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Category: Neuroscience

Neuroscientists find evidence that brain plasticity peaks at the end of the day

Neuroscientists find evidence that brain plasticity peaks at the end of the day

PsyPost reports: New research provides evidence that the brain’s ability to process signals and adapt to new information fluctuates rhythmically over a 24-hour cycle. A study published in Neuroscience Research reveals that while fatigue appears to suppress immediate neural activity at the end of the active phase, this same period may heighten the brain’s capacity for learning and memory formation. These findings suggest that the brain creates specific temporal windows that are optimized for different types of neural processing. Biological…

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Long-term calorie restriction in diet may slow biological aging in the brain

Long-term calorie restriction in diet may slow biological aging in the brain

PsyPost reports: A new study suggests that restricting calorie intake over a lifetime may slow the biological aging of support cells in the primate brain. The research provides evidence that a thirty percent reduction in calories preserves the metabolic function of cells responsible for insulating nerve fibers. These findings were published in the journal Aging Cell. The brain relies on complex networks of communication to function correctly. This communication depends heavily on white matter, which consists of nerve fibers coated…

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Musicians possess a superior internal map of their body in space

Musicians possess a superior internal map of their body in space

PsyPost reports: Research suggests that learning to play a musical instrument does far more than provide artistic satisfaction; it appears to fundamentally alter how the brain maps the physical body in space. A new analysis indicates that trained musicians possess a superior ability to maintain their physical orientation and balance, even in the absence of visual cues. These findings were recently published in the academic journal Cortex. Spatial cognition is the mental process that allows individuals to navigate the physical…

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How to maintain good cognitive health at any age

How to maintain good cognitive health at any age

By Benjamin Boller, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR) Is it an achievable goal to remain mentally sharp while aging, or is it a pipe dream? It’s entirely possible if you cultivate habits throughout your life that are beneficial to brain function. As a researcher in cognitive neuroscience and the neuropsychology of aging processes, I aim to shed light on the ways we can maintain good cognitive health while aging in light of recent scientific advances. This article is part…

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Between sleep and awareness are many types of liminal states

Between sleep and awareness are many types of liminal states

Yasemin Saplakoglu writes: The pillow is cold against your cheek. Your upstairs neighbor creaks across the ceiling. You close your eyes; shadows and light dance across your vision. A cat sniffs at a piece of cheese. Dots fall into a lake. All this feels very normal and fine, even though you don’t own a cat and you’re nowhere near a lake. You’ve started your journey into sleep, the cryptic state that you and most other animals need in some form…

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The neuroscience of making sense

The neuroscience of making sense

Asif Ghazanfar writes: Picture someone washing their hands. The water running down the drain is a deep red. How you interpret this scene depends on its setting, and your history. If the person is in a gas station bathroom, and you just saw the latest true-crime series, these are the ablutions of a serial killer. If the person is at a kitchen sink, then perhaps they cut themselves while preparing a meal. If the person is in an art studio,…

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How the brain maintains a harmonious balance between excitation and inhibition

How the brain maintains a harmonious balance between excitation and inhibition

Yasemin Saplakoglu writes: From Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s hand came branches and whorls, spines and webs. Now-famous drawings by the neuroanatomist in the late 19th and early 20th centuries showed, for the first time, the distinctiveness and diversity of the fundamental building blocks of the mammalian brain that we call neurons. In the century or so since, his successors have painstakingly worked to count, track, identify, label and categorize these cells. There is now a dizzying number of ways to…

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Most daily actions are habitual, not the result of conscious choices

Most daily actions are habitual, not the result of conscious choices

University of Surrey: Habit, not conscious choice, drives most of our actions, according to new research from the University of Surrey, University of South Carolina and Central Queensland University. The research, published in Psychology & Health, found that two-thirds of our daily behaviours are initiated “on autopilot”, out of habit. Habits are actions that we are automatically prompted to do when we encounter everyday settings, due to associations that we have learned between those settings and our usual responses to…

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Decision-making far more widely distributed across the brain than previously thought, study finds

Decision-making far more widely distributed across the brain than previously thought, study finds

