neuroscience

Yet another study debunks "wind turbine syndrome"

A new study confirms the idea: the sound from wind turbines just doesn't make a difference.

Dutch scientists left a hamster wheel outside. Then, all the animals started playing with it

It seems that animals simply love to play.

Bonobos Know When You’re Clueless — Their Theory of Mind Explains Why

The bonobos eagerly pointed out treats to humans who didn’t know where they were, but when humans had watched the treats being placed, they didn't point.

Human thought has a speed limit — and it's surprisingly slow

For now, humans remain slow thinkers. We dream faster than we speak. We see more than we can process and we imagine more than we can act upon.

A paralyzed man just piloted a virtual drone using his brain

This new brain-computer interface offers a glimpse into the future for millions with motor impairments.

The Neuroscience Behind Vermeer's Girl and Its Hypnotic Power

There's a reason why viewers can't look away from Vermeer's masterpiece.

Humans should be better at voting than monkeys. But are we, really?

When you step into the voting booth, you might think you're making a rational choice. But what if I told you that part of your brain is just doing monkey things?

Alzheimer's disease causes brain cells to overheat and 'fry like eggs'

Researchers have shown that an essential protein involved in Alzheimer’s causes cells to overheat, which may explain how the disease appears.

Gut bacteriophages associated with improved cognitive function and memory in both animals and humans

These viruses can alter our gut microbiome to improve brain function.

Brain scans are saving convicted murderers from death row–but should they?

Perpetrators of horrendous crimes could avoid the death penalty because of their brainwaves.

Demystifying nootropics - Is cognitive enhancement even a thing?

Whether you’re a college student hoping to improve your grades, a professional wanting to achieve more at work, or an older adult hoping to stave off dementia, the idea of popping a magic pill that boosts your brainpower can be tempting. So it’s no surprise that the use of nootropics or smart drugs is on […]

Scientists find hidden brain patterns that predict what video is gonna go viral

Certain brain patterns can forecast what kind of video becomes popula.

My thoughts are my password, because my brain reactions are unique

Your brain is an inexhaustible source of secure passwords – but you might not have to remember anything.

Mouse Mazes and Cutting Edge Science: A Discussion with Harvard's Shuhan He

A winding discussion about neuroscience, technology, and mouse mazes.

As neuroscience advances, new human right laws are required to ensure our minds remain our own

Matter over mind.

An old game console could challenge all we know about how the brain works

And it can run Donkey Kong. Can your brain do that? Didn't think so.

Detailed new map of human brain reveals almost 100 new regions

Just like space, the human brain has plenty of uncharted territory.

Genetic variant explains why women are more prone to Alzheimer's

Like a sticking nail, Alzheimer’s has been irritating neuroscientists for decades. After so many years and billions worth of research, the underlying causes and mechanics that cause the gruesome neurodegenerative disease have yet to be identified, though hints suggest genetics have a major role to play – never mind a cure! Clearly, Alzhaimer’s is formidable […]

Measuring creativity through spontaneous single spoken words

What is creativity? Although definitions vary, one might be inclined to say that creativity, ultimately, is anything that has to do with ideas – generating them, building them, transforming them into reality. There are a lot of tests that measure creativity and chances are if you’ve been to a job interview recently you might have […]

Is making cyborg cockroaches immoral?

Through the halls of TedxDetroit last week, participants were introduced to an unfamiliar and unlikely guest – a remote controlled cyborg cockroach. RoboRoach #12 as it was called can be directed to either move left or right by transmitting electrical signals through electrodes attached to the insect’s antennae via the Bluetooth signals emitted by a smartphone. […]

Schizophrenia symptoms canceled in mice after gene therapy

A group of international researchers may have reached a breakthrough moment after they successfully eliminated schizophrenia symptoms in mice after they targeted a specific gene and manipulated its expression. Their findings offer hope that similar results might be possible for humans as well. Despite schizophrenia being well documented for many years now and it being […]

Neurobiologist can see in 3-D after being stuck in 2-D for 48 years. [amazing brain adaption]

