neuroscience

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Scientist: Love's Just Brain Chemicals

...that could someday be reproduced in a lab

(Newser) - An American neurologist is determined to prove wrong the poets who say love is beyond understanding, reports the BBC. The Emory professor argues that neurochemical reactions in certain parts of the brain can explain love, raising the possibility that scientists could someday create drugs to bring love back to dying...

Japanese Scientists Can Read Your Mind

They find a way to extract images directly from the brain

(Newser) - The Thought Police could eventually exist in reality, if they can just figure out how to harness new technology developed by Japanese researchers, the Daily Yomuri reports. The team managed to re-create images that people were looking at—using only subjects' recorded brain activity. This is the first successful display...

Brain Pacemakers May Revolutionize Treatment

(Newser) - The precise application of electricity to certain areas of the brain—the same principles a pacemaker uses for the heart—is showing promise for people with an array of illnesses such as Parkinson's, severe depression, epilepsy, and Alzheimer's, the Chicago Tribune reports. The treatment, called deep brain stimulation, remains in...

Brains Get Noisier as They Age
Brains Get
Noisier as
They Age
Jul 10, 2008 1:36 PM CDT

Brains Get Noisier as They Age

Study finds neural complexity generates more cranial static

(Newser) - Just because you can't hear it doesn't mean your brain isn't making noise. It is, and scientists using high-tech gear to record it have now discovered that it increases as you mature, reports LiveScience. A comparison of noise generated by groups of children and young adults indicates that brain noise,...

That Irritating Itch? It May Just Be Your Brain

In fact, our noodles could be inventing 90% of what we call real

(Newser) - A woman suffers from an itch so severe that she scratches right through to her brain—yet doctors find no medical ailment. War victims feel the sensations of a real limb—but from phantom appendages. What does it all add up to? Perhaps a new understanding of how our brains...

Baby Birds' Babbling Suggests Intricate Brain

How our feathered friends learn, play back song may hold answers for human speech

(Newser) - Being bird-brained might not be much of an insult: New MIT research paints a more intricate portrait of how songbirds learn to sing, with one part of the brain used for learning and another for singing itself. Rather than maturing from babbling to birdsong, the independent but overlapping pathways work...

Surgery for Depression? Yup.
 Surgery for Depression? Yup. 
May 3, 2008 8:35 AM CDT

Surgery for Depression? Yup.

Deep brain stimulation, used for years to fight Parkinson's, is spreading out

(Newser) - A type of brain surgery previously used to treat symptoms of Parkinson’s disease may be effective in countering the debilitating effects of deep depression, CNN reports. A new study shows that deep brain stimulation, a process in which electrodes are inserted into problem areas in the brain and hooked...

Brain Training Can Boost Smarts

 Brain Training Can Boost Smarts 
Apr 29, 2008 3:13 AM CDT

Brain Training Can Boost Smarts

Mental gymnastics can strengthen general intelligence, study finds

(Newser) - Software claiming to improve intelligence has met with market success in recent years— along with plenty of skepticism—but sales could now get a boost with the discovery that it really is possible to improve general intelligence with mental gymnastics. Researchers had thought so-called "fluid intelligence" was purely genetic,...

Cell Phones Worse Than Smoking, Study Says

Neurosurgeon warns that handsets double brain tumor risk

(Newser) - Cell phones may cause more deaths than smoking or asbestos, warns a new study in which an Australian neurosurgeon found that a decade of cell use can double brain tumor risk—an effect that he says will show in coming years. "We are currently experiencing a reactively unchecked and...

Why Girls Are Better at Language
Why Girls Are Better at Language
Mar 6, 2008 11:12 AM CST

Why Girls Are Better at Language

Study finds brain wiring gives girls the edge

(Newser) - Study after study has found that girls have better language skills than boys, and scientists now think they've found a biological reason why, Scientific American reports. Researchers discovered that girls showed more activity in the language part of their brains, which deciphers abstract encoding, than boys. The boys had more...

