Neuroscience

There’s a good chance that you’re listening to music while reading this, and if you happen not to be, my bet is that you listen to music in the car, or at home, or while jogging. In all likelihood, you love music – simply love it. Why?  What is it about those auditory patterns counting as “music” that makes us relish it so?  I have my own opinion about the answer, the topic of my recently finished book that will appear next year, Harnessed: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man. I’ll give you a hint as to my view at the end of this piece, but what I’d…

Evidence that environmental factors can contribute to autism has been around for several decades. The first clue comes from studies of monozygotic (‘identical’) twins, who share 100% of their inherited genes, but do not show complete concordance, i.e., one twin can have autism and the other not, or the two can be extremely different in terms of the severity of their symptoms. These discordant twin-pairs demonstrate that genes alone cannot tell the whole story: environment must explain part of the causal process in the neuropathology of these disorders. Secondly, several specific…

For any of those that have not yet had the opportunity to see it (and have HBO), HBO will presenting its made-for-TV biopic on Temple Grandin this evening.  It's a very well-done piece, and superbly acted by Claire Danes. Ms. Grandin is arguably the most well known adult with autism, and has through the years become one of the most respected voices on autism and autism advocacy.  Born in 1947, her autism was diagnosed when she was a child.  At that time the so little was known about that disorder that most psychiatrists believed it was caused by cold, withholding “refrigerator…

A cutting-edge UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute research project, the Infant Sibling Study, is leading the way in seeking clues to the earliest behavioral manifestations of autism. This project studies the younger siblings of children already diagnosed with autism. For reasons that are not entirely clear, these children are among the most likely to be subsequently diagnosed with the condition. While the chance that a first child will have autism is about 1 in 100, the chance that a sibling of a child with autism will also have autism is as high as 1 in 5. The study has as its premise that as…

Although they only account for a fraction of the synapses in the visual cortex, neurons in the thalamus get their message across loud and clear by coordination -- simultaneously hitting the "send" button—according to a computer simulation developed by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Their findings may hold important clues to how the brain encodes and processes information, which can be applied to a wide variety of applications, from understanding psychiatric disorders to the development of novel pharmaceuticals and new ways of handling information by computers or…

A team of neuroscientists claim it is possible to influence people's moral judgments by disrupting a specific brain region called the the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ). The study offers "striking evidence" that the right TPJ, located at the brain's surface above and behind the right ear, is critical for making moral judgments, the authors say. Previous studies have shown that the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) is highly active when we think about other people's intentions, thoughts and beliefs. In the new study, researchers disrupted activity in the right TPJ by inducing a…

Type 2 dopamine receptors (D2DR)—brain receptors that play a key role in addiction--also play a key role in rats' heightened response to food, according to Scripps Insititute Neuroscientists. The findings suggest that the same brain mechanisms that fuel drug addiction in humans may also accompany the emergence of compulsive eating behaviors and the development of obesity. The study was published today in Nature Neuroscience. When investigators gave rats access to varying levels of high-fat foods, they found unrestricted availability alone can trigger addiction-like responses in the brain,…

A new study published in Neuron suggests that our ability to respond with outrage toward people who attempt to harm us is seated in a brain region called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC). Patients with damage to this brain area are unable to conjure a normal emotional response to hypothetical situations in which a person tries, but fails, to kill another person. Therefore, they judge the situation based only on the outcome, and do not hold the attempted murderer morally responsible. The findings support the idea that making moral judgments requires at least two processes — a logical…

Research published in Behavioral and Brain Functions suggests that scientists may one day be able to cure phobias, everything from fear of spiders to heights, with a simple injection. Researchers studied the cerebellum, an area of the brain thought to be involved with the development of fear. Using classical conditioning, Masayuki Yoshida and Ruriko Hirano from the University of Hiroshima taught goldfish to become afraid of a light flashed in their eyes. By administering a low voltage electric shock every time a light was shone, the fish were taught to associate the light with being shocked…

Now, this may sound like a New Age centre for feel-good flaky philosophies, but it isn't: it's a neuroscience research laboratory. Run by Richard Davidson, who became famous for testing the brain waves of Tibetan monks, the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds uses some hard-nosed neuroscience to research how we can change our brains and thereby achieve a healthier perspective on life, the universe and everything. "Located within the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, we are a research Center dedicated to creating a world in which healthy qualities of mind flourish. The…