Mind & Brain

It’s the early 1950s, and some strange experiments are going on at Tulane University in Louisiana. Well, maybe not weird, but definitely pushing the limits of neurophysiological knowledge one step further. Dr. Robert G. Heath is at the forefront of these experiments, and he found that he can manipulate both the pleasure and pain centers [...]

People with higher IQ have a much better ability to ignore background distractions, because they are just much better at filtering out useless information. Now personally, I’m not a big fan at defining intelligence, especially using the IQ type of tests, and even less any results that are demonstrated starting from here. Reality has shown [...]

A rather debatable theory in psychology says  the brain detects grammar errors even when we don’t consciously pay attention to them, sort of working on autopilot. Now, researchers at University of Oregon have come with  tangible evidence pointing toward this idea after they performed a brain scan study. The team of psychologists, led by Laura Batterink, [...]

Researchers Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and the University of Toronto have demonstrated for the first time that is possible to confirm or independently assess clinical diagnoses of autism in children simply by analyzing their brain activity. Reliable and efficient, their method might be employed at a massive scale as a means of [...]

A topic of great interest in neurology and psychology is memory. While a lot of efforts have been made towards identifying what mechanisms and processes govern memory formation and retrieval, very few things are understood with respect to its storage. This is because our memories aren’t static, they always shift position and become either more [...]

Our close primate relatives, chimpanzees, have been constantly amazing us with their incredible cognitive abilities and personality traits that are so similar to our own. If you believe much of what you undertake today is limited to human cognition only, think again. Chimps do it too – thinking about thinking that is, as the findings [...]

One of the biggest problem in psychiatry today, though the doctors practicing it regularly hand out medication and treatment, is the lack of clear biological markers. Basically, most of the diagnosis is made based on reported and evaluated symptoms that might not hint towards the real mental affliction the said person is suffering from. Brains [...]

For decades, there’s been significant discussions on how professional fighting affects the brain, but not much scientific progress has been made on the matter. Now, a new (not yet peer reviewed) MRI study has shown that important regions and connections of the brain have decreased in volume in both amateur and professional fighters with the [...]

As the writers on Nature depict it, it evokes the dystopian worlds of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick – if you’ve read his works or seen Minority Report, you’ll understand it. Neuroscientists have developed a brain scan that shows how likely are convicted felons to commit crimes again. Brain scanning felons Kent Kiehl, a [...]

When a lion hunts a gazelle, he is actually hunting the weakest of the herd, the one which is the slowest. Repeating the hunt, in time only strengthens the herd. The drunken version of this is that the same things happen with alcohol and neurons: sure, alcohol destroys some neurons, but it’s only the weaker [...]