Neuroscience

Building A Virtual Brain: A Dialogue

On June 6 th  2005, EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland) and IBM launched the Blue Brain Project, an ambitious attempt at simulating a mammalian brain down to a molecular level. Headed by professor Henry Markram, the Blue Brain Pro ...

Article - Gunnar De Winter - Jun 3 2011 - 12:06pm

Brain Scans Show Violent People Have Bigger Mesolimbic Areas

It is generally accepted that pathological violence is a combination of factors, both biological and psychological, but brain studies of violent criminals haven't revealed much. However, a new brain imaging study suggests that men with a history of vi ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 6 2011 - 6:36pm

Routine Screening For Autism Unnecessary

The American Academy of Pediatrics recently recommended that screening for autism be incorporated into routine physician check-ups, even if no concern has been raised by the parents. Such routine screening of all children for autism gets a thumbs down fro ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 13 2011 - 11:23am

Morning Person Or Night Owl? Sleep Type Predicts Batting Averages Of Baseball Players

Baseball coaches often use traditional metrics for managerial decisions, like batting results against specific pitchers, performance in certain park configurations and whether they bat from the left or right side in making strategic lineup decisions. Maybe ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 13 2011 - 12:46pm

Treatment For Primary Insomnia- Brain Cooling?

A cap that literally cools the brain during sleep may be an effective insomnia treatment, according to new research. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine says that chronic insomnia, symptoms that last for at least a month, affects about 10 percent of adu ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 13 2011 - 12:55pm

Could A Teenage Brain Have Predicted Lady Gaga's Success?

Lady Gaga is a marketing-fueled pop music phenomenon.   If you exclude her music, she can do no wrong, and every appearance, even a walk through an airport, is carefully choreographed.   She knows her audience. But a Little Monster could help create the ne ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 13 2011 - 4:00pm

A Live View of Unconsciousness

It's difficult to know what you are thinking-- or what is happening in your own brain-- as you loose consciousness. There are many instances where this loss might happen, including getting whacked up side the head, inhaling a large volume of non-medi ...

Blog Post - Matthew T. Dearing - Jun 14 2011 - 9:46pm

Phantom Words

Diana Deutsch, professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego (see webpage), is well-known for her work on perception and memory for sounds. She has discovered numerous auditory illusions, one of them know as 'phantom words', ...

Blog Post - Gunnar De Winter - Jun 20 2011 - 3:50am

DCDC2- Dyslexia Gene Also Controls Cilia

Scientists at Karolinska Institutet and Helsinki University are reporting that DCDC2, a gene linked to dyslexia, has a surprising biological function: it controls cilia, the antenna-like projections that cells use to communicate.  ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 20 2011 - 11:16am

Talking Cartoon Birds May Be More Realistic Than We Thought

Songbirds have been used in the past to examine the precursor functions to human language in our neural circuitry, but they may be capable of much more than being animal models.  A new study shows the Bengalese finch (Lonchura striata var. domestica) can l ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 26 2011 - 12:30pm