Meet Susan Barry. She’s an accomplished neurobiologist and a professor of biological studies at Mount Holyoke College. For 48 years of her life, however, Susan was visually stuck in 2-D world. You see, she was born with her eye crossed and could only see in two dimensions. Our eyes each produce an image, and since they’re […]

Rats' brains connect to form an organic computer

In an incredible feat of neuroscience and communications, researchers at Duke University School of Medicine formed a link between pairs of rats by electronically linking their brains. As such, the rats could exchange motor and tactile information between each other. In one particular case, the experiment showed that a pair of linked rats – one rat […]

Meet SPAUN - the most complex artificial human brain yet

Needless to say, the human brain is the most complex neural structure encountered so far. While a computer can outwork a human in many cognitive tasks, our brain can perform a variety of tasks that no computing machine can even scratch the surface. Just think a bit about imagination – how could a computer ever […]

Cognitive computing milestone: IBM simulates 530 billon neurons and 100 trillion synapses

First initiated in 2008 by IBM, the Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) program whose final goal is that of developing a new cognitive computer architecture based on the human brain. Recently, IBM announced it has reached an important milestone for its program after the company successfully simulated 10 billion neurons and 100 trillion […]

Brain scans of rappers offer valuable insight on creativity

Freestyle rapping is perhaps the most prized skill in hip hop – it is the ability to make rhymes on the fly, and it’s usually what rappers do to “duel” – the one who makes the better insults win. But Siyuan Liu and Allen Braun, neuroscientists, didn’t go to a rap show – they brought […]

Humans are capable of short-term precognition, study finds

How many times did you find yourself anticipating a certain event shortly before it happened?

Cooking food helped early humans grow bigger brains

The pyramids, art, all of the world’s great inventions, literary works, just about any valuable intellectual work can be traced back to food – cooked food. If you care to go as far back as our very roots, that is. Previous research showed that cooked food made it easier and more efficient for our guts to […]

Slime can navigate using external memory, despite having no brain - a precursor to the nervous system?

Scientists at University of Sydney have been studying for the past few years one of the most peculiar events in nature. It seems that a living slime, no less, no more, is capable of reading information and remembering its past “steps” acting on some sort of external memory, this despite the fact that it has no […]

Atlas of the human brain might help identify the mechanics of neural conditions

Neuroscientists at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle have created an atlas of the human brain, which highlights the activity of genes across the entire organ. The brain map was created after many hard years of labor, and might help scientists from across the world identify factors that underlie neurological and psychiatric conditions. The human brain is […]

We make mistakes more often and learn harder when rules change

Someone whose been driving for 20 years, let’s say, in the United States and somehow ends up driving a car in the UK will be in a lot of trouble. Going from right side driving to left side driving, or vice versa, will bewilder just about anyone, and if you’ve gone through such an experience […]

Fluoride in tap water lowers IQ and hampers child brain development

According to the Fluoride Action Network there are at present 24 independent studies which have a direct link between fluoride contamination from city tap water and reduced IQ, especially in children who are more vulnerable due to developing brains. The most recent one comes from Harvard University, which also came to the same conclusion, namely that […]

Paralyzed, controls robotic arm just with the power of thought

Nothing short of extraordinary, two people paralyzed from the neck down controlled a robotic arm to perform actions of various complexity, like manipulating objects, simply by using their minds. One of the participants involved in the demonstration of the brain to robotic arm set-up actually controlled the arm to retrieve a coffee recipient and eventually drank from […]

The Human brain might be organized a whole lot simpler than previously thought. Imaging reveals 3-D grid structure

The most complex object on Earth is the human brain. However, even though it’s intertwined by billions of nerve fibers almost in a chaotic fashion, scientists who have used sophisticated mathematical analysis of advanced imaging data found that the neural pathways that carry electrical signals through the brain are arranged in a very simple manner, resembling […]

Memories are stored in specific brain cells, MIT Inception-like research finds

When the brain deems an experience meaningful enough, it will transfer that information from short-term storage, where typically information like where you put your car keys or the phone number of a person you just met gets stored temporarily, to your long-term memory, offering the possibility to be accessed at a later time. Neurologists claim […]

