Neuroscience

The Center for Investigating Healthy Minds

Mar 20 2010 | 5 comment(s)

Now, this may sound like a New Age centre for feel-good flaky philosophies, but it isn't: it's a neuroscience research laboratory. Run by Richard Davidson, who became famous for testing the brain waves of Tibetan monks, the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds uses some hard-nosed neuroscience to research how we can change our brains and thereby achieve a healthier perspective on life, the universe and everything.

Songbirds Enlighten Study Of Speech Production

Mar 19 2010 | 0 comment(s)

A Penn State physicist is looking at how songbirds transmit impulses through nerve cells in the brain to produce a complex behavior, such as singing.

The research will help scientists gain insight into how the human brain functions, which may lead to a better understanding of complex vocal behavior, human speech production and ultimately, speech disorders and related diseases.

The findings were presented this week at the American Physical Society's March meeting in Portland.

Songbirds are particularly well suited for studying speech production and syntax -- the rules of syllable or word sequence -- because there are more similarities between birdsong and human speech than one may initially think.

Meditation on the Brain - a Podcast with Richard Davidson

Mar 18 2010 | 0 comment(s)

This
is an interview of Prof. Richard J. Davidson on Shrink Rap Radio, hosted by David Van
Nuys, discussing his research on meditation and the brain. Davidson
tells that his research shows that meditation has a beneficial effects
on the mind and quantitative effects on brain functions. Even novice
meditators show immediate changes, with experienced long term
meditators showing more pronounced changes to their brainwave patterns. One thing he has noticed is
that, given each individual starts with a slightly different brain
structure, different meditation techniques have varying degrees of
effects. One thing he would like to see in the future is a way to
establish which technique is most suitable for each individual, without

Fastest Color Vision Belongs To Bumblebees

Mar 17 2010 | 0 comment(s)

Bees see the world almost five times faster than humans, giving them the fastest color vision of all animals, according to new research appearing in the Journal of Neuroscience.

The ability to see at high speed is common in fast-flying insects; allowing them to escape predators and catch their mates mid-air. However, until now it wasn't known whether the bees' full colour vision was able to keep up with their high speed flight. This research sheds new light on the matter; suggesting that although slower, it is also much faster than human vision.

Is This How Brain Waves And Neurons Create Consciousness?

Mar 15 2010 | 12 comment(s)

I had previously speculated on how electric and magnetic fields generated by individual neurons may be able to transmit information to other neurons with which they are not in synaptic contact. From a purely physical point of view it strikes me as at least something to investigate. After all, we know that there are broad sweeps of electric fields that travel across the brain - whether alpha, beta, gamma, delta or theta waves. Such endogenous fields are both generated by the brain and feed back upon the brain. There must therefore be a mechanism by which such emergent fields are generated, sustained and propagated by the basic units of our brain: the neurons.

Can Neurons Communicate At A Distance With Electromagnetic Signals?

Mar 12 2010 | 1 comment(s)

I've been pondering this for some time and have just now been fired into action by a comment I made in another article “Building Smarter Artificial Intelligence By... Shrinking the Body?” One approach to artificial intelligence is to model the activities of neurons as electrical circuits with multiple inputs and multiple outputs. The model assumes that each individual neuron affects only those other neurons with which it has direct contact at the synapses. But, we also know that an electrical signal will also generate an electromagnetic field.

Inhibited SK Channels May Explain Relapse In Alcoholics

Mar 10 2010 | 0 comment(s)

University of California, San Francisco researchers have uncovered a crucial mechanism that encourages alcohol consumption after extended abstinence.

Previous work has suggested that people, places, and objects associated with alcohol use are potent triggers for eliciting relapse and that cravings for both alcohol and drugs can increase across protracted abstinence. However, the specific molecular mechanisms that underlie pathological alcohol seeking are not well defined.

Building Smarter Artificial Intelligence By ... Shrinking The Body?

Mar 09 2010 | 25 comment(s)

There are currently two ambitious projects straddling artificial intelligence and neuroscience, each with the aim of building big brains that work. One is The Blue Brain Project, and it describes its aim in the following one-liner:

Faster Nicotine Accumulation Doesn't Explain Tobacco Addiction

Mar 09 2010 | 1 comment(s)

Traditionally, scientists believed that nicotine inhaled in a puff of cigarette smoke took a mere seven seconds to be taken up by the brain, but new evidence indicates that nicotine takes much longer to reach peak levels in the brains of cigarette smokers, according to a new study in PNAS.

Using PET imaging, Duke investigators found for the first time that cigarette smokers actually experience a steady rise of brain nicotine levels during the course of smoking a whole cigarette.

Economics and Neuroscience Coming Together UCLA Video

Mar 07 2010 | 0 comment(s)

Great video but very dense with information. I still say dopamine deficits need to be given their due since they are the basis of the reward and incentive system in the brain.
Tiff