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When you whack yourself with a hammer, it feels like the pain is in your thumb. But really it's in your brain.

perception of pain is shaped by brain circuits that are constantly filtering the information coming from our sensory nerves,

In 2003, Turner was unloading supplies when his unit came under attack. He was wounded by a grenade. "He took shrapnel in his leg, in his side — and he didn't even notice that he had been hit,"

Sometimes, it occurs when a person suffers a nearly fatal accident or life-threatening situation. In others, they are born with a developmental disorder, such as autism.

This is known as savant syndrome. Of course, it’s exceedingly rare.

Upon entering the bathroom and turning on the faucet, he saw “lines emanating out perpendicularly from the flow.” He couldn’t believe it.

In a radical experiment that has some experts questioning what it means to be "alive," scientists have restored brain circulation and some cell activity in pigs' brains hours after the animals died

that in some cases, the cell death processes can be postponed or even reversed, Sestan said.

Still, the researchers stressed that they did not observe any kind of activity in the pigs' brains that would be needed for normal brain function or things like awareness or consciousness.

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a complex psychiatric disorder brought on by physical and/or psychological trauma

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a complex psychiatric disorder brought on by physical and/or psychological trauma

Now, researchers using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have found potential brain biomarkers of PTSD in people with traumatic brain injury (TBI).

for hurting others relies on a part of neural anatomy, one that likely evolved before the brain regions responsible for analysis and planning.

hypothetical;

Early in the pandemic, people with COVID-19 began reporting an odd symptom: the loss of smell and taste.

Their fears proved well-founded — though the damage may come from the body and brain's response to the virus rather than the virus itself.

Many patients who are hospitalized for COVID-19 are discharged with symptoms such as those associated with a brain injury. These include "forgetfulness that impairs their ability to function,"

a mysterious state: eyes open, yet without clear signs of consciousness. Hundreds of thousands of such patients in the United States alone are diagnosed in a vegetative state or as minimally conscious. They may survive for decades without regaining a connection to the outside world.

Six groups of experts, including Dr. Owen’s and Dr. Schiff’s teams, began collaborating on a survey in 2008. To accelerate it, they figured out how to record brain activity in patients with an electrode-covered cap. It’s much easier to use electrodes to test patients at their bedside than to wheel them into a brain scanner.

A large study published on Wednesday suggests that a quarter of them are.

We speak so effortlessly that most of us never think about it. But psychologists and neuroscientists are captivated by the human capacity to communicate with language.

Untangling the brain’s mechanisms for language has been a pillar of neuroscience since its inception. New research published in the Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences about the different connections going on in the brains of Mandarin and English speakers, demonstrates just how flexible our ability to learn language really is.

Victims of stroke or traumatic brain injury to either of these crucial areas on the left side of the brain exhibited profound disabilities for producing and understanding language.

Brain signature of emotion-linked pain is uncovered

it is possible to distinguish between brain activity associated with pain from a physical cause, such as an injury, and that associated with pain linked to your state of mind.

Hearing or vision, for example, can be traced from sensory organs to distinct brain regions, but pain is more complex, and incorporates thoughts and emotions.

she cried, “They took my f***ing phone!” Attempting to engage Kelly in conversation, I asked her what she liked about her phone and social media. “They make me happy,” she replied.

Even though they were loving and involved parents, Kelly’s mom couldn’t help feeling that they’d failed their daughter and must have done something terribly wrong that led to her problems.

My practice as a child and adolescent psychologist is filled with families like Kelly’s. These parents say their kids’ extreme overuse of phones, video games, and social media is the most difficult parenting issue they face — and, in many cases, is tearing the family apart.

how the brain encodes time and place into memories.

how the brain encodes time and place into memories.

new treatments to combat memory loss from conditions such as traumatic brain injury or Alzheimer's disease.

Much of the student population would likely agree that the library’s menacing figure on the quad is nothing short of soul-crushing. New research conducted by a team of architects and neuroscientists suggests that architecture may indeed affect mental states, though they choose to focus on the positive.

I spoke with Dr. Julio Bermudez, the lead of a new study that uses fMRI to capture the effects of architecture on the brain. His team operates with the goal of using the scientific method to transform something opaque—the qualitative “phenomenologies of our built environment”—into neuroscientific observations that architects and city planners can deliberately design for. Bermudez and his team’s research question focuses on buildings and sites designed to elicit contemplation: They theorize that the presence of “contemplative architecture” in one’s environment may over time produce the same health benefits as traditional “internally induced” meditation, except with much less effort by the individual.

