Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

Some specific types of sensory stimuli and activities, especially those that involve non-routine actions and thoughts, produce more of those chemicals that encourage growth of new dendrites and neurons in the brain. These are generally non-routine activities. Routines become so automatic that actions are done largely unconsciously (ever get up in the morning and walk to the bathroom before you're really conscious?). Such automated or unconscious actions require less activity in the brain, and exercise it less.

In a nutshell, the device converts electrical signals sent to the visual cortex into images that can be viewed on a computer screen. In their experiment, they showed test subjects the six letters in the word neuron and succeeded in reconstructing the word on screen by measuring their brain activity. As the technology progresses, it could be possible to "see" what people are thinking, what they dream about and record it for posterity. What do you think? Would that be awesome or scary as hell? All I know is that image weirds me out. [Yahoo Image via Pink Tentacle Thanks Roger!]

Granger's original objective was to see if links could be established that allowed economists to use current economic data to forecast changes in the economy in the near future. But first author Steven L. Bressler, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Florida Atlantic University, suspected the technique might help reveal if one brain area was passing data to or influencing another brain area.

However, contact between nerve cells is also constantly being set up and dismantled in adults. It is this continuous restructuring of the brain that allows us to learn and to forget.

In reality, it should actually be consuming much more energy. This is because both young and adult nerve cells allow many hundreds of cell extensions to grow towards their neighbours.

Multitasking is part of daily life. But humans remember and learn differently when their attention is divided. Russel Poldrack, a UCLA psychology professor, speaks with Lynn Neary about what occurs in the brain during multitasking.

"The hippocampus is crucial for navigation and we use it like a 'sat nav'," says Dr Spiers from the Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience at UCL. "London taxi drivers, who have to know their way around hundreds of thousands of winding streets, have the most refined and powerful innate sat navs, strengthened over years of experience."

have shown that both calorie restriction and intermittent fasting along with vitamin and mineral intake, increase resistance to disease, extend lifespan, and stimulate production of neurons from stem cells.

Physical exercise may also have beneficial effects on neuron regeneration by stimulating regeneration of brain and muscle cells via activation of stress proteins and the production of growth factors. But again, additional research suggests that not all exercise is equal. Interestingly, some researchers found that exercise considered drudgery was not beneficial in neuronal regeneration, but physical activity that was engaged in purely for fun, even if equal time was spent and equal calories were burned, resulted in neuronal regeneration.

To remember a particular event, a specific sequence of neurons must fire at just the right time. For this to happen, neurons must be connected in a certain way by chemical junctions called synapses. But how they last over decades, given that proteins in the brain, including those that form synapses, are destroyed and replaced constantly, is a mystery.

Many genes are already coated with methyl groups. When a cell divides, this "cellular memory" is passed on and tells the new cell what type it is - a kidney cell, for example. Miller and Sweatt argue that in neurons, methyl groups also help to control the exact pattern of protein expression needed to maintain the synapses that make up memories.

"Without regulating your attention, you would orient to everything that appears and moves. An organism that couldn't filter anything just wouldn't work. It would be in a state of constant distraction," said Moore. "This work shows that, whether we are moving our eyes or not, the networks that control eye movements may be a source of that filtering."

THOMAS是一个强大的神经回路，当我们被信任时会释放出影响神经系统的化学物质催生素（oxytocin），引诱得到报答的渴望。骗局的关键不是你去相信骗子，而是骗子表现出他信任你。骗子会展示他是如何的需要你的帮助，令人以为他们是多么的脆弱。因为THOMAS的效应，我们在帮助他人时会自我感觉良好——这是家庭和朋友关系、以及与陌生人合作的基础。

大脑就是一台三磅重的超级计算机。它是身体运行的命令和控制中心。它几乎涉及你所做的每一件事。你的大脑决定你如何思考，如何感觉，如何行动，以及如何与他人相处。你的大脑甚至决定你是哪一类的人。它决定了你有多善解人意；你有多友善或是有多粗鲁。它决定了你思维有多敏捷，这还涉及到你工作完成的如何以及你的家庭。你的大脑还影响你的情感活动，以及你如何对待异性。

可以充当情绪兴奋剂的味道有薄荷，柏杨和柠檬。起到舒缓作用的味道有：依兰，天竺葵和玫瑰。滴几滴精油在浴缸中或者在扩散器中，都可以起到作用。你也可以在一个棉球或手帕中滴一两滴，然后吸入这种味道。对于办公地点使用的一个警告：先确保没有人对你使用的精油过敏。

Watching black and white television as a child may explain why older people are less likely to dream in colour than younger people, according to new study reported in New Scientist.

Human free will might seem like the squishiest of philosophical subjects, way beyond the realm of mathematical demonstration. But two highly regarded Princeton mathematicians, John Conway and Simon Kochen, claim to have proven that if humans have even the tiniest amount of free will, then atoms themselves must also behave unpredictably.

“If the atoms never swerve so as to originate some new movement that will snap the bonds of fate, the everlasting sequence of cause and effect—what is the source of the free will possessed by living things throughout the earth?”—Titus Lucretius Carus, Roman philosopher and poet, 99–55 BC.

claim to have proven that if humans have even the tiniest amount of free will, then atoms themselves must also behave unpredictably.

The situation is much the same in primates and rodents, where new neurons only appear in the hippocampus and olfactory bulb. In contrast, fish, reptiles and birds renew the neurons throughout their entire network and throughout their entire lives.