Neuroscience

If only you could ditch that traumatic memory, that craving, that debilitating fear of ventriloquist dummies (autonomatonophobia)! But these tendencies are so deeply ingrained that try as you might, you can't dig them out. Maybe you can drug them out. The process of recalling a memory is like a rolling snowball——a trigger provides the first ball, which then rolls through various parts of your brain picking up the additional elements it needs to become a full memory. The molecule PKMzeta rolls the ball. Actually, when a trigger hits your brain, PKMzeta chooses the paths it takes, allowing it…

Researchers say that by applying electrical current to the brain they can enhance mathematical performance for up to 6 months - and there is no impact on other cognitive functions. Aside from being a new way for kids to cheat on their SATs, the work may lead to treatments for the percentage of the population with moderate to severe numerical disabilities like dyscalculia ('math dyslexia') and for those who lose their skill with numbers as a result of stroke or degenerative disease. The researchers used a method of brain stimulation known as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS…

I had the following article in the ICMPC 11 proceedings. ABSTRACT An often cited conclusion that musical chills are mediated by endogenous opioids (endorphins) is based on an experiment that showed the opioid antagonist naloxone reduced the chills rate of music in some subjects. However, we find some experimental problems with its methods, results and conclusion. Dr. Goldstein's experiment with musical chills and naloxone used 10 subjects, all music chill responders, and found that 3 had significant chill reduction related to naloxone. He did not provide the result showing if the other 7…

Men and women are different, we know that now (efforts to the contrary in the 1970s aside) but when it comes to neuroscience, differences may be speculation, no matter how many studies you read saying this imaging study or that is correlated to a hypothesis. Dr. Cordelia Fine is a psychologist at Macquarie University in Australia and first became interested in the gender issue as a parent reading a book about how differences between boys' and girls' brains mean they should be taught differently.  As a psychologist, she was curious about the research on which these claims were…

Do you fall in love using your heart or your brain?   It depends.    For your brain, says a new analysis by Syracuse University Professor Stephanie Ortigue that won't discourage drug use, falling in love elicits the same euphoric feeling as using cocaine,  but it also affects intellectual areas of the brain.  That's a pretty big endorsement of the brain being number one in romance.So if love is in the brain and not the heart, is there 'love at first sight' after all?   The science says yes, according to the researchers, who found falling in love only takes about…

A new study says it isn't just human memories that fade - aging impacts the ability of honey bees to find their way home as well. Bees are typically impressive navigators, able to wend their way home through complex landscapes after visits to flowers far removed from their nests, even after three to four days of flight time. Mature bees have piloted their way to and from the hive for five to 11 days and old bees have had more than two weeks of flight time but the paper says that aging impairs the bees' ability to extinguish the memory of an unsuitable nest site even after the colony has…

Someone put a comment that do traditional medicines have some medicine to control stupidity. Brain function may be governed by various signaling molecules . I am no expert of medicine but what produces stupid behavior and how it can be cured using traditional medicine could be matter of interest. Ipomea growing on the sides of railway tracks also known as railway creeper if consumed by cows , produced strange behavior. Datura metal fruits and seeds if consumed cause hallucinations. All kinds of "drugs" obtained mainly from Cannabis and Poppy produce stupid behaviour. In one poets saying "…

Intense, passionate feelings of love can provide effective pain relief on a par with painkillers or even illicit drugs like cocaine, according to a new study. That's not to say you should rely on a string of affairs when you have a headache, but a better understanding of these neural-rewards pathways that get triggered by 'love', or winning money, could lead to new methods for producing pain relief. The concept for the study was sparked several years ago at a neuroscience conference when Arthur Aron, PhD, a professor of psychology at State University of New York at Stony Brook  and an…

Temple psychologist Ingrid Olson, who dedicates her research to understanding human memory,  has found a way to improve the recall of proper names - electricity.Electric stimulation of the right anterior temporal lobe of the brain using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) improved the recall of proper names in young adults by 11 percent - that will sure teach those kids. My title is a little inflammatory, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is different than the electroconvulsive ("shock") therapy (ECT), made famous in movies. "We know a lot about how to…

What's more universal in culture than a "thumbs up"? To our brains, whether we seem to have a cultural familiarity or not, it isn't familiar at all, says new research in Human Brain Mapping. People seem to react quickly and intuitively to body language, tone of voice and gaze but gestures are different, at least when the gesturer offers no other cues.    Less surprisingly, the new study also found that same-race interaction leads to greater activity in the mirror neuron system, a region of the brain linked to subconscious imitation. Neuroscientists at USC and Peking University…