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In a recent learning study they were able to show that new conceptual information is stored along spatial dimensions in form of a mental map located in the hippocampus. Together with colleagues from the Donders Institute at Radboud University in Nijmegen, they observed brain activity patterns that support the idea that the neural mechanisms that […]
A new study by researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas, UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, UT Health Science Center at Houston and Baylor College of Medicine has produced evidence of the source of chronic pain in humans, revealing several new targets for pain treatment. The paper — published March 19 in Brain, one […]
A new Northwestern University study provides the first evidence that infants’ increasingly precise perceptual tuning to the sounds of their native language sets constraints on the range of human languages they will link to cognition. According to the researchers, this reveals that as early as 3 to 4 months, infants’ advances in speech processing play […]
Researchers have clarified, for the first time, the mechanism behind a very rare brain disorder called MICPCH (microcephaly, disproportionate pontine and cerebellar hypoplasia) syndrome in animal models. Information gleaned from this study could also inform research into other, more common neurological diseases such as mental retardation, epilepsy, and autism. MICPCH has only affected a total […]
What makes us human, and where does this mysterious property of “humanness” come from? Humans are genetically similar to chimpanzees and bonobos, yet there exist obvious behavioral and cognitive differences. Now, researchers from the Salk Institute, in collaboration with researchers from the anthropology department at UC San Diego, have developed a strategy to more easily […]
Human beings, like other animals, possess an enormous learning capacity that allows for the apprehension of new sensory information to master new skills or to adapt to an ever-changing environment. However, many of the mechanisms that enable us to learn remain poorly understood. One of the greatest challenges of systems neuroscience is to explain how […]
Personality traits and mental health affect how people value personal control in decision making, according to a new study in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging. Our brain’s reward and motivation systems show higher activity when we feel personal control in a situation and when we receive rewards that we’ve earned, rather than been given […]
Think of the brain as a complex transportation hub, a place where neural traffic heads off in any number of directions to make connections while processing something as simple as a mother’s smile. Now consider the same center in a child with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). At a time different parts of the brain […]
The innate immune system may be able to be trained to react to viral infections more efficiently by repeated exposure to anti-viral signaling molecules. Mammalian cells seem to be able to memorize anti-viral stimulation at the level of DNA-packaging molecules, enabling faster and greater activation of anti-viral genes in subsequent stimulations, according to a study […]
Adults in their 40s and 50s with higher levels of cortisol — a hormone linked to stress — performed worse on memory and other cognitive tasks than peers of the same age with average cortisol levels, research found. Higher cortisol in the blood also was associated with smaller brain volumes, according to the study, published […]