Neuroscience

Bees have tiny brains but that is all relative; It seems they also possess complex number skills. Lots of animals count as shown by how many engage in foraging, shoaling, and resource management arithmetic, addition and subtraction, is rare, only a few nonhuman vertebrates do it. A new study found that honeybees learn to use blue and yellow as symbolic representations for addition or subtraction and used this information to solve unfamiliar problems involving adding or subtracting one element from a group of elements. Humans have long-term rule memory and shorter working memory but bees…

The new year has only just begun, yet by Valentine’s Day some 80 percent of us will have already given up on those well-intentioned commitments – at least according to University of Minnesota researcher Marti Hope Gonzales. Why is that? Some may chalk it up to a failure of will or of character, but, as a brain scientist, I think that’s attributing a lot of moral causation to a more easily explained lapse in brain function. After all, it was in your brain that you decided on the resolution as something that would be good for you in the new year, and that’s where you made the commitment. …

Our brains can track the sounds in its environment while we sleep, and favor the most relevant ones, according to a recent study. No great new information there. Everyone has woken up from sleep because of noise. But the mechanism that allows us (and some better than others) to sleep in complete safety and wake up at the right moment has remained a mystery. Why do some people who fall asleep on a bus or train miss their stop while others may only wake up at the sound of their own name but not that of others? Studies that concentrated on the sleeping brain’s capacity to process isolated sounds…

Cells along the brain's cavities are equipped with tiny hair-like protrusions called cilia but relative to their importance, we know little about them. Unless they are not doing their job. People with ciliary defects can develop neurological conditions like hydrocephalus and scoliosis. New research in Current Biology shows that cilia are essential for the brain to develop normally and gives us more insight into how cilia work and why they are so important to our brains. The human brain has four fluid-filled cavities called ventricles, all of which are interconnected. The ventricles are filled…

Since microRNAs are key regulators of biological processes, a microRNA cluster that regulates synaptic strength and is involved in the control of social behavior in mammals may be a new path toward therapeutic strategies for the treatment of social deficits in neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder or schizophrenia.  DNA is first copied to make messenger RNA molecules (mRNAs) that are then translated into protein. MicroRNAs are short snippets of RNA that do not code for a protein. Instead, they function mainly by regulating the stability or translation rate of…

Do Drosophila, commonly called fruit flies, have culture? Culture, lasting changes in a group that cannot be ascribed to genetic or ecological variation, is obviously a human quality, and it may be found in other vertebrates like some other primates and birds. A new computer simulation says it may be in fruit flies also. Fruit flies can learn and copy the sexual preferences of their conspecifics after observing them copulating. For a behavioral pattern to be deemed culturally transmitted, there are considered: 1) the behavior must be learned socially, which is to say by observing conspecifics…

A pilot study in Development and Psychopathology concluded that teenage girls who engage in self-harm like cutting often have brain features like adults with borderline personality disorder. Often is relative, since this was only 40 individuals. Cutting and other forms of self-harm are warning signs for suicide, which data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say increased 300 percent among 10- to 14-year-old girls from 1999 to 2014, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. During that same time, along with a 53 percent increase in suicide in older…

DDT was banned by a politician in the US in 1972 and was banned a few years later in Finland, so how can it be causing autism now? The answer is statistics. The same curve that can show autism is linked to organic food can link autism to anything and if you are at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health you are very much against corporations and in need of a way to get in the New York Times, so a recent paper links DDE, a metabolite of DDT, in the blood of pregnant women to autism. Autism is low-hanging fruit for statisticians. Most people are obviously not for it (though plenty…

Neuroscientists believe that people's earliest memories date from around three to three-and-a-half years of age but many people report memories much earlier than that. It's likely just as fake as claims of repressed memories from the 1980s.  At least according to surveys, which are just as unreliable as science claims about memory.  Survey results of people's first memories found that 38.6 percent of 6,641 people claimed to have memories from two or younger, with 893 people claiming memories from one or younger. This was particularly prevalent among middle-aged and older adults…

It's no secret that marijuana usage leads to hunger, it even has a colloquial name - "the munchies." But understanding the neuroscience of that that could also help people who lose their appetites during illness.  A family of compounds called cannabinoids, particularly delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), are responsible for its psychological effects. Using a new procedure to dose lab rats with cannabis vapor, researchers examined the ability of THC to stimulate appetite and found how the drug triggers hunger hormones. They also identified specific brain regions that shift to 'hungry'…