Neuroscience

In the MGM musical "Gigi", Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold perform "I Remember It Well", wherein everything they remember contradicts each other. It's a charming number, and accurate, according to a new Northwestern Medicine study. Our memory, the authors write, takes fragments of the present and inserts them into past memories. Recollections are updated with current information. Just in time for Valentine's Day, they even reveal that 'love at first sight' is more likely a trick of memory. The authors say this the first study to show specifically how memory is faulty, and how it…

A new paper correlates brain activity with how people make decisions. Based on these images, the authors suggest that when individuals engage in risky behavior, such as drunk driving or unsafe sex, it's not because their brains' desire systems are too active, but because their self-control systems are not active enough.  Defense lawyers now have a new way to make criminal behavior exculpatory. Unless the judge knows something about the weaknesses of inferring cause and effect based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and read this article about how mainstream media love weak…

A new study by shows a direct link between metabolism in brain cells and their ability to signal information. The research may explain why the seizures of many epilepsy patients can be controlled by a specially formulated diet. The findings in Nature Communications by scientists at McGill University and the University of Zurich reveal that metabolism controls the processes that inhibit brain activity, such as that involved in convulsions. The study uncovers a link between how brain cells make energy and how the same cells signal information – processes that neuroscientists have…

What separates us from other primates? The psychologists behind a new MRI study say it is key components in the ventrolateral frontal cortex area of the human brain, and how these components were connected up with other brain areas. When compared to equivalent MRI data from 25 macaque monkeys, the authors determined that it is unlike anything in the brains of some of our closest evolutionary relatives.  The ventrolateral frontal cortex area of the brain is involved in many of the highest aspects of cognition and language, and is only present in humans and other primates. Some parts…

A new paper says the the human sense of smell can detect dietary fat in food. As the most calorically dense nutrient, fat has been a desired energy source across much of human evolution - but those people who claim they want to eat like their ancient ancestors are doing themselves a huge disservice eating that way now. A diet high in fat today is a health problem but in the past it would have been advantageous to be able to detect sources of fat in food, just as sweet taste is thought to signal a source of carbohydrate energy, says Johan Lundström, PhD, a cognitive scientist at Monell…

Do you understand the complexities of the brain's working memory? No one really does. Yet everyone knows how much RAM is in their phone or tablet or PC. Using the RAM analogy, researchers say that working memory - a temporary memory system that keeps information readily accessible for a few minutes - in the brains of primates is a lot like a computer. But it's also in simpler mammals like rodents. RAM does not work like the brain, the brain works like RAM. Ray Kurzweil's singularity just came a little closer after you read that sentence. Working memory has been studied in detail in…

You can always tell when someone does not have a lot of experience in something. They are anxious, they start too soon, perhaps confused. With practice and training, situations become rote. Athletes talk about how time slows down when they have locked into what they are doing. Older brains are more experienced, obviously, and a new paper in Topics in Cognitive Science finds that rather than being a decline in brain function, older brains may take longer to process because they have ever increasing amounts of knowledge. Dr. Michael Ramscar of the University of Tuebingen and colleagues examined…

The problem with diagnosing and treating pain is that it's so subjective. But a new paper in Pain says that brain structure may hold some answers.  Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center say that the amount of grey matter in certain regions of the brain  is related to how intensely people perceive pain.   The brain is made up of both grey and white matter. Grey matter processes information much like a computer, while white matter coordinates communications between the different regions of the brain. The research team investigated the relationship between…

An in vivo study reveals how a protein in the brain, alpha2/delta-1, helps regulate food intake and body weight and may help explain why medications that are prescribed for epilepsy and other conditions that interfere with this protein, such as gabapentin and pregabalin, can cause weight gain. The alpha2/delta-1 protein has not been linked previously to obesity but the team led by Maribel Rios, Ph.D., associate professor in the department of neuroscience at Tufts University School of Medicine, found that alpha2/delta-1 facilitates the function of another protein called brain-derived…

Many people can recall reading a cherished story that they say changed their life and now researchers have detected what may be biological traces related to this feeling: Actual changes in the brain that linger after reading a novel. Essentially, reading a novel may cause changes in resting-state connectivity of the brain that persist. Neuroscience research using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is attempting to identify brain networks associated with reading stories. Most previous studies have focused on the cognitive processes involved in short stories, while subjects are…