By showing 12 architects photos of contemplative and non-contemplative buildings from facade to interior, the researchers were able to observe the brain activity that occurred as subjects "imagined they were transported to the places being shown." All of the architects were white, right-handed men with no prior meditative training, creating the necessary (if comical) uniformity for neuroscientific research—the team wanted to ensure that the brain scans would not be influenced by factors unrelated to the photos, like gender, race, or handedness. For instance, the brain scans of left- and right-handed people often look different even when subjects are performing the same task.

YOU'RE not imagining the pain. But your brain might be behind it, nonetheless. For the first time, it is possible to distinguish between brain activity associated with pain from a physical cause, such as an injury, and that associated with pain linked to your state of mind.

A fifth of the world's population is thought to experience some kind of chronic pain – that which has lasted longer than three months. If the pain has no clear cause, people can find themselves fobbed off by doctors who they feel don't believe them, or given ineffective or addictive painkillers.

So does this mean we can think our way into or out of pain? To find out, Wager and his colleagues used fMRI to look at the brain activity of 33 healthy adults while they were feeling pain.

Blockbusters, from the 2002 action thriller The Bourne Identity to last year’s Scarlett Johansson vehicle Lucy, reinforce pervading misconceptions about how the brain works.

“Watching movies about neurological disorders, if they’re done well, I think gives people an appreciation for what the characters may go through,” she says, while films that promote stereotypes “can actually be a little bit more hurtful to people who have those disorders.”

this 2003 Disney film offers surprisingly solid insight about a neurological disorder.

The NFL on Wednesday pledged to halt the use of “race-norming” which assumed Black players started out with lower cognitive function in the $1bn settlement of brain injury claims and review past scores for any potential race bias.

The practice made it harder for Black retirees to show a deficit and qualify for an award.

Wednesday’s announcement comes after a pair of Black players filed a civil rights lawsuit over the practice, medical experts raised concerns and a group of NFL families last month dropped 50,000 petitions at the federal courthouse in Philadelphia where the lawsuit had been thrown out by the judge overseeing the settlement.

In a world first, a newly authorized handheld device will allow doctors to detect traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) in under 15 minutes, potentially saving lives by dramatically shortening the time it takes to properly diagnose the issue.

Until now, health care providers have needed to rely on subjective measurements for TBIs, but we finally have a more objective tool to help evaluate patients.”

Unfortunately, many patients with mild TBI struggle to get an accurate and timely diagnosis, even as they grapple with ongoing symptoms. This ultimately results in delayed treatment.

Two American Football stars say they will donate their brains for medical research after their deaths.

Many former players in the sport suffer degenerative brain disease

"There are a lot of issues that stem from brain injuries and it's not just professional athletes. This affects everybody,"

Can you get smarter by exercising — or altering — your brain?

Although improvements were observed in every cognitive task that was practiced, there was no evidence that brain training made people smarter.

Our brain has remarkable neuroplasticity; that is, it can remodel and change itself in response to various experiences and injuries. So can it be trained to enhance its own cognitive prowess?The multibillion-dollar brain training industry certainly thinks so and claims that you can increase your memory, attention and reasoning just by playing various mental games.

there is a darker side to adolescence that, until now, was poorly understood: a surge during teenage years in anxiety and fearfulness. Largely because of a quirk of brain development, adolescents, on average, experience more anxiety and fear and have a harder time learning how not to be afraid than either children or adults.

the brain circuit for processing fear — the amygdala — is precocious and develops way ahead of the prefrontal cortex, the seat of reasoning and executive control. This means that adolescents have a brain that is wired with an enhanced capacity for fear and anxiety, but is relatively underdeveloped when it comes to calm reasoning.

the brain’s reward center, just like its fear circuit, matures earlier than the prefrontal cortex. That reward center drives much of teenagers’ risky behavior. This behavioral paradox also helps explain why adolescents are particularly prone to injury and trauma. The top three killers of teenagers are accidents, homicide and suicide.

“There’s this energy drink culture now, a high-level, high-risk culture, that’s being marketed and impacting the way people ski,” Robb Gaffney, a sports psychiatrist, said. “That’s what people see and that’s what people think skiing is, but really, that’s the highest level of skiers doing the highest level of tricks.”