Mind-Reading Edges Closer to Reality

New computer can determine what you're looking at

(Newser) - Mind-reading has taken a step toward possibility with a new computer that can decode brain activity to determine what a person is looking at with up to 90% accuracy, the Independent reports. With improvements, the technology could be able to reconstruct any image a person could conjure up—and someday,...

Vaccines, Medicines to Treat Addiction on the Way

Many resist pharmaceutical approach

(Newser) - It's been decades since scientists recognized that addiction is a disease, not just a lack of willpower, but only now are potential treatments coming online that address what Newsweek calls "a chronic, relapsing brain disorder to be managed with all the tools at medicine's disposal." The magazine surveys...

Missing Protein May Explain 'Rain Man'

Brain deficiency could play role in creating autistic savants

(Newser) - The absence of a certain brain protein may play a role in the development of “autistic savants”—patients who exhibit the socio-cognitive impairments of autism but possess exceptional aptitude in highly specific areas, Live Science reports. Researchers found mice lacking the Shank1 protein, used for building synapses, learned...

Chronic Pain Rewires the Brain
Chronic Pain Rewires the Brain
Feb 6, 2008 5:34 AM CST

Chronic Pain Rewires the Brain

Researchers find suffering constant pain can cause permanent changes

(Newser) - Researchers studying the brains of people suffering from chronic pain have found that  an area of their cortex is permanently active when it should sometimes deactivate, Reuters reports. That part of the brain, usually associated with emotion, stays on "full throttle" at all times. Researchers say this could explain...

Freud Is Everywhere but in Psych Dept
Freud Is Everywhere but in Psych Dept
Nov 25, 2007 10:59 AM CST

Freud Is Everywhere but in Psych Dept

Psychoanalysis is thriving in culture, obsolete in psychology

(Newser) - Sigmund Freud's ideas have seeped into every corner of popular culture and academia, from film to foreign policy. The one place they've seeped out of is university psychology departments, where psychoanalysis is now viewed as obsolete, the New York Times reports. A new survey of 150 top colleges and universities...

New Scanning Techniques Could Decode Brain Wiring

Scientists work to speed neuroimaging methods

(Newser) - An international team of researchers is investigating a new type of neuroimaging technique, called connectomics, that can make incredibly detailed "wiring diagrams" of the brain, Technology Review reports. The researchers cut nanometer-thin slices off of brain tissue and use an electron microscope to image each sliver, catching much more...

Scientists Find Eternal Sunshine Spot in Your Mind

Study: Brain section thinks happy thoughts

(Newser) - If you think the glass is half empty, you’re a pessimist—but if you think it’s half full, you have strong activity in your rostral anterior cingulate cortex. That’s the section of the brain, located right behind the eyes, that controls optimism, according to a new study...

Do Vegetative Patients Dream of Comatose Sheep?

Research sheds light on impaired brain activity

(Newser) - New research into the way vegetative brains function is challenging the way the scientific community classifies cognitively impaired patients. Recent studies show that some vegetative patients can recognize faces, acquire new memories, and imagine physical movement—all mental activities long held to be out of reach for such patients, the...

Brain Implant Shows Promise for Stroke Victims

Electrical stimulations helps organ rewire itself

(Newser) - Stroke patients have shown lasting, "extremely promising" results, even years after suffering a brain hemorrhage, from an experimental therapy that electrically stimulates the brain. The currents help the organ rewire itself to take over for stroke-damaged sections, Newsweek reports, and study participants have improved significantly beyond what they could...

Scientists Find Fever Trigger in Mice

Discovery of hormone receptor in brain could lead to targeted treatment

(Newser) - Researchers have discovered a fever trigger in lab mice and succeeded in switching it off by removing specific hormone receptors in a tiny spot in the brain. The study is likely to lead to the development of  drugs efficiently targeted to controlling fever, Reuters reports. The trigger is one of...

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