Clipmarks | pokkets's 'brain' clips

Anatomy of a false memory

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:48:45 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

We believe that memory provides us with a faithful record of past events. But in fact, it is well established that memory is reconstructive, and not reproductive, in nature. In retrieval, a memory is pieced together from fragments, but during the reconstruction errors creep in due to our own biases and expectations.

Generally, these errors are small, so despite not being completely accurate, our memories are usually reliable. Occasionally, there are too many errors, and the memory becomes unreliable. In extreme cases, memories can be completely false.

False memory, or confabulation, is completely unintentional, and can occur spontaneously due, for example, to the suggestive power of a leading question or a doctored photograph. It can also following frontal lobe damage due to tumours, head injuries, or ruptured arteries.

Tags: memory, brain

6 iconoclastic discoveries about the brain

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 10:02:06 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: let go of the dogma

Clip Source: scienceblogs.com

Neuroscience, like all other branches of science, is fraught with dogmatic ideas about its subject matter. A number of principles have emerged, principles that have been regarded as fundamental to our understanding of brain function.

But the human brain is an organ of bewildering complexity - it is often referred to as the most complex object in the known universe - which doesn't give up its secrets easily. After 100 years of scientific investigation, we still know very little about it.

Dogma 1:

The adult human brain is not plastic.

Dogma 2: The adult human brain cannot regenerate

Dogma 3:

Neurons are the functional elements of the nervous system

Dogma 4:

Neurotransmitters are released from the nerve terminal

Dogma 5:

Neurons are binary switches.

Dogma 6:

Neurons communicate with each other by propagating action potentials

Tags: brain, discoveries, neuroscience, clipversity

Justice in the brain: Equity and efficiency are encoded differently

Thu, 08 May 2008 20:50:21 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: An interest in such issues kept the study subjects in the scanner, despite the pain of grappling with difficult choices, Hsu said. “Quite a few came out saying: ‘This is the worst experiment I’ve ever been in. I never want to do anything like this again!’ ”

Clip Source: www.eurekalert.org

Which is better, giving more food to a few hungry people or letting some food go to waste so that everyone gets a share" A study appearing this week in Science finds that most people choose the latter, and that the brain responds in unique ways to inefficiency and inequity.

The study, by researchers at the University of Illinois and the California Institute of Technology, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of people making a series of tough decisions about how to allocate donations to children in a Ugandan orphanage.

The researchers hoped to shed light on the neurological underpinnings of moral decision-making

“Morality is a question of broad interest,” Hsu said. “What makes us moral, and how do we make tradeoffs in difficult situations"”

Tags: brain, study, science

Words in your brain

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 12:36:35 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.sharpbrains.com

Brain Teaser: Words in your brain, learn as you exercise!

Do you know where words are stored in your brain...?

In your temporal lobe! Here is a drawing of the brain so you can see where your temporal lobe is (in green) on a profile view of the right side of your brain.

As you know your brain has two sides (two hemispheres) connected by the corpus callosum. So you have one temporal lobe on each side of the brain.

Words in the brain are not stored randomly. They seemed to be quite organized. Research has shown that words that are often heard together (such as salt and pepper) or words that share some meaning (such as nurse and doctor) are connected or associated in the brain. Once you hear one, the other is activated.

Here is a brain exercise whose aim is to stimulate the connections or associations between words in your temporal lobe.

Ready to stimulate connections in your temporal lobe(s)? Enjoy! (Solutions are below. Please don't check them until you have trid to solve all the pairs!)

Tags: brain, words, training

Telepathic Thought

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 11:24:50 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.pbs.org

Meet a young man who became "locked in" due to a devastating automobile accident.

Having suffered a major brain stem stroke, Eric Ramsey was completely aware of everything going on in the outside world, but was unable to communicate at all.

Surgeons implanted an electrode in his brain and he learned to communicate just by thinking about what he wants to say.

The implications of Eric's story are profound... In the near future, we may be able to restore speech (and other abilities) to those who have lost them. In the long term, we might be able to extend our 'natural' abilities to do such things as adding additional memory or thinking capacity.

Read an interview with Dr. Philip Kennedy, Eric's doctor.

Tags: world wide mind, telepathy, brain

Music Makes Your Brain Happy

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 17:22:10 GMT

clipped by: shunyax

Clip Source: www.wired.com

Brain areas involved in listening to music are the same as those involved in other pleasurable activities, such as orgasms, eating chocolate or winning a bet.

