A major paradigm shift is taking the science world by storm. Open source is taking over. For more than a century, scientists have depended on peer-reviewed journals to keep them up to date on the latest research. But as many of these journals have raised their subscription fees to bank-breaking levels, and locked life-saving research [...]
Archive for the ‘Brain News’ Category
Science Fights Back With Open Access
November 16th, 2012 
The Connectome 
Posted in Brain News, Featured 
Tags: connectomics, imaging, learning, neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, technology 
1 Comment »
The Listeners from Below
August 15th, 2012 The Connectome Deep within your brain, they are listening. In still silence, they await signals from afar – dim echoes of distant calls. And when they hear what they’ve been waiting for… they will awaken. They are known as neural stem cells – and not only are they real; researchers have just made some major discoveries about [...]
Posted in Brain News, Featured Tags: biochemistry, biology, neurochemistry, neurons, neurophysiology No Comments »
Brains and Brilliance
August 1st, 2012 The Connectome Where in the brain, exactly, is intelligence? Is a high I.Q. just a result of a flawed test – or do high-I.Q. brains have specific, measurable differences from others? Answers await, Intrepid Reader – but first we have to make sure we’re asking the right questions. Let’s start with the big news: a study just published [...]
Posted in Brain News, Featured Tags: anxiety, connectomics, depression, drugs, functional networks, intelligence, learning, neurophysiology 4 Comments »
Lying Eyes
July 12th, 2012 The Connectome Despite what you may have heard, you can’t tell if a person’s lying by watching their eyes. If you’re surprised, you’re not alone – I thought that theory made a lot of sense until I read this new study. As it turns out, the eye idea just doesn’t line up with the evidence. As far [...]
Posted in Brain News, Featured Tags: neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, psychology, science to the rescue! No Comments »
Aliens in the Lab
June 19th, 2012 The Connectome Researchers are creating new lifeforms that are chemically unrelated to any other life on earth. In fact, for the first time ever, scientists in Japan have built an artificial synapse, from the molecules up. What?! How can this be? Read on, intrepid voyager of the unknown, and discover for yourself. The basic idea is that [...]
Posted in Brain News, Featured Tags: biochemistry, biology, learning, neurochemistry, neurons, technology No Comments »
Sleep, Stress and Snacks
June 12th, 2012 The Connectome A lack of sleep makes our brains go nuts for unhealthy food, says a new study. When sleep-deprived people are shown images of junk food, fMRI scans show that their brains’ reward centers light up with far more intense anticipation than those of people who’ve slept a full night. The Fourthmeal marketing team, I assume, [...]
Posted in Brain News, Featured Tags: neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, psychology, sleep, stress No Comments »
Skin Into Brain II
June 9th, 2012 The Connectome For the first time in history, scientists have reprogrammed a whole batch of skin cells into a self-organizing, functioning network of brain cells, says a new study. That’s right, y’all – Dr. Sheng Ding at UCSF is blowin’ up the stem cell research game once again – except this time, instead of just reprogramming individual [...]
Posted in Brain News, Featured Tags: biology, genetics, neurons, structural networks, technology 1 Comment »
Becoming Bad
May 13th, 2012 The Connectome The brains of psychopaths are anatomically different from healthy brains in a specific set of ways, says a new study. Areas of the brain that enable us to feel guilt and fear, and to understand other people’s emotions – particularly the anterior rostral prefrontal cortex and the temporal poles – are significantly smaller in psychopathic [...]
Posted in Brain News, Featured Tags: emotions, fear, neuroanatomy, psychology, psychopathy 2 Comments »
The Depths of Decisions
May 5th, 2012 The Connectome Our brains – and the brains of other animals – actually run through superfast replays of past experiences as we make decisions, says a new study. This process isn’t one we usually have conscious access to – but without it, we might not be able to learn from the past at all. Memory seems pretty [...]
Posted in Brain News, Featured Tags: consciousness, learning, memory, neuroanatomy, neurons, neurophysiology, senses No Comments »
The Intelligence Network
April 10th, 2012 The Connectome Intelligence isn’t a single process – but it still depends on the coordinated activity of some specific brain areas, a new study reports. In one of the most sweeping surveys in neuroscience history, researchers put patients with various types of brain damage through a battery of cognitive tests, and pinpointed the neural correlates of “general [...]
Posted in Brain News, Featured Tags: functional networks, imaging, intelligence, neurophysiology, structural networks 1 Comment »
