Brain And Consciousness Research - March 2009 Archives

Face recognition: the eyes have it (3/31/2009)

Our brain extracts important information for face recognition principally from the eyes, and secondly from the mouth and nose, according to a new study from a researcher at the University of Barcelona. This result, published March 27 in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology, was obtained by analyzing several hundred face images in a way similar to that of the brain. ...> Full Article

Action video games improve vision (3/31/2009)

Ability to perceive changes in shades of gray improves up to 58 percent ...> Full Article

Study shows brain activity associated with phantom limbs (3/30/2009)

Patients have reported seeing their phantom limb or feeling objects or body parts with it ...> Full Article

Vindictiveness doesn't pay (3/30/2009)

Study shows: The guiding motto of 'an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth' brings neither success nor happiness ...> Full Article

When it comes to intelligence, size matters (3/29/2009)

A collaborative study led by researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University has demonstrated a positive link between cognitive ability and cortical thickness in the brains of healthy six- to 18-year-olds. The correlation is evident in regions that integrate information from different parts of the brain. The imaging study published this week in a special issue of scientific journal Intelligence is the largest and most comprehensive of its kind with a representative sample of healthy children and adolescents. ...> Full Article

Distinct hippocampal neurons monitor success or failure during learning task (3/28/2009)

Scientists have discovered that individual neurons in the monkey hippocampus can signal information about the outcome of experimental trials during an associative learning task. The research, published by Cell Press in the March 26 issue of the journal Neuron, furthers our understanding of outcome-selective cells in the primate brain and provides important insight into how information about trial outcomes may influence learning. ...> Full Article

Visual attention: How the brain makes the most of the visible world (3/27/2009)

The visual system has limited capacity, and cannot process everything that falls onto the retina. Instead, the brain relies on attention to bring salient details into focus and filter out background clutter. Two recent studies by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, one study employing computational modeling techniques and the other experimental techniques, have helped to unravel the mechanisms underlying attention. ...> Full Article

Fear or romance could make you change your mind, study finds (3/26/2009)

People's primal emotions alter effectiveness of persuasion tactics ...> Full Article

Cognitive decline begins in late 20s, study suggests (3/25/2009)

A new study indicates that some aspects of peoples' cognitive skills -- such as the ability to make rapid comparisons, remember unrelated information and detect relationships -- peak at about the age of 22, and then begin a slow decline starting around age 27. ...> Full Article

Researcher identifies just 8 patterns as the cause of all humor (3/24/2009)

Evolutionary theorist Alastair Clarke has today published details of eight patterns he claims to be the basis of all the humor that has ever been imagined or expressed, regardless of civilization, culture or personal taste. ...> Full Article

Heightened level of amygdala activity may cause social deficits in autism (3/24/2009)

Researchers at the University of Washington have discovered an increased pattern of brain activity in the amygdalas of adults with autism that may be linked to the social deficits that typically are associated with the disorder. Previous research at the UW and elsewhere has shown that abnormal growth patterns in the amygdala are commonly found among young children diagnosed with autism. ...> Full Article

Language of music really is universal, study finds (3/23/2009)

Native African people who have never even listened to the radio before can nonetheless pick up on happy, sad, and fearful emotions in Western music, according to a new report published online on March 19 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. The result shows that the expression of those three basic emotions in music can be universally recognized, the researchers said. ...> Full Article

The brain 'joins the dots' when drawing a cartoon face from memory (3/22/2009)

In a study by Miall, Gowen and Tchalenko published by Elsevier, in the March issue of Cortex, a brain scanner was used to record the brain's activity in each stage of the process of drawing faces. ...> Full Article

Study finds how brain remembers single events (3/21/2009)

Brief experiences activate neurons, genes as effectively as repetitive activities ...> Full Article

Study gives more proof that intelligence is largely inherited (3/20/2009)

UCLA researchers find that genes determine brain's processing speed ...> Full Article

Guitarists' brains swing together (3/19/2009)

When musicians play along together it isn't just their instruments that are in time -- their brain waves are too. Research published in the online open access journal BMC Neuroscience shows how EEG readouts from pairs of guitarists become more synchronized, a finding with wider potential implications for how our brains interact when we do. ...> Full Article

Stress may cause the brain to become disconnected (3/18/2009)

Does stress damage the brain? In the March 1 issue of Biological Psychiatry, published by Elsevier, a paper by Tibor Hajszan and colleagues provides an important new chapter to this question. ...> Full Article

Researchers find that the unexpected is a key to human learning (3/17/2009)

The human brain's sensitivity to unexpected outcomes plays a fundamental role in the ability to adapt and learn new behaviors, according to a new study by a team of psychologists and neuroscientists from the University of Pennsylvania. ...> Full Article

Cracking the spatial memory code (3/16/2009)

Researchers have shown that they can tell where a person is "standing" within a virtual reality room on the basis of the pattern of activity in the brain alone. The findings, published online on March 12 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, offer compelling evidence that the hippocampus, a region of the brain critical to navigation, memory, and imagining future experiences, works in a structured and predictable way. That discovery is contrary to what many experts had previously suspected, according to the researchers. ...> Full Article

