Browsed by
Category: Neuroscience

New neuroscience research uncovers the brain’s unique musical processing pathways

New neuroscience research uncovers the brain’s unique musical processing pathways

PsyPost reports: A new study by researchers at UC San Francisco provides insight into how the brain processes musical melodies. Through precise mapping of the cerebral cortex, the study uncovered that our brains process music by not only discerning pitch and the direction of pitch changes but also by predicting the sequence of upcoming notes, each task managed by distinct sets of neurons. The findings have been published in Science Advances. Previous research had established that our brains possess specialized…

Read More Read More

What your brain is doing when you’re doing nothing

What your brain is doing when you’re doing nothing

Nora Bradford writes: Whenever you’re actively performing a task — say, lifting weights at the gym or taking a hard exam — the parts of your brain required to carry it out become “active” when neurons step up their electrical activity. But is your brain active even when you’re zoning out on the couch? The answer, researchers have found, is yes. Over the past two decades they’ve defined what’s known as the default mode network, a collection of seemingly unrelated…

Read More Read More

Universal process that wires the brain is consistent across species

Universal process that wires the brain is consistent across species

Live Science reports: Mouse, insect or worm — in all these creatures, the same principle guides the formation of super strong connections between neurons in the brain, a new study confirms. The research helps validate the idea that, regardless of species, there’s a universal mechanism that underlies how brain networks form. Different animals carry contrasting numbers of neurons in their brains, ranging from hundreds in worms to tens of billions in humans. Neurons form connections with each other, called synapses,…

Read More Read More

Did neurons evolve twice?

Did neurons evolve twice?

Cara Giovanetti writes: The human brain’s billions of neurons represent a menagerie of cells that are among both the most highly specialized and variable ones in our bodies. Neurons convert electrical signals to chemical signals, and in humans, their lengths can be so tiny as to span just the tip of a sharpened pencil or, in some cases, even stretch the width of a doorway. Their flexible control of movement and decision-making explains why they are so key to survival…

Read More Read More

Intermittent fasting seems to result in dynamic changes to the human brain

Intermittent fasting seems to result in dynamic changes to the human brain

Science Alert reports: Scientists looking to tackle our ongoing obesity crisis have made an important discovery: Intermittent fasting leads to significant changes both in the gut and the brain, which may open up new options for maintaining a healthy weight. Researchers from China studied 25 volunteers classed as obese over a period of 62 days, during which they took part in an intermittent energy restriction (IER) program – a regime that involves careful control of calorie intake and fasting on…

Read More Read More

Apes remember friends they haven’t seen for decades

Apes remember friends they haven’t seen for decades

  Johns Hopkins University reports: Apes recognize photos of groupmates they haven’t seen for more than 25 years and respond even more enthusiastically to pictures of their friends, a new study finds. The work, which demonstrates the longest-lasting social memory ever documented outside of humans and underscores how human culture evolved from the common ancestors we share with apes, our closest relatives, was published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Chimpanzees and bonobos recognize individuals…

Read More Read More

New cell atlases reveal untold variety in the brain and beyond

New cell atlases reveal untold variety in the brain and beyond

Yasemin Saplakoglu writes: In the 16th century, the Belgian cartographer Abraham Ortelius created the world’s first modern atlas — a collection of maps that he called “The Theater of the World.” The maps, drawn by Ortelius and others, detailed what was at the time the best knowledge of the world’s continents, cities, mountains, rivers, lakes and oceans and helped usher in a new understanding of global geography. Similarly, the creation of cell atlases — maps of organs and bodies constructed…

Read More Read More

Consciousness science needs to study less complex organisms

Consciousness science needs to study less complex organisms

Kristin Andrews writes: Twenty-five years ago, the burgeoning science of consciousness studies was rife with promise. With cutting-edge neuroimaging tools leading to new research programmes, the neuroscientist Christof Koch was so optimistic, he bet a case of wine that we’d uncover its secrets by now. The philosopher David Chalmers had serious doubts, because consciousness research is, to put it mildly, difficult. Even what Chalmers called the easy problem of consciousness is hard, and that’s what the bet was about –…

