Brain Bugs: Hallucinations, Forgotten Faces, and Other Cognitive Quirks | Think Tank What's the Big Idea? If seeing is believing, then how do we come to know? One common misperception holds that vision springs directly from the eyes. True, the eyes, ears, and skin bombard us with a constant stream of information. But sensory input is only the first step in a complex journey towards arriving at our understanding of the world. As neuroscientist V.S. What's the Significance? For neurologists like Ramachandran, "the question of how neurons encode meaning and evoke all the semantic associations of an object is the holy grail of neuroscience, whether you are studying memory, perception, art, or consciousness." This is because brain damage is highly specialized. John developed a blood clot in a vein in his leg, which traveled to his cerebral arteries, causing a stroke. There was nothing wrong with his vision or hearing. In John's case, the "wire between the vision and the amagydala," which regulates emotion, had been cut. Dan Honan contributed to this article.
The Neuroscience of Barbie In science fiction and fantasy tales, there is a long running fascination with the idea of dramatically diminishing or growing in stature. In the 1989 classic, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Rick Moranis invents a device which accidentally shrinks both his own and the neighbor’s children down to a quarter-of-an-inch tall. Preceding this by more than 100 years, Lewis Carroll wrote about a little girl who, after tumbling down a rabbit hole, nibbles on some cake and then grows to massive proportions. Nearly 300 years ago, Jonathan Swift described the adventures of Gulliver while on the island of Lilliputan, on which he is a giant, and then on the island of Brobdingnag, where everyone else is a giant. These kinds of experiences, however, have been limited to the world of fictional stories. Or at least, they were mythical until recently. In order to make participants feel ownership over these false bodies, researchers employed a technique well known to those interested in body perception.
The 50 best apps for children | Technology | The Observer When Apple unveiled its iPad in January 2010, the idea of handing over a touchscreen gadget costing at least £429 to a sticky-fingered child seemed ridiculous. Two years later, tablets – and smartphones – are now well established as pass-on devices, with an increasing number of apps available for children of all ages. In July, Disney commissioned a survey of 2,000 British parents who owned an app-capable device and found that 75% share them with their children; 56% said they had downloaded an app at the request of their kids; and 37% considered apps to be an "integral" part of their family life. There are hundreds of developers making apps for kids, from games and story books to maths and phonics apps. Pretty much every big brand in the world of children's entertainment is now involved in apps, including Disney, Nickelodeon, Penguin, Mattel and Moshi Monsters, as well as individual characters and TV shows such as Bob the Builder, Peppa Pig, In the Night Garden and Dr Seuss.
From Sci-Fi to Sci-Fact: The New Frontier of Neuroscience | Dr. Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa With rendition switcher Question: What is the most exciting part of brain science for you? Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa: I think the most exciting part of what I do right now is exactly the fact that what we are doing is giving patients new hope; that we're looking at a disease, which is brain cancer, that people have looked at for hundreds of years and we have not been able to understand, and we're finally perhaps beginning to scratch the surface, we're beginning to look at an old disease with new eyes. And what new eyes are those is the fact that within brain cancer there may be a small population of cells that have the ability to recreate the same type of cancer, which means that despite the fact that we can actually do a perfect surgical resection and we can take a lot of these tumors out, these patients eventually continue to progress, perhaps because we're leaving those small little cells back there that are able to recreate the whole tumor. Recorded on: July 2, 2008
Brain May ‘See’ More Than the Eyes, Study Indicates Vision may be less important to “seeing” than is the brain’s ability to process points of light into complex images, according to a new study of the fruit fly visual system currently published in the online journal Nature Communications. University of Virginia researchers have found that the very simple eyes of fruit fly larvae, with only 24 total photoreceptors (the human eye contains more than 125 million), provide just enough light or visual input to allow the animal’s relatively large brain to assemble that input into images. “It blows open how we think about vision,” said Barry Condron, a neurobiologist in U.Va.’s College of Arts & Sciences, who oversaw the study. “This tells us that visual input may not be as important to sight as the brain working behind it. In this case, the brain apparently is able to compensate for the minimal visual input.” The animals apparently saw the writhing motion and were attracted to it, willingly traveling toward it.
The Networked Future of Batteries - Alexis C. Madrigal More batteries are coming to your life -- and they're going to have to get a whole lot smarter. The Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal in conversation with industry entrepreneurs shaping our future. See full coverage Batteries have become a strangely integral part of our lives. Every single person with a cell phone has to constantly manage power in a way that no one did even 10 years ago. The mobile revolution has brought with it a sea change in the way that people use and think about stored electricity. In a sense, the constant presence of batteries in our lives is the biggest change in the way we relate to energy since the ubiquitous grid power came into American lives in the first half of the 20th century. But Ryan Wartena, CEO of Growing Energy Labs, Inc, believes that this is only the beginning.
Why Can Some People Recall Every Day Of Their Lives? Brain Scans Offer Clues : Shots - Health Blog hide captionResearchers are using MRI scans to learn more about the brains of people with extraordinary memory. iStockphoto.com Researchers are using MRI scans to learn more about the brains of people with extraordinary memory. Six years ago, we told you about a woman, identified as A.J., who could remember the details of nearly every day of her life. Bob Petrella, 62, of Los Angeles had to go through a lot of memory testing to qualify as someone with superior autobiographical memory. Petrella scored 55 percent correct on the news events, according to a paper published in July in the journal Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. "They asked, 'What day of the week was Jan. 1, 1984?' Petrella is one of 11 individuals who have now been extensively studied by memory researcher James McGaugh at the University of California, Irvine. They don't have photographic memories. "They're reasonably successful in what they do. "People like us, we forget normal things. May 25, 1977. "He's germ-avoidant.
Biology and ideology: The anatomy of politics A popular political advertisement from early this summer begins with US President Barack Obama addressing a crowd of moon-eyed supporters. Suddenly, the screen goes dark to a crescendo of minor chords. Phrases such as “Fear and Loathing”, “Nauseating” and “Divide and Conquer” flash onto the screen, along with video clips of commentators complaining that Obama has used scare tactics to manipulate voters. In the final scene, the iconic poster from Obama's 2008 election campaign appears, the word HOPE transforming into FEAR as it bursts into flames. The advertisement, produced by the conservative organization American Crossroads in Washington DC, is typical of those that have come to dominate the US airwaves and YouTube in preparation for next month's presidential election. Emerging from both the right and the left, these commercials increasingly resemble horror films as they seek to sway voters by triggering basic emotions such as fear, anger and disgust. Nature Podcast Innate ideology
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