This blog entry is about one of the most interesting discoveries of the 90's in Neuroscience -- Mirror Neurons -- and a recent research paper that adds to their intrigue.

Mirror neurons are found in the premotor cortex, and what has made them so interesting is that they fire both when the individual performs a goal-directed action and when they watch someone else perform the same action. It is as if the mirror neurons encode an understanding about the intentions of someone else. For example, when my husband reaches for his coffee cup I understand that he intends to take a drink before he even raises the cup to his lips. Neuroscientists think it is the mirror neurons that encode the "understanding" when we watch what others are doing.

When you're on a diet, deciding to skip your favorite calorie-laden foods and eat something healthier takes a whole lot of self-control--an ability that seems to come easier to some of us than others. Now, scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have uncovered differences in the brains of people who are able to exercise self-control versus those who find it almost impossible.

The key? While everyone uses the same single area of the brain to make these sorts of value-laden decisions, a second brain region modulates the activity of the first region in people with good self-control, allowing them to weigh more abstract factors--healthiness, for example--in addition to basic desires such as taste to make a better overall choice.

With the new movie ‘Star Trek’ opening in theaters across the nation, one thing movie goers will undoubtedly see is the Starship Enterprise racing across the galaxy at the speed of light but two Baylor University physicists believe they have an idea that can turn traveling at the speed of light from science fiction to science, and that their idea does not break any laws of physics. 

An international team of geologists may have uncovered the answer to an age-old question - an ice-age-old question, that is. It appears that Earth's earliest ice age may have been due to the rise of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere, which consumed atmospheric greenhouse gases and chilled the earth.

Scientists from the University of Maryland, including post-doctoral fellows Boswell Wing and Sang-Tae Kim, graduate student Margaret Baker, and professors Alan J. Kaufman and James Farquhar, along with colleagues in Germany, South Africa, Canada and the United States, uncovered evidence that the oxygenation of Earth's atmosphere - generally known as the Great Oxygenation Event - coincided with the first widespread ice age on the planet. 

Rising shale gas production in the United States and Canada as well as potential natural gas supplies from Iraq could be pivotal in curbing Russia's ability to organize an "energy weapon" against European consumers, according to a new study released today by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. 

The study, "Russia and the Caspian Basin in the World Energy Balance," examines Russia's evolving energy relations with its Caspian neighbors, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and the West and considers potential scenarios for Russian and Caspian oil and natural gas strategies.

One year after giving birth, women were less likely to have the most dangerous kind of obesity if they had been given probiotics from the first trimester of pregnancy, found new research that suggests manipulating the balance of bacteria in the gut may help fight obesity.