Why the brain gets slower as we get older

From a certain age onward, humans seem to process information at a slower pace – learning new things becomes more difficult, remembering where you put the car keys seems to give headaches, and it gets ever worse as we age even more. Neuroscientists at the University of Bristol studying dysfunctional neural communication in Alzheimer patients demonstrated that the […]

Brain imaging reveals the movies inside our mind

Mixing in a typical fMRI brain scanner with advanced computer modeling simulations, scientists at the University of California have managed to achieve the the unthinkable – render the visual expressions triggered inside the brain and play them like a movie. This is the forefront technology which will one day allow us to tap inside the mind […]

Cyborg-rats with artificial cerebellums - first step ahead the age of borg

Remarkably enough, scientists from Tel Aviv University in Israel, have manged to implant an artificial cerebellum in a rat’s brain, which successfully restored lost brain function. This research could provide the foundations for implementing cyborg-like functions in the human brain sometime in the distant future. Such an advancement, could possibly one day offer the prospect […]

Tiny neuromicroscope can see inside a moving animal's brain

A team of neuroscientists from Stanford University have managed to create a remarkably tiny device capable of monitoring brain activity in a rodent or other small animals. The device can be manufactured extremely cost-effective and might prove to be an invaluable tool for researchers of the new decade. Mice have always been the lab subjects […]

Science brings mind reading tech a step closer

Researchers from Princeton University recently published a study in which they show how they’ve been able to use functional magnetic resonance imaging and a computer program that condensed 3,500 Wikipedia articles to associate words to particular brain activity patterns. Basically, they were able to read thoughts. To reach this remarkable correlation, researchers first did some […]

Amazing Brain Art

Brain-Art competition is an annual celebration of the beauty and creativity of artistic renderings emerging from the neuroimaging community. Last month concluded the first edition in which various artists from around the world submitted some incredible work for the competition’s galleries – 3D-rendering gallery, connectome gallery, abstract gallery and humorous gallery. Below are a few […]

Introspective individuals spot illusions harder, study says

According to a new study by scientists from University College London, it seems people who find optical illusion solving easier are less inclined to think about the process and understand how they came to that decision. This conclusion came after further analysis of data from a research conducted last year, which showed people with more […]

Remember and forget at the flick of a button

A team of neuro-scientists have managed to restore lost memories to rats by activating a part of their brains through an artificial memory chip – just like a sort of neuro-prosthesis. Further advances backed by this study might lead to the development of important leaps in long-term memory treatment, providing relief for Alzheimer or dementia […]

Study: traumatic brain injuries in Asterix comics

Brain surgeons must have the best sense of humor in the whole scientific community. Seems like a team of German neurosurgeons took the liberty to analyze the hundreds of head injuries roman legionnaires had to suffer at the hands of the ruthless gaul Asterix. They’re results have been remarkable – this my friend is pure […]

Multitasking becomes more difficult as we age, brain scans show

It’s somewhat evidently observable that the elderly have more trouble focusing or multitasking than young people, but a recent study in which scientists used brain scans shows an unexpected explanation to the generation deficit. Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco led by neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley, recruited 20 relatively young adults, average age 25, […]

Mapping the brain's complexity - 'one of science's ultimate goals'

Similar to genomics, the science which maps our genetic background, “connectomics” is a new emerging science which is becoming very popular in the neuroscience area. Basically, connectomics aims to map the highly intense neuron connections and properties in the brain, more exactly the synapses, and recently researchers have made important progress in the field which […]

Learning keeps your brain healthy

Just like any muscle in your body, if not used, the brain starts to degrade as time passes; this has been known for quite a while, but recently, a team from UC Irvine provided the first visual evidence of how learning protects the brain, thus proving that mental stimulation fights against the degrading effects that […]

Young people and Old people store information differently

The latest study conducted by researchers from the Duke University Medical Center was performed on two groups of (old and young) adults. The first group had an average age of about 70 while the younger ones were about 24 years old. Neuroscientists found out that the mechanism behind the part of the brain responsable for […]

Technique Images Brain Activity When We Think Of Others

Just like when you lie certain things happen in your brain, the same thing happens when you think something about somebody. But what happens in our brain when we judge people or at least when we make an idea about someone? Those (and many other) questions have been tackled by MIT neuroscientist Rebecca Saxe. Her […]