Neuroscience

It's Not Cognitive Decline, Older Brains May Be Slower Because They Know More

You can always tell when someone does not have a lot of experience in something. They are anxious, they start too soon, perhaps confused. With practice and training, situations become rote. Athletes talk about how time slows down when they have locked int ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 21 2014 - 11:57am

In Neuroscience, Computers Have Anthropomorphized Us

Do you understand the complexities of the brain's working memory? No one really does. Yet everyone knows how much RAM is in their phone or tablet or PC. Using the RAM analogy, researchers say that working memory- a temporary memory system that keeps ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 21 2014 - 5:24pm

Can You Smell The Fat?

A new paper says the the human sense of smell can detect dietary fat in food. As the most calorically dense nutrient, fat has been a desired energy source across much of human evolution- but those people who claim they want to eat like their ancient ances ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 23 2014 - 1:09pm

What Makes Us Human? The Lateral Frontal Pole Prefrontal Cortex

What separates us from other primates? The psychologists behind a new MRI study say it is key components in the ventrolateral frontal cortex area of the human brain, and how these components were connected up with other brain areas. When compared to equiv ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 29 2014 - 1:56pm

The Art Of Cognitive Rehabilitation Therapy

There is a growing need for Cognitive Rehabilitation Therapy (CRT) due to  athletes with sports-related head injuries, a growing population with age-related cognitive decline and soldiers returning from war zones with brain injuries. A special collection ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 8 2014 - 2:39am

You Take Risks Because You Can't Stop Yourself

A new paper correlates brain activity with how people make decisions. Based on these images, the authors suggest that when individuals engage in risky behavior, such as drunk driving or unsafe sex, it's not because their brains' desire systems a ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 5 2014 - 6:00am

Constant Rewrites: Your Memory Isn't All That Accurate

In the MGM musical "Gigi", Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold perform "I Remember It Well", wherein everything they remember contradicts each other. It's a charming number, and accurate, according to a new Northwestern Medicin ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 5 2014 - 6:51pm

Receptive Joint Attention: Vasopressin Receptor Gene A Heritable Clue Into Autism?

A new study found that the ability to follow another's gaze or look in the direction someone is pointing, two examples of receptive joint attention, is significantly heritable. Determining such communicative cues are significantly heritable means var ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 5 2014 - 10:41am

Whose Brains Trigger Easier For Violent Behavior, Males Or Females?

We're all capable of committing violence. The person who truly cannot commit violence is quite rare, and likely learned it. Some aspects of behavior depend on interactions in the brain between genetic and environmental factors. And so, it is said, an ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 5 2014 - 2:32pm

For Better Sensory Information Processing, You Need To Be Asymmetrical

Symmetry isn't always good. When we look at human faces, the most symmetrical, where one half is mirrored to the other, are less attractive than faces that show some distinction. And it isn't just culture. A study in brains found that too much s ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 6 2014 - 5:27pm