Neuroscience

In this week's episode we explore the recent research that has established, contrary to long-standing dogma, that our brains our able to change throughout our lives, based on our experience. Show Notes The reference for this episode is Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves, by Sharon Begley. This book describes the 2004 meeting between the Dalai Llama and several leading neuroscientists. To learn more about these meetings go to the Mind and Life Institute website. All the studies that I mention in the podcast are…

Changing one's diet to lose weight is often difficult. There may be physical and psychological effects from a changed diet that reduce the chances for success. With nearly 65% of the adult population currently classified as overweight or obese and with calorically dense foods high in fat and carbohydrates readily available, investigating those factors that contribute to dieting failures is an important effort. Researchers found that mice withdrawn from high-fat or high-carbohydrates diets became anxious and showed changes in their brains indicating higher stress levels. Using a variety of…

Is there a specific memory for events involving people? Researchers in the Vulnerability, Adaptation and Psychopathology Laboratory (CNRS/University Paris VI France ) and a Canadian team at Douglas Hospital, McGill University (Montreal), have identified the internal part of the prefrontal cortex as being the key structure for memorising social information. Published in Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, February 2007. Social events such as a party with friends, a work meeting or an argument with a partner form an integral part of daily life. Our ability to remember these events, and more…

The latest episode of the Brain Science Podcast is more technical than most. It deals with neurotransmitters. One of the key things that makes the brain different from a digital computer is that most of the signaling between neurons is actually chemical. Neurotransmitters are the chemicals released by one neuron that then interact with the receptors on another neuron or target cell (like a muscle). It turns out that it is the properties of the receptor, which is a membrane protein, that determines the effect of the neurotransmitter. This means that the same neurotransmitter can have very…

Quantum mechanics can't explain consciousness and I am going to explore why. The reason I bring this up is that many people seem to be worried that the mounting evidence that the brain generates the mind implies that free will can not exist. Of course, most of us feel strongly that we do have free will. Various arguments are put forth to "save" free will. (I am not going to tackle the claim that it needs saving in this post.) One recent approach has been to use the uncertainty inherent in quantum mechanics as a potential location for free will. John Searle has observed that this only gives us…

Nearly one in three women still experience painful sexual intercourse a year after their baby is born and more than half have at least one sex-related health problem, according to research in the March issue of Journal of Clinical Nursing. 482 women who had attended maternity units in Birmingham, UK, took part in a self-administered questionnaire at least a year after their most recent birth. "87 per cent complained of at least one health problem" says Midwife Amanda Williams, who is currently on secondment to the city's Perinatal Institute. "Asian women, who made up 15 per cent of the…

Certain children who wear a special kind of no-line bifocal lenses show signs of slower progression of myopia than those who wear more conventional lenses according to a new study published in Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science (IOVS). The study found that among children with two myopic parents, myopia progression was slower in children wearing progressive-addition lenses (PALs) when compared to those wearing single-vision lenses (SVLs). Knowing parental myopia may be helpful when deciding which myopic children are likely to benefit from special lenses. The five-year study was…

Let’s say a college student enters a classroom to take a test. She probably already has an idea how she will do—knowledge available before she actually takes out a pencil. But do animals possess the same ability to think about what they know or don’t know? A new study by researchers from the University of Georgia, just published in the journal Current Biology, shows that laboratory rats do. It’s the first demonstration that any non-primate knows when it doesn’t know something, and it could open the way to more in-depth studies about how animals—and humans—think. A new study by researchers…

Tooth-brushing may trigger seizures in certain people with epilepsy, and researchers say lesions in a specific part of the brain may be a cause in some people, according to an article published in the March 6, 2007, issue of Neurology®, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The article reviewed the cases of three adults with epilepsy who experienced seizures while brushing their teeth. Two of the adults reported some of their seizures occurred when they brushed certain areas of their mouth. The seizures varied from jerking and twitching of the face to salivating…

"The Sopranos" have some competition -- brown-headed cowbirds. Cowbirds have long been known to lay eggs in the nests of other birds, which then raise the cowbirds’ young as their own. Sneaky, perhaps, but not Scarface. Now, however, a University of Florida study finds that cowbirds actually ransack and destroy the nests of warblers that don’t buy into the ruse and raise their young. Jeff Hoover, an avian ecologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History, is the lead author on the first study to document experimental evidence of this peeper payback -- retaliation to encourage acceptance of…