Read More Read More

Bats use the same brain cells to map physical and social worlds

Bats use the same brain cells to map physical and social worlds

Jake Buheler writes: A fruit bat hanging in the corner of a cave stirs; it is ready to move. It scans the space to look for a free perch and then takes flight, adjusting its membranous wings to angle an approach to a spot next to one of its fuzzy fellows. As it does so, neurological data lifted from its brain is broadcast to sensors installed in the cave’s walls. This is no balmy cave along the Mediterranean Sea. The…

Read More Read More

The value of wild ideas

The value of wild ideas

Anil Seth writes: Earlier this month, the consciousness science community erupted into chaos. An open letter, signed by 124 researchers—some specializing in consciousness and others not—made the provocative claim that one of the most widely discussed theories in the field, Integrated Information Theory (IIT), should be considered “pseudoscience.” The uproar that followed sent consciousness social media into a doom spiral of accusation and recrimination, with the fallout covered in Nature, New Scientist, and elsewhere. Calling something pseudoscience is pretty much…

Read More Read More

Bizarre blob-like animal may hint at origins of neurons

Bizarre blob-like animal may hint at origins of neurons

Live Science reports: A sea animal so simple that it looks like a blobby pancake may hold the secret to the origin of neurons. Placozoans are one of the five major branches of animals, along with bilaterians (which include everything from worms to humans), cnidarians (corals and medusas), sponges and ctenophores (comb jellies). They’re the most basic of the bunch, consisting of millimeter-long blobs of cells without organs or body parts. They move through the water using cilia — tiny…

Read More Read More

Why do we dream?

Why do we dream?

Amanda Gefter writes: In the late nineteen-nineties, a neuroscientist named Mark Blumberg stood in a lab at the University of Iowa watching a litter of sleeping rats. Blumberg was then on the cusp of forty; the rats were newborns, and jerked and spasmed as they slept. Blumberg knew that the animals were fine. He had often seen his dogs twitch their paws while asleep. People, he knew, also twitch during sleep: our muscles contract to make small, sharp movements, and…

Read More Read More

Mitch McConnell may be experiencing focal seizures, doctors suggest

Mitch McConnell may be experiencing focal seizures, doctors suggest

The New York Times reports: A four-line letter, signed by the attending physician of Congress and released by Senator Mitch McConnell on Thursday, suggested that his recent spells of speechlessness were linked to “occasional lightheadedness” perhaps brought on by his recovery from a concussion last winter or “dehydration.” But seven neurologists, relying on what they described as unusually revealing video of Mr. McConnell freezing up in public twice recently, said in interviews Thursday and Friday that the episodes captured in…

Read More Read More

Another path to intelligence

Another path to intelligence

James Bridle writes: It turns out there are many ways of “doing” intelligence, and this is evident even in the apes and monkeys who perch close to us on the evolutionary tree. This awareness takes on a whole new character when we think about those non-human intelligences which are very different to us. Because there are other highly evolved, intelligent, and boisterous creatures on this planet that are so distant and so different from us that researchers consider them to…

Read More Read More

We may have found the part of the brain where conscious experience lives

We may have found the part of the brain where conscious experience lives

Science Alert reports: New research sheds light on a tricky idea of consciousness: There’s a difference between what the brain takes in and what we’re consciously aware of taking in. Scientists now think they’ve pinpointed the brain region where that conscious awareness is managed. The team, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel and the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), in the US, found sustained brain activity in the occipitotemporal area of the visual cortex in the back…

Read More Read More

Tickled rats reveal brain structure that controls laughter

Tickled rats reveal brain structure that controls laughter

Science reports: Do rats like to be tickled? The furry rodents can be quite fun-loving, scientists say. And yes, under the right circumstances, they do enjoy a bit of rough-and-tumble play, letting out high-pitched squeaks akin to human laughter. Now, researchers say they have identified the area of the brain responsible for this playfulness. The discovery, reported today in Neuron, represents “a fantastic step forward” for understanding the neural basis of play and laughter, says Sergio Pellis, a neuroscientist at…

Read More Read More