Image: Courtesy of Vinod Menon and Daniel J. Levitin

Tags: music, brain

The Daydreaming Brain

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 22:58:10 GMT

clipped by: pokkets

Clip Source: www.mindpowernews.com

Daydreaming seems to be the default setting of the human mind and certain brain regions are devoted to it

When people are given a specific task

they focus on that task

other brain regions get busy during down time

When Mason asked people what was happening during this down time, the answer was clear.

"It's daydreaming," she said. "But I find that the vast majority of time, people aren't having fanciful thoughts. People are thinking about what they have to do later today."

Her team has chosen to call it stimulus-independent thought or mind wandering.

Mason's team set up an experiment using the relatively new technology of functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI to see what is going on

volunteers

did a variety of tasks

volunteers were also imaged when they were sitting there, waiting between tasks

"In the absence of a task that requires deliberative processing, the mind generally tends to wander, flitting from one thought to the next with fluidity and ease,"

Now they know what that looks like.

Tags: brain, thinking, daydream, mind, neurology

BERT And ERNI Proteins Control Brain Development

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 08:17:00 GMT

clipped by: Deepti

Clip Source: www.scientificblogging.com

Scientists at University College London have discovered how two proteins called BERT and ERNI interact in embryos to control when different organ systems in the body start to form, deepening our understanding of the development of the brain and nervous system and expanding our knowledge of stem cell behavior

The new research published this week in PLoS Biology solves the puzzle of how vertebrates prioritize the order in which they begin to develop different sets of structures. During development, only a few signals instruct cells to form thousands of cell types, so the timing of how cells interpret these signals is critical

An international research team led by Professor Claudio Stern of the UCL Department of Anatomy & Developmental Biology has shown that the first stage of development of the brain and nervous system is, paradoxically, a block on its progression

Tags: proteins, brain, development, nervous system, cells, embryos

Nun brains may help unlock secrets of Alzheimer's

Sat, 22 Dec 2007 00:45:47 GMT

clipped by: gingembre
clipper's remarks: Nun Study -- yielding valuable research into aging. And it's okay with the Pope!

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

Two decades ago, Sister Treanor and 677 other members of the School Sisters of Notre Dame granted a young researcher's request to test them each year

The mission: Tracking the progression of Alzheimer's disease and other age-related brain disorders

The 61 surviving nuns recently completed their last round of intellectual and physical tests for the Nun Study, one of the world's most comprehensive neurological research projects

One final sacrifice remains: When they die, their brains will be taken for further study, joining a collection of hundreds of other brains donated by the the nuns who died before them

Snowdon's work already has produced interesting results, including a finding that people who challenge themselves intellectually can apparently delay or prevent the onset of Alzheimer's symptoms

About half the nuns in the study developed Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia before they died, about similar to the general population

It's such a cool study

Tags: aging, alzheimer's, brain, research, medicine, science, neuroscience, nuns, university of kentucky

Brain 'irrelevance filter' found

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 10:43:08 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Scientists believe they have located a new brain area essential for good memory - the "irrelevance filter".

People who are good at remembering things, even with distractions, have more activity in the basal ganglia on brain scans, the Swedish team found.

The work in Nature Neuroscience could help explain why some people are better at remembering things than others.

Clinically, it could also aid the understanding of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

The ability to hold information in the mind so that it is immediately accessible is known as working memory.

We use working memory all of the time - for example, when doing a simple maths calculation in our head or recalling a telephone number.

There will be many brain regions that filter irrelevant information, so it is too early to tell if these findings will have a bearing on conditions such as ADHD

Tags: brain, neuroscience, filter, irrelevance, memory

Boost your Brain power with Neurobics

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 11:35:54 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: Strengthen your senses by operating with one removed.

Clip Source: mail01.mail.com

Boost Your Brain Power with Neurobics

"Neurobics" encourages people to take everyday activities and make them different. Like "brushin' roulette" - instead of brushing your teeth with your right hand, brush it with your left - it's harder than you think.

Eat dinner in the dark, using your sense of smell and taste, or choose your clothing with your eyes closed, using your sense of touch, and smell everything from flowers to food even if it smells foul.

Using the five senses in new ways releases brain growth factors and neurons start connecting. "One of the growth factors in the brain is called nerve growth factor, this is like a fertilizer for the brain," explained Dr. Doraiswamy. "The more "Neurobic" activities you do for the brain, the more connections are formed, and the more connections are formed the more reserve capacity you have."