Live Science reports: Researchers have completed the first-ever activity map of a mammalian brain in a groundbreaking duo of studies, and it has rewritten scientists’ understanding of how decisions are made. The project, involving a dozen labs and data from over 600,000 individual mouse brain cells, covered areas representing over 95% of the brain. Findings from the research, published in two papers in the journal Nature, suggest that decision-making involves far more of the brain than previously thought. The mammoth…

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Music-induced emotion affects what we remember and how clearly

Music-induced emotion affects what we remember and how clearly

PsyPost reports: Music can stir emotion, spark memories, and bring people together—but does it also change what we remember? A new study published in The Journal of Neuroscience suggests that the emotional arousal elicited by music after learning can shape whether people remember the gist of an experience or its finer details. The research indicates that increases or decreases in emotional arousal after listening to music influence the balance between general and specific memory in different ways, with potential implications…

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Neuroscientists find evidence of an internal brain rhythm that orchestrates memory

Neuroscientists find evidence of an internal brain rhythm that orchestrates memory

PsyPost reports: A new study sheds light on how our brains rhythmically organize memories at the level of individual nerve cells. Researchers in Germany have found that single neurons in the human medial temporal lobe tend to synchronize their activity with slow brain waves, particularly during memory formation and retrieval. These patterns, known as theta-phase locking, appear to reflect an internal rhythm that helps structure cognitive processes. The findings were published in Nature Communications. The study, led by neuroscientists at…

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The hippocampus may have much wider functions than previously thought

The hippocampus may have much wider functions than previously thought

Natalia Mesa writes: The tiny hippocampus, deep in the brain’s medial temporal lobe, has long resisted easy explanation. Its prominent role in navigation seems at odds with its contributions to episodic memory. It contains cognitive maps of the external world yet also stores abstract relationships between concepts, objects and events. And it actively encodes memories during our waking hours but also replays this information offline during rest. Scientists have long debated how, or even if, the same neural circuits support…

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An expanded view of the function of the hippocampus comes into focus

An expanded view of the function of the hippocampus comes into focus

Natalia Mesa writes: The tiny hippocampus, deep in the brain’s medial temporal lobe, has long resisted easy explanation. Its prominent role in navigation seems at odds with its contributions to episodic memory. It contains cognitive maps of the external world yet also stores abstract relationships between concepts, objects and events. And it actively encodes memories during our waking hours but also replays this information offline during rest. Scientists have long debated how, or even if, the same neural circuits support…

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Socioeconomic background tied to distinct brain and behavioral patterns

Socioeconomic background tied to distinct brain and behavioral patterns

PsyPost reports: A new study published in Nature Neuroscience suggests that different aspects of socioeconomic status are associated with distinct patterns of brain structure, connectivity, and behavior—and these associations can vary depending on whether they occur in early or later stages of life. Drawing on data from more than 4,200 young adults in China, the research provides a detailed look at how family income, neighborhood adversity, and regional economic conditions relate to memory, personality traits, mental health, and brain imaging…

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The human brain is like a murmuration of starlings

The human brain is like a murmuration of starlings

Luiz Pessoa writes: When thousands of starlings swoop and swirl in the evening sky, creating patterns called murmurations, no single bird is choreographing this aerial ballet. Each bird follows simple rules of interaction with its closest neighbours, yet out of these local interactions emerges a complex, coordinated dance that can respond swiftly to predators and environmental changes. This same principle of emergence – where sophisticated behaviours arise not from central control but from the interactions themselves – appears across nature…

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Bodily awareness guides morality, new neuroscience study suggests

Bodily awareness guides morality, new neuroscience study suggests

PsyPost reports: A new study published in The Journal of Neuroscience suggests that people who are more attuned to their internal bodily sensations are also more likely to make moral decisions that align with the values of the broader group. The researchers found that individuals with greater interoceptive awareness—how accurately they can perceive their own bodily signals—tended to choose responses in moral dilemmas that matched the majority’s preferences. Brain imaging revealed that this connection may be supported by resting-state activity…

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