Clipmarks | kidora's 'neuroscience' clips

The Difference Between Liberals And Conservatives May Be Neurological

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 16:18:28 GMT

clipped by: kidora
clipper's remarks: Hummmm... This study seems to be a little biased towards the liberals. Besides the fact that this study is coming out of NYU and UCLA.

Clip Source: science.slashdot.org

"Scientists from NYU and UCLA report in Nature Neuroscience that the brains of Democrats and Republicans process information differently. This new study finds that the differences are apparent even when the brain processes common information, not just political topics. From the study, liberals were more likely to be accurate and showed more brain activity in the region associated with analyzing conflicts. A researcher not affiliated with the study stated, liberals 'could be expected to more readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas.' Moreover, 'the results could explain why President Bush demonstrated a single-minded commitment to the Iraq war and why some people perceived Sen. John F. Kerry... as a flip-flopper.'"

Tags: liberals, conservatives, politics

Natalie Portman, Neuroscientist

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 02:49:47 GMT

clipped by: kidora
clipper's remarks: How many actors do you know take a break from acting and peruse this kind of alternative job?
This is great to actually see an actor using their brain. How wonderful !
Cheers to you Natalie.
If you click on this link you can get a copy of the paper Ms. Portman is on at the bottom of the page.

Clip Source: www.mindhacks.com

Natalie Portman is best known for her roles in Hollywood movies like Star Wars, Cold Mountain and V for Vendetta. What is less known is that she was co-author of a scientific paper on the neuroscience of child development. This is about her research.

Portman, whose real name is Natalie Hershlag, left acting to pursue a psychology degree at Harvard during 2000.

While there she was employed as a research assistant in Prof Stephen Kosslyn's neuropsychology lab where she got involved in a study investigating the link between frontal lobe development and visual knowledge in infants.

Tags: natalie-portman, neuroscience, science, development, children

Whos Got Rhythm? Your Brain Does

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 20:27:21 GMT

clipped by: kidora
clipper's remarks:

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

In an attempt to understand what makes us tick, researchers have been probing various regions of the brain, such as the premotor cortex, which helps make movement possible, and the auditory cortex, responsible for processing what we hear. But neuroscientists now say communication between regions—as opposed to within the areas themselves—may be the key that has eluded analysis until now, in part, because of technological obstacles.

"We hypothesized that two [neuronal] groups can only communicate efficiently with each other when their rhythms are coordinated, or synchronized," wrote Pascal Fries and Thilo Womelsdorf, neuroscientists at the F. C. Donders Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, in an e-mail interview with Scientific American Online. "If the rhythms are not coordinated, then one group sends information over while the other is not ready to take it on and vice versa."

Tags: brain. science, neuroscience