Brain And Consciousness Research - May 2008 Archives

Scientists Produce The First Smell Map (5/31/2008)

Smells can be mapped and the relative distance between various odors determined ...> Full Article

When your memories can no longer be trusted (5/31/2008)

The experience of false memories, known as confabulation, appears centered in the inferior medial prefrontal cortex ...> Full Article

I do not see it, but my brain knows what it means (5/31/2008)

Disorder that affects perception of things on a persons left side is quite strange. ...> Full Article

Powerful emotions affect how voters seek political information (5/30/2008)

Angry and anxious voters tend to tune into the presidential race but their strong emotions might actually distract them from paying attention to the facts. ...> Full Article

Trauma of 9/11 may have changed brains (5/30/2008)

Healthy adults who were close to the World Trade Center during the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, have less gray matter in key emotion centers of their brains compared with people who were more than 200 miles away ...> Full Article

How fairness is wired in the brain (5/29/2008)

Researchers have discovered that reason struggles with emotion to find equitable solutions, and have pinpointed the region of the brain where this takes place ...> Full Article

Report highlights impact of future brain drugs on society (5/28/2008)

New report states that an increasing number and variety of psychoactive drugs - drugs that act on the brain - will emerge over the next few decades. ...> Full Article

Video games can make us creative if spark is right (5/27/2008)

Video games that energize players and induce a positive mood could also enhance creativity ...> Full Article

High-school girls who consider themselves attractive are more likely to be targets for bullying (5/26/2008)

It turns out your mother was right: they are just jealous. ...> Full Article

Incense is psychoactive: Scientists identify the biology behind the ceremony (5/25/2008)

New study shows how and why molecules released from burning incense in religious ceremonies alleviate anxiety and depression ...> Full Article

Brain's 'trust machinery' identified (5/24/2008)

The brain centers triggered by a betrayal of trust have been identified by researchers, who found they could suppress such triggering and maintain trust by administering the brain chemical oxytocin. The researchers said their findings not only offer basic insights into the neural machinery underlying trust; the results may also help in understanding the neural basis of social disorders such as phobias and autism. ...> Full Article

Rules of the game: the unwritten rules of the bar pick-up (5/23/2008)

How is a pick-up done in a bar? What strategies for rejection and sexual come-ons do men and women use? ...> Full Article

Modeling how we see natural scenes (5/22/2008)

Sophisticated mathematical modeling methods and a "CatCam" that captures feline-centric video of a forest are two elements of a new effort to explain how the brain's visual circuitry processes real scenes. The new model of the neural responses of a major visual-processing brain region promises to significantly advance understanding of vision ...> Full Article

Scientists Discover a Molecular Scaffold That Guides Connections Between Brain Cells (5/21/2008)

Non-signaling glial cells can direct synapse formation in the forging of neural networks ...> Full Article

With Age Comes a Sense of Peace and Calm, Population Research Center Study Shows (5/20/2008)

Aging brings a sense of peace and calm ...> Full Article

Women want bargains but men prefer brand names (5/19/2008)

Women are better bargain hunters than men, with male shoppers seeking known brand names when deciding which store to go to ...> Full Article

Teens' perception that they are liked found to be at least as important as actually being liked (5/19/2008)

A new study has found that teenagers who feel good about themselves and are comfortable with their peers can also be socially successful without being popular in the traditional sense ...> Full Article

Sight Recovery After Blindness Offers New Insights on Brain Reorganization (5/18/2008)

Studies of the brains of blind persons whose sight was partially restored later in life have produced a compelling example of the brain's ability to adapt to new circumstances and rewire and reconfigure itself. ...> Full Article

Study Says Visual System Equipped With 'Future Seeing Powers' (5/18/2008)

New research categorizes more than 50 types of illusions that help us perceive the present ...> Full Article

Having less power impairs the mind and ability to get ahead, study shows (5/18/2008)

New research suggests that being put in a low-power role may impair a person's basic cognitive functioning and thus, their ability to get ahead. ...> Full Article

Discovery of cell linked to learning and memory (5/17/2008)

Researchers have discovered a fundamental component of the process that regulates memory formation ...> Full Article

Businesspeople who are too sure of their abilities are less savvy entrepreneurs (5/16/2008)

Apprentice-style 'overconfidence' is cause of too many business start-ups and why many ventures fail in first few years ...> Full Article

TV Commercials Influence What You Want to Do in Life, New Research Show (5/16/2008)

