Neuroscience

Homing pigeons fly off from an unknown place in unfamiliar territory and still manage to find their way home. This ability has always been fascinating to humans and nothing would ever happen in "Game of Thrones" if birds couldn't deliver messages. Yet despite intensive research, it is not yet definitively clear where this unusual gift comes from. All we seem to know is that homing pigeons and migratory birds determine their flight direction with the help of the Earth's magnetic field, the stars and the position of the sun.  Nicole Blaser, a doctoral student in biology at the University…

If you don't sleep well during a full moon, it is not because you have epigenetically become a werewolf after watching "Twilight" too many times, lunar cycles and human sleep behavior are connected, according to results of a study on endogenous rhythms of circalunar periodicity. Prof. Christian Cajochen of the Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Basel and colleagues analyzed the sleep of over 30 volunteers in two age groups in the lab. While they were sleeping, the scientists monitored their brain patterns, eye movements and measured their hormone secretions. The findings suggest that…

For almost a century, science has been engaged in a quest to study brain waves and learn about mental health and the way we think. It hasn't been easy. The way billions of interconnected neurons work together to produce brain waves remains unknown. Researchers from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne's Blue Brain Project in Switzerland and the Allen Institute for Brain Science in the United States say that their numerical model is providing a new tool to solve the mystery. The brain is composed of many different types of neurons, each of which carry electrical signals. Electrodes placed…

Walking helps people in lots of ways but a paper in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine (now JAMA Pediatrics) has a new benefit; adolescent girls who walk to school show a cognitive boost compared to girls who travel by bus or car. But distance matters. Girls who walk more than 15 minutes showed more benefit than those who live closer and have a shorter walk to school. The results come from findings of the nationwide AVENA (Food and Assessment of the Nutritional Status of Spanish Adolescents) study, which they say is the first international study that associates…

Aplysia californica is a curious beast indeed. The California sea hare is a species of sea slug; a hermaphroditic gastropod mollusc that feeds on seaweed and occasionally squirts ink if you piss it off. Charming little chap, really. A. Californica has become the best friend of the neurobiologist. It is used extensively as a laboratory model in experiments looking to elucidate how learning occurs, and how responses decline as a result of repeated stimulation. What’s great about this animal is it elicits a gill/siphon withdrawal response- a reflex which can be induced simply by touching these…

Maybe some day, depression and anxiety could benefit from good vibrations. University of Arizona researchers have found in a recent study that ultrasound waves applied to specific areas of the brain appear able to alter patients' moods. The discovery has led the scientists to conduct further investigations with the hope that this technique could one day be used to treat conditions such as depression and anxiety. Dr. Stuart Hameroff, professor emeritus of the  University of Arizona's departments of anesthesiology and psychology, is lead author of what they call the first clinical study of…

It's a bizarre feeling, yet it’s one that we’ve all probably experienced, at one time or another.   Whether it’s the brush of a feather-duster, or a friend’s fingers under your chin, a great many of us are ticklish. There are a number of spots on the body which appear to be particularly sensitive to being tickled, as many an older-sibling will have discovered, when they attack the underarms, belly, ribcage or the soles of the feet of a younger brother or sister. What’s so tricky about tickling? Well, there are two things that make the response intriguing. The first is that we often can’t…

Learned fear is a good thing. It keeps us from making risky, stupid decisions or falling over and over again into the same trap.  New research found that a missing brain protein may be the culprit in cases of severe over-worry, where the fear perseveres even when there's nothing of which to be afraid. The researchers examined mice without the enzymes monoamine oxidase A and B (MAO A/B), which sit next to each other in our genetic code as well as on that of mice. Prior research has found an association between deficiencies of these enzymes in humans and developmental disabilities along…

A 'rather bizarre' result using a robotic frog and recorded mating call may provide insight into how complex traits evolve by hooking together much simpler traits. Researchers have discovered that two wrong mating calls can make a right for female túngara frogs. It's not a defect in the frog brain, but an example of how well frogs have evolved to extract meaning from noise, much the way humans have.  Túngara frogs are challenged by an auditory world similar to what confronts humans in noisy environments (what's called the "cocktail party problem" by cognitive scientists). At…

Researchers have created a virtual model of the brain based on the dynamics of brain cells and the many connections those cells make with their neighbors and with cells in other brain regions - and it daydreams like humans do. The group hope the model will help them understand why certain portions of the brain work together when a person daydreams or is mentally idle. This, in turn, may one day help doctors better diagnose and treat brain injuries. Scientists first recognized in the late 1990s and early 2000s that the brain stays busy even when it's not engaged in mental tasks. Researchers…