlefront firefight. In recent years a different line of research has put the physiology of stress in an entirely new perspective. Select an option below: Customer Sign In *You must have purchased this issue or have a qualifying subscription to access this content
An Off Switch for Pain Chemists build light-controlled neural inhibitor. The notion of a pain switch is an alluring idea, but is it realistic? Well, chemists at LMU Munich, in collaboration with colleagues in Berkeley and Bordeaux, have now shown in laboratory experiments that it is possible to inhibit the activity of pain-sensitive neurons using an agent that acts as a photosensitive switch. For the LMU researchers, the method primarily represents a valuable tool for probing the neurobiology of pain. The system developed by the LMU team, led by Dirk Trauner, who is Professor of Chemical Biology and Genetics, is a chemical compound they call QAQ. One half of QAQ closely resembles one of the active analogs of lidocaine, a well-known local anesthetic used by dentists. Neuroreceptors are proteins that span the outer membrane of nerve cells. In their experiments, the researchers exploited the fact that QAQ can percolate through endogenous ion channels to get the molecule into nerve cells. Contact: Prof.
The Best of Neuromarketing 2011 Once again, it’s time for the “Readers’ Choice” Neuromarketing picks for the year. These posts aren’t my own choices, but are selected because they garnered the most traffic from tweets, Facebook shares, Stumbleupon clicks, and so on. Without further ado, here are the top articles of 2011, as chosen by our Neuromarketing readers: 1. Simple Slogans Double Sales We think of brands as amazingly powerful. 2. Are you focusing on your product’s features and benefits, or are you seducing your customer’s brain? 3. Which brands are the most desirable to consumers, as measured by neuromarketing firm Buyology? 4. What did Guy Kawasaki learn about favors from influence expert Robert Cialdini? 5. Find out why you really need to respond to customer criticism! 6. What you call your product changes how customers perceive it, and even its unchanging characteristics. 7. Some ads use humor, some surprise you with a twist… Take a look at this ad and see if you can guess what the product is before the end.
David Eagleman: The human brain runs on conflict This article was taken from the May 2011 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online. Throughout the 60s, pioneers in artificial intelligence worked late nights trying to build simple robotic programs capable of finding, fetching and stacking small wooden blocks in patterns. It was one of those apparently simple problems that turn out to be exceptionally difficult, and it led AI scientists to think: perhaps the robot could solve the problem by distributing the work among specialised subagents -- small computer programs that each bite off a piece of the problem. The society-of-mind framework was a breakthrough, but, despite initial excitement, a collection of experts with divided labour has never yielded the properties of the human brain. Artificial intelligence has become stuck because it has so far not adopted the idea of a democratic architecture.
A unique on-off switch for hormone production After we sense a threat, our brain center responsible for responding goes into gear, setting off a chain of biochemical reactions leading to the release of cortisol from the adrenal glands. Dr. Gil Levkowitz and his team in the Molecular Cell Biology Department have now revealed a new kind of ON-OFF switch in the brain for regulating the production of a main biochemical signal from the brain that stimulates cortisol release in the body. This finding, which was recently published in Neuron, may be relevant to research into a number of stress-related neurological disorders. This signal is corticotropin releasing hormone (CRH). CRH is manufactured and stored in special neurons in the hypothalamus. The research -- on zebrafish -- was performed in Levkowitz's lab and spearheaded by Dr. The team found that both receptors are encoded in a single gene. Together with Drs. Faulty switching mechanisms may play a role in a number of stress-related disorders.
Multitasking: This Is Your Brain On Media From Rasmussen College, Multitasking: This Is Your Brain On Media is a cool infographic design that looks at some of the research behind multitasking. New reports find that multi-taskers are “lousy at everything that’s necessary for multi-tasking.” Considering the amount of time people spend with around-the-clock access to TV, the Internet and mobile devices, it’s not surprising.This infographic looks at the causes and effects of multi-tasking. From a design perspective, I like the clean look with a simple color palate that is easy on the eyes. The statistics in the Media Addiction section could have been visualized to make them easier to comprehend. Without visualizations, this section feel less important compared to the rest of the data. I love the brain diagrams. Found on Infographics Journal
The Upside of Pessimism The theory of defensive pessimism suggests that imagining—and planning for—worst-case scenarios can be more effective than trying to think positively. I have pretty low expectations for this article. Oh sure, I spent a lot of time on it, and I personally think it’s a great read. Or at least, that’s how I would start out thinking if I were prone to defensive pessimism, a phenomenon in which people imagine worst-case scenarios in order to manage their anxiety. This type of negativity might sound like apostasy by American standards. I recently spoke with Norem, a pioneer of the defensive pessimism theory. A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows, and you can take a test to find out if you’re a defensive pessimist here. Olga Khazan: What is defensive pessimism? Julie Norem: It’s a strategy for dealing with anxiety and helping to manage anxiety so that it doesn’t negatively influence performance. Khazan: How would I apply this in real life?
Neuroscientists identify how the brain works to select what we (want to) see If you are looking for a particular object — say a yellow pencil — on a cluttered desk, how does your brain work to visually locate it? For the first time, a team led by Carnegie Mellon University neuroscientists has identified how different neural regions communicate to determine what to visually pay attention to and what to ignore. This finding is a major discovery for visual cognition and will guide future research into visual and attention deficit disorders. The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, used various brain imaging techniques to show exactly how the visual cortex and parietal cortex send direct information to each other through white matter connections in order to specifically pick out the information that you want to see. "We have demonstrated that attention is a process in which there is one-to-one mapping between the first place visual information comes from the eyes into the brain and beyond to other parts of the brain," said Adam S.
Emotion Selectively Distorts Our Recollections On September 11, 2001, Elizabeth A. Phelps stepped outside her apartment in lower Manhattan and noticed a man staring toward the World Trade Center, about two miles away. Looking up, “I just saw this big, burning hole,” Phelps recalls. Like Phelps, many Americans have searing memories of that day. Select an option below: Customer Sign In *You must have purchased this issue or have a qualifying subscription to access this content U.S. researchers map emotional intelligence of the brain We tend to think of reason and emotion as being two different things, but it turns out that there may not be a choice between the heart and the head. A University of Illinois team, led by neuroscience professor Aron Barbey, has made the first detailed 3D map of emotional and general intelligence in the brain, that shows a strong overlap of general and emotional intelligence. Reason and emotions aren’t opposites, but rather two types of intelligence or, perhaps, two aspects of one intelligence. Reason comes under the heading of general intelligence. That covers higher-order mental processes that include reasoning, attention and perception, and memory and language. Emotions are described as emotional intelligence, which takes in perceiving, immediate processing and applying emotional and social content, information and knowledge. There are a number of theories about how general and emotional intelligence are related. Relationships between general and emotional intelligence