Read the full story here...

Tags: brain, exercise, sense, neuron, growth

Top 10 Brain teasers

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 11:50:03 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: I've clipped the start of a few, but there are 10 on the page. The "Click here for the answers" link goes to a page with all of the answers listed

Clip Source: www.mindpowernews.com

Source: The List Universe

Brain teasers are a good way to improve your mind and have some fun at the same time. They usually require lateral thinking and patience. This is a list of my favorite 10 brain teasers.

1. The Firing Squad

Pirate Pete had been captured by a Spanish general and sentenced to death by his 50-man firing squad.

Click here for the answers...

2. The Servant’s Wish

Once upon a time, in the West Lake village, a servant lived with his master. After service of 30 years, his master became ill and was going to die. One day, the master called his servant and offered him for a wish

Click here for the answers...

3. The Wisest Son

One day, a father went to his three sons and told them that he would die soon and he needed to decide which one of them to give his property to

Click here for the answers...

4. Sherlock holmes and the Broken Window

Click here for the answers...

5. What is it?

Click here for the answers...

6. Wheelbarrow Battle

Tags: brain, teaser, mind, list

Schizophrenia: The Curse That's Almost a Blessing

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:57:25 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: A recent study may have found what kind of process goes awry in schizophrenic brains. Researchers found that DISC1 regulates the migration of new neurons in the adult brain. When the levels of DISC1 were reduced in mice during adult neurogenesis, the newborn neurons sped up and overshot their intended targets within the hippocampus, When the neurons finally reached their destinations, they forged an unusual number of connections with neighboring cells, a series of events that might give rise to the abnormal—and quite crippling—brain functions associated with schizophrenia, according to Hongjun Song, a Johns Hopkins neurologist who also worked on the study. It is possible, Song says, that further research will lead to a drug that treats schizophrenia by restoring normal neurogenesis.

So what evolutionary advantage could schizophrenia-related genes bring to people who have some of the genes but not the disease? For now, this remains one of the many open questions.

Clip Source: discovermagazine.com

Schizophrenia: The Curse That's Almost a Blessing

The disease may be the twisted flipside of an evolutionary boost.

For years, scientists struggled to identify an adaptive advantage that might explain schizophrenia’s persistence. Researchers from various disciplines volleyed ideas back and forth. Some argued that the genes implicated in the disease promoted creativity; others believed that schizophrenics were frustrated cult leaders—unorthodox thinkers constitutionally “engineered” to lead segments of humanity to break off from the herd, but who lacked the charisma to effect much change. None of the theories gained much traction.

Tags: psychology, brain, schizophrenia, evolution

Migraine Brains May Be Starved of Oxygen

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 04:34:55 GMT

clipped by: gardengirlinohio

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

People with migraines may also be suffering from some brain damage as brain cells swell and become starved of oxygen, researchers say.

This damage is simililar to the type that can occur with concussions and after strokes, the researchers report online in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

They say their finding may help to explain why migraine sufferers have a higher risk of stroke.

It may also suggest that migraine patients should not simply get pain relief but also drugs that prevent the migraine, which is often preceded by aura, a series of visual disturbances that can include flashes of light or black spots.

The research, which was done in mice, suggests giving oxygen may help reduce the damage, the international team says.

Giving the mice rich doses of oxygen seemed to shorten the duration of the wave of brain effects seen in CSD, the researchers say.

Tags: migraine, brain, stroke

This is your brain on Advertising.

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 10:28:37 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: Now they can really tell what people think of their ads.

Clip Source: www.mindpowernews.com

Neuromarketers use sophisticated brain-imaging technology to test consumer response and help clients fine-tune their strategies

By Amber Haq
Source: Business Week

Do you ever get the creepy feeling that advertisers know how to put a lump in your throat, inspire subconscious brand loyalty, or make your mouth water? Just wait: It could get worse. An emerging technique called neuromarketing that uses brain scans to measure human response to promotional messages is starting to catch on in Europe—and soon ads may become even more effective at prompting you to pull out your wallet.

Orwellian, perhaps. But for companies looking to fine-tune their promotions and boost sales, neuromarketing offers the enticing prospect of a quantitative way to test the subconscious effectiveness of ads, jingles, and logos before spending big bucks on media placements. That's a godsend for marketers wary of the sometimes unreliable results of focus groups and other field testing.

Tags: brain, advertising, neuromarketing, response, marketeers