Research shows that men, in particular, are influenced by television commercials that more often portray them in a career environment than doing domestic duties. ...> Full Article

New insights into the dynamics of the brain's cortex (5/15/2008)

Research demonstrates link between patterns of neuronal activity and the underlying anatomy ...> Full Article

Memory lane: Older persons with more schooling spend fewer years with cognitive loss (5/14/2008)

Those with high school education live 2.5 years more without mental impairment, study finds ...> Full Article

Are Anxiety Disorders All in the Mind? (5/13/2008)

Researchers Find Link Between Altered Dopamine Activity and Social Anxiety Disorder ...> Full Article

Phantoms in the brain: Pain after amputation (5/13/2008)

>Losing a limb can be a traumatic experience and, in some cases, emotional and physical pain can linger for years ...> Full Article

Fruit fly avoidance mechanism could lead to new ways to control pain in humans (5/12/2008)

A team has discovered for the first time that the important developmental switch from food attraction to aversion in the fruit fly larva is controlled by a timing mechanism in the brain and its sensory system ...> Full Article

Justice in the brain: equity and efficiency are encoded differently (5/11/2008)

Researchers using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of people making a series of tough decisions ...> Full Article

Brain studies reveal big differences among individuals (5/11/2008)

Scans show depressed people have fewer serotonin and opioid receptors, and that variation is linked to symptoms and treatment response ...> Full Article

Scientists study people who can't forget (5/10/2008)

Following international publicity, researchers seek additional superior memory subjects ...> Full Article

Killer Competition: Neurons Duke It Out For Survival (5/9/2008)

The developing nervous system makes far more nerve cells than are needed to ensure target organs and tissues are properly connected to the nervous system. As nerves connect to target organs, they somehow compete with each other resulting in some living and some dying. Now, using a combination of computer modeling and molecular biology, neuroscientists have discovered how the target tissue helps newly connected peripheral nerve cells strengthen their connections and kill neighboring nerves. ...> Full Article

Not sure? Don't sweat it: Embrace Uncertainty (5/9/2008)

Governments and other large organisations should put more resources into ways of dealing with the unknown, according to experts pioneering a new approach to understanding and managing uncertainty. ...> Full Article

Does the brain control muscles or movements? (5/8/2008)

Scientists analyzing muscle function in monkeys, have created a mathematical model that captures the control characteristics of the motor cortex. ...> Full Article

Hunger hormone makes food look more attractive (5/7/2008)

A new brain-imaging study reveals that ghrelin - a stomach hormone, acts on specific regions of the brain to enhance our response to food related cues and eating for pleasure. ...> Full Article

Imaging study provides glimpse of alcohol's effect on brain (5/5/2008)

Findings help explain why people engage in risky behavior while intoxicated ...> Full Article

What does it mean to be alive? (5/4/2008)

How notions of the natural world unfold- in development and across languages. ...> Full Article

It's a Unisex Brain with Specific Signals that Trigger 'Male' Behavior (5/4/2008)

Research shows that males and females have essentially unisex brains - at least in flies ...> Full Article

Decoding the Dictionary: Study Suggests Lexicon Evolved To Fit in the Brain (5/3/2008)

The latest edition of the Oxford English Dictionary boasts 22,000 pages of definitions. While that may seem far from succinct, new research suggests the reference manual is meticulously organized to be as concise as possible - a format that mirrors the way our brains make sense of and categorize the countless words in our vast vocabulary. ...> Full Article

Singing in the brain: Baby birds' chirps use different neural pathway (5/2/2008)

Young songbirds babble before they can mimic an adult's song, much like their human counterparts. Now, in work that offers insights into how birds--and perhaps people--learn new behaviors, scientists have found that immature and adult birdsongs are driven by two separate brain pathways, rather than one pathway that slowly matures. ...> Full Article

New Research Shows Consistency in Synaesthetic Experiences (5/2/2008)

A quirky psychological phenomenon known as "grapheme-color synaesthesia" describes individuals who experience vivid colors whenever they see, hear, or think of ordinary letters and digits ...> Full Article

United We Stand: When cooperation butts heads with competition (5/1/2008)

Study reveals that the individuals preferred choosing cooperation over competition, when given the option to do so ...> Full Article

Decision making, is it all 'me, me, me'? (5/1/2008)

Psychologists find evidence that it's not. ...> Full Article

Is Happiness Having What You Want, Wanting What You Have, or Both? (5/1/2008)

Research suggests that people can grow accustomed to their possessions and thereby derive less happiness from them ...> Full Article