I’ve just returned from a thrilling weekend at the BIL Conference in Long Beach, California (yes, the pun on “TED” is very intentional) where I met all kinds of smart, fun people – including lots of folks who share my love for braaaiiins! So I thought I’d introduce you guys to some of the friends [...]
Posts Tagged ‘learning’
Neuroscience Friends!
March 4th, 2012 
The Connectome 
Posted in Feature Stories 
Tags: biochemistry, biology, consciousness, learning, neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, psychology, science to the rescue!, technology 
1 Comment »Consider This an Invitation
March 2nd, 2012 The Connectome This photo got me thinking. Only 24 percent? Really? We’re finding weird new exoplanets every day – hell, NASA hasn’t even ruled out the possibility that there could be life on Europa and Titan, two moons in our own solar system – yet so many people have lost faith in space’s limitless potential to surprise [...]
Forget Me Not
March 2nd, 2012 The Connectome Having trouble remembering where you left your keys? You can improve with a little practice, says a new study. It’s an idea that had never occurred to me before, but one that seems weirdly obvious once you think about it: people who train their brains to recall the locations of objects for a few minutes [...]
Posted in Brain News, Featured Tags: aging, fMRI, imaging, learning, memory, neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, senses, vision No Comments »
Connection Clusters
February 19th, 2012 The Connectome As our brains learn something, our neurons form new connections in clustered groups, says a new study. In other words, synapses – connections between neurons – are much more likely to form near other brand-new synapses than they are to emerge near older ones. As our neuroscience friends like to say: “Cells that fire together [...]
Posted in Brain News, Featured Tags: learning, neurons, neurophysiology, structural networks No Comments »
Why I Love and Hate "Game"
February 14th, 2012 The Connectome Yes, it’s that special time of year again – time for flamboyant bouquets and chalky candy to appear at office desks – time for Facebook pages to drown in cloying iconography – time for self-labeled “forever aloners” to dredge the back alleys of OKCupid in last-ditch desperation – and time for me to load up my trusty gatling [...]
Posted in Feature Stories, Featured Tags: biology, emotions, evolution, learning, literature, psychology, sex 5 Comments »
Beyond Perfection
February 11th, 2012 The Connectome If you continue to practice a skill even after you’ve achieved mastery of it, your brain keeps learning to perform it more and more efficiently, says a new study. As we perform a task – say, dunking a basketball or playing a sweet guitar lick – over and over again, we eventually reach a point [...]
Learning Expectations
February 7th, 2012 The Connectome Researchers have isolated a specific pathway our brains use when learning new beliefs about others’ motivations, a new study says. Though this type of learning, like many others, depends heavily on the neurotransmitter chemical dopamine‘s influence in a set of ancient brain structures called the basal ganglia, it’s also influenced by the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) – a structure [...]
Musical Learning
January 30th, 2012 The Connectome A new study throws some light on how musical aptitude can offset one very specific aspect of the aging process. In research comparing older patients with musical training to those without, older people who’d spent time regularly practicing or teaching music consistently displayed much faster neural reaction times to certain kinds of sounds. The idea [...]
Posted in Brain News Tags: aging, autism, learning, music, neurophysiology, schizophrenia 1 Comment »The Memory Master
January 18th, 2012 The Connectome A gene that may underlie the molecular mechanisms of memory has been identified, says a new study. The gene’s called neuronal PAS domain protein 4 (Npas4 to its friends). When a brain has a new experience, Npas4 leaps into action, activating a whole series of other genes that modify the strength of synapses – the connections [...]
Posted in Brain News Tags: biochemistry, learning, memory, neuroanatomy, neurochemistry, neurons, neurophysiology, synapses 1 Comment »Catchin' Some Waves
January 6th, 2012 The Connectome Our capacity for short-term memory depends on the synchronization of two types of brainwaves – rapid cycles of electrical activation – says a new study. When the patterns of theta waves (4-7 Hz) and gamma waves (25-50 Hz) are closely synchronized, pieces of verbal information seem to be “written” into our short-term memory. But it also [...]
