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Category: Neuroscience

A tiny change in brain organization without which humans never could have evolved

A tiny change in brain organization without which humans never could have evolved

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Douglas Fox writes: Suzana Herculano-Houzel spent most of 2003 perfecting a macabre recipe—a formula for brain soup. Sometimes she froze the jiggly tissue in liquid nitrogen, and then she liquefied it in a blender. Other times she soaked it in formaldehyde and then mashed it in detergent, yielding a smooth, pink slurry. Herculano-Houzel had completed her Ph.D. in neuroscience several years earlier, and in 2002, she had begun working as an assistant professor at the Federal University of Rio de…

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Octopuses on ecstasy reveal genetic link to evolution of social behaviors in humans

Octopuses on ecstasy reveal genetic link to evolution of social behaviors in humans

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Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine: By studying the genome of a kind of octopus not known for its friendliness toward its peers, then testing its behavioral reaction to a popular mood-altering drug called MDMA or “ecstasy,” scientists say they have found preliminary evidence of an evolutionary link between the social behaviors of the sea creature and humans, species separated by 500 million years on the evolutionary tree. A summary of the experiments is published Sept. 20 in Current Biology,…

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The digital corruption of the human brain

The digital corruption of the human brain

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Maryanne Wolf writes: Look around on your next plane trip. The iPad is the new pacifier for babies and toddlers. Younger school-aged children read stories on smartphones; older boys don’t read at all, but hunch over video games. Parents and other passengers read on Kindles or skim a flotilla of email and news feeds. Unbeknownst to most of us, an invisible, game-changing transformation links everyone in this picture: the neuronal circuit that underlies the brain’s ability to read is subtly,…

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Brains keep temporary molecular records before making a lasting memory

Brains keep temporary molecular records before making a lasting memory

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Like the day’s newspaper, the brain has a temporary way to keep track of events. TonTonic/Shutterstock.com By Kelsey Tyssowski, Harvard University The first dance at my wedding lasted exactly four minutes and 52 seconds, but I’ll probably remember it for decades. Neuroscientists still don’t entirely understand this: How was my brain able to translate this less-than-five-minute experience into a lifelong memory? Part of the puzzle is that there’s a gap between experience and memory: our experiences are fleeting, but it…

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We are more than our brains

We are more than our brains

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Alan Jasanoff writes: Brains are undoubtedly somewhat computer-like – computers, after all, were invented to perform brain-like functions – but brains are also much more than bundles of wiry neurons and the electrical impulses they are famous for propagating. The function of each neuroelectrical signal is to release a little flood of chemicals that helps to stimulate or suppress brain cells, in much the way that chemicals activate or suppress functions such as glucose production by liver cells or immune…

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In order to remember, it’s necessary to forget

In order to remember, it’s necessary to forget

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Dalmeet Singh Chawla writes: Past theories about forgetting mostly emphasized relatively passive processes in which the loss of memories was a consequence of the physical traces of those memories (what some researchers refer to as “engrams”) naturally breaking down or becoming harder to access; those engrams may typically be interconnections between brain cells that prompt them to fire in a certain way. This forgetting process could involve the spontaneous decay of connections between neurons that encode a memory, the random…

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A theory of reality as more than the sum of its parts

A theory of reality as more than the sum of its parts

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Natalie Wolchover writes: In his 1890 opus, The Principles of Psychology, William James invoked Romeo and Juliet to illustrate what makes conscious beings so different from the particles that make them up. “Romeo wants Juliet as the filings want the magnet; and if no obstacles intervene he moves towards her by as straight a line as they,” James wrote. “But Romeo and Juliet, if a wall be built between them, do not remain idiotically pressing their faces against its opposite…

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Neurons can carry more than one signal at a time

Neurons can carry more than one signal at a time

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Duke Today: Back in the early days of telecommunications, engineers devised a clever way to send multiple telephone calls through a single wire at the same time. Called time-division multiplexing, this technique rapidly switches between sending pieces of each message. New research from Duke University shows that neurons in the brain may be capable of a similar strategy. In an experiment examining how monkeys respond to sound, a team of neuroscientists and statisticians found that a single neuron can encode…

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