Neuroscientists map intelligence in the brain (3/16/2009)

Neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have conducted the most comprehensive brain mapping to date of the cognitive abilities measured by the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, the most widely used intelligence test in the world. The results offer new insight into how the various factors that comprise an "intelligence quotient" score depend on particular regions of the brain. ...> Full Article

Does humor on the Internet mold political thinking? (3/15/2009)

Jokes are not merely a source of popular enjoyment and creativity; they also provide insights into how societies work and what people think. Humor is so powerful it can help shape geopolitical views worldwide, according to Professor Darren Purcell and his team from the University of Oklahoma in the US. Their study of humor including the analysis of two "Achmed the Dead Terrorist" skits, has recently been published online in Springer's GeoJournal. ...> Full Article

Is that your final answer? Study suggests method for improving individual decisions (3/14/2009)

What if there is no one else around to consult with before making a judgment - how can we be confident that we are giving a good answer? A new study suggests that "dialectical bootstrapping" (that is, thinking about why your own answer might be incorrect and then averaging across estimates) may be an effective strategy in helping us come up with better answers to many types of problems. ...> Full Article

What I was doing vs. what I did: How verb aspect influences memory and behavior (3/14/2009)

If you want to perform at your peak, you should carefully consider how you discuss your past actions. A new study reveals that the way a statement is phrased (and specifically, how the verbs are used), affects our memory of an event being described and may also influence our behavior. ...> Full Article

Difficult balance between play and learning (3/13/2009)

If the teacher is not capable of understanding the perspective of six-year olds, then the child's learning becomes unnecessarily difficult, or in some cases the child's interest in learning may not be aroused at all. This is revealed in a new thesis by Agneta Simeonsdotter Svensson, from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. ...> Full Article

Tiny brain region better part of valor (3/12/2009)

Piece of hypothalamus is key to animals' fear of territorial rivals and predators, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ...> Full Article

Teenage boys who eat fish at least once a week achieve higher intelligence scores (3/11/2009)

Male teenagers who ate fish at least once a week at the age of 15 showed a 6 percent increase in intelligence scores at 18 and those who ate it more than once a week showed an 11 percent increase. ...> Full Article

Scientists identify the neural circuitry of first impressions (3/10/2009)

Neuroscientists at New York University and Harvard University have identified the neural systems involved in forming first impressions of others. The findings, which show how we encode social information and then evaluate it in making these initial judgments, are reported in the most recent issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience. ...> Full Article

Psychologist explores perception of fear in human sweat (3/9/2009)

Findings show human sweat contains emotional meanings ...> Full Article

Politicians can use fear to manipulate the public (3/8/2009)

Manipulation more likely with complex issues ...> Full Article

Coming undone: How stress unravels the brain's structure (3/7/2009)

The helpless behavior that is commonly linked to depression and post-traumatic stress disorder is preceded by stress-related losses of synapses -- microscopic connections between brain cells -- in the brain's hippocampal region, researchers at Yale School of Medicine report in the March 1 issue of Biological Psychiatry. ...> Full Article

Power and the illusion of control (3/6/2009)

Why some make the impossible possible and others fall short ...> Full Article

New and unexpected mechanism identifies how the brain responds to stress (3/5/2009)

Switching off a protein causes the brakes to fail in our natural ability to respond to stress ...> Full Article

Sex is in the brain, says new research (3/4/2009)

More than 40 percent of women ages 18-59 experience sexual dysfunction, with lack of sexual interest -- hypoactive sexual desire disorder, or HSDD -- being the most commonly reported complaint, according to medical researchers. While some question the validity of this diagnosis, a multidisciplinary team from the Stanford University School of Medicine is devoted to objective investigation of such problems. ...> Full Article

Evidence appears to show how and where frontal lobe works (3/3/2009)

Brown University's David Badre, an assistant professor of cognitive and linguistic sciences, and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, mapped parts of the brain that control abstract or concrete decision making by studying stroke patients. Their findings will be published March 1 in the journal Nature Neuroscience. ...> Full Article

Psychologists shed light on origins of morality (3/2/2009)

Study suggests bad behavior leads a bad taste in your mouth ...> Full Article

Researchers capture wave of brain activity linked to anticipation (3/2/2009)

Neuroscientists at Georgetown University Medical Center have, for the first time, shown what brain activity looks like when someone anticipates an action or sensory input which soon follows.In the Feb. 25 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, they say this neural clairvoyance involves strong activity in areas of the brain responsible for preparing the body to move. ...> Full Article

Brain encodes complex plumes of odors with a simple code (3/1/2009)

A simple model explains how the locust brain encodes turbulent plumes of odors ...> Full Article

Scientists find evidence for precise communication across brain areas during sleep (3/1/2009)

The researchers bring together theoretical models and experimental data to explain protein folding ...> Full Article

Stages of sleep have distinct influence on process of learning and memory (3/1/2009)

Research on the sleeping brain has revealed some fascinating stage-dependent interactions between areas involved in formation and storage of long term memories. The study, published by Cell Press in the Feb. 26 issue of the journal Neuron, may also provide a framework for further understanding the role of sleep in memory. ...> Full Article