Sight, Sound Out of Sync in Kids With Autism Says Study The new diagnostic term “autism spectrum disorder” doesn’t reflect how devastating it can be for parents to have children limited in their ability to communicate and show affection, but it does reflect how little is still known about the condition that affects roughly 2 percent of children in the United States. Doctors have made great strides in accurately describing and diagnosing autism, but its causes remain opaque. A recent Vanderbilt University offers neurological findings that help explain for the disorder’s seemingly disparate symptoms. The study, published in January in the Journal of Neuroscience, found that children with autism have a broader window of time than normal children during which their brains process two distinct sensory stimuli as aspects of the same event. The window exists to allow the brain to connect stimuli, for example the sound of the sight of the same action, arriving at slightly different times.
Rats Get Placebo Effect Rodents experience placebo-induced pain relief, providing a new model with which to investigate the phenomenon. Wikimedia, AlexK100Like humans, rats can get pain relief from a placebo, according to a study published in the October issue of the journal PAIN. The findings give scientists a useful animal model with which to further investigate the mechanisms behind placebo-induced analgesia. Researchers from the University of Florida (UF) conditioned rats to expect morphine or saltwater by injecting them with one or the other during 2 sessions in which the rats were subjected to mild thermal pain on their faces. “We know basic things about placebo response, but the study we did is important because now we can look at placebo response in ways that you can’t in humans due to practical and ethical issues,” John Neubert, a pain specialist at the UF College of Dentistry and lead author of the study, said in a press release.
This famous brain was cut into 2,400 slices and uploaded to the cloud Good thing this guy wasn't on staff. SExpand This is one of the movies I know by heart, and I promise people every time that if we watch it, I won't quote along. I lie. Doesn't matter how many times I've seen it, I'm always too busy laughing. Except the Putting on the Ritz part. This movie has to be somewhere in my top ten list. that's me with Spaceballs! At risk of opening Pandoras box... you have a fave quote? Oh good, because if you don't quote it, I will. "That's right! "Taffeta, darling." "Taffeta, sweetheart." "No, the dress, it's taffeta—it wrinkles so easily." and "...the other one is just for socks and poo-poo undies." Madeline Kahn is my personal hero, and I adore her so much in this movie. And this is probably my favourite scene: I still ask people if they want Ovaltine, in her voice. I also say "the staircase can be treacherous" a lot, whenever I'm in a dim or darkened place.
“Vegans and vegetarians think they don’t kill animals but they do” – PlayGround+ Last year Claudio Bertonatti, one of the most renowned naturalists in Argentina, wrote an article that triggered an earthquake. The tsunami reached us here and is likely to extend even further. In his article, The Vegan Confusion, he warns that eating vegetables doesn’t prevent the death of animals. Bertonatti has enraged thousands of vegans and vegetarians, as well as other nature conservationists. However, many who read his article learned something about animal rights that might never have occurred to them otherwise. We spoke to Claudio about his earth-shattering idea and discussed the most important points of the controversy. Claudio, you were a vegetarian. As a teenager, I grew interested in nature. What happened? I began studying nature and going out to the countryside to observe wildlife. How? As a vegetarian, I was helping to prevent the death and suffering of domestic animals, but not of wild species. What drove you to write the article? Why? Indirect deaths? Wheat, rice, corn. What?
Scientific evidence that you probably don’t have free will I might note that you're citing experiments, which while not entirely debunked are in many circles considered to be highly flawed. For example, the "when did you decide to move your finger," experiment. This experiment is considered flawed because moving your finger is purely a motor response, and an incredibly simplistic one at that. The motion of our hands is one of the things we have the least control over, we're constantly twitching, scratching itches, or simply stretching our fingers out without realizing it. This however, is entirely different from decisions that by necessity require a great deal of forethought. Actually, I read up on this subject a little about a week ago, and found a fairly decent article on the subject. PS: io9, did you guys see that I was just arguing free will earlier today on another posts comment board?!
Does a Spider Use Its Web Like You Use Your Smartphone? - The Atlantic Millions of years ago, a few spiders abandoned the kind of round webs that the word “spiderweb” calls to mind and started to focus on a new strategy. Before, they would wait for prey to become ensnared in their webs and then walk out to retrieve it. Then they began building horizontal nets to use as a fishing platform. In 2008, the researcher Hilton Japyassú prompted 12 species of orb spiders collected from all over Brazil to go through this transition again. Their ability to recapitulate the ancient spiders’ innovation got Japyassú, a biologist at the Federal University of Bahia in Brazil, thinking. In February, Japyassú and Kevin Laland, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Saint Andrews, proposed a bold answer to the question. This would make the web a model example of extended cognition, an idea first proposed by the philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers in 1998 to apply to human thought. Perhaps the prime example is another eight-legged invertebrate.
Q&A: Daniel Pasini, Policy and Programme Officer at the European Commission Dr. Daniel Pasini, Policy and Programme Officer at the European Commission + Enlarge Daniel Pasini, PhD, is a Policy and Programme Officer at the European Commission, working in the Horizon 2020 Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Programme. For more than 20 years he has been closely involved in the development of policy and legal instruments for the construction and operation of European and international research infrastructure, in all fields of science. Q: It is an exciting time for neuroscience, and The Human Brain Project is an example of the promise of the field. The aim of the Human Brain Project (HBP) is to better understand the human brain and its diseases. HBP has formally started on Oct. 1, 2013. Q: The Human Brain Project has identified six areas of research. However, the project has also several other important dimensions. Q: The first major congress of the Human Brain Project was held in October.
Researchers catch biggest tadpole on record This critter might be a tad too big. The largest bullfrog tadpole on record was discovered by a volunteer at the American Museum of Natural History’s Southwestern Research Station in Arizona, researchers said Thursday. Earyn McGee, PhD student at the University of Arizona originally tweeted an image of the freaky larva – to the horror, or delight, of many. “A look through the scientific literature suggests this is the largest bullfrog tadpole ever recorded. Rare indeed!” While tadpoles are usually pretty small, the one in the picture has grown to epic proportions. Researchers think its size is due to a hormonal imbalance and don’t believe it’ll ever metamorphose and turn into a frog, McGee said. The record-breaking amphibian was found in a local landowner’s pond in March, as researchers drained the area on non-native predatory bullfrogs, Bender said. “This is definitely going to haunt my dreams,” wrote @ocean_ginger. The AMNH didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
Inside Paul Allen's Plan to Reverse-Engineer the Human Brain - Wired Science In 2003, Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen spent $100 million to build the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. With laser-equipped microscopes and custom brain-slicers, the institute has mapped the brains of mice, monkeys, and humans, showing which genes are turned on—and where—to better understand vision, memory, autism, and other neural phenomena. Last year Allen ponied up another $300 million to aim the institute at a narrower but more ambitious goal: a complete understanding of how the mouse brain interprets visual information. To succeed, they’ll have to go beyond static gene maps and learn how to watch a living brain in action. The new method will track electrical activity in neurons—not just in one mouse but many. Of all the things you could have invested in, why brain research? Well, as a programmer you’re working with very simple structures compared to the brain. How do you think your investment has paid off so far? Oh, I think it’s had a real impact.
Brains flush toxic waste in sleep, including Alzheimer’s-linked protein, study of mice finds Scientists say this nightly self-clean by the brain provides a compelling biological reason for the restorative power of sleep. “Sleep puts the brain in another state where we clean out all the byproducts of activity during the daytime,” said study author and University of Rochester neurosurgeon Maiken Nedergaard. Those byproducts include beta-amyloid protein, clumps of which form plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. Staying up all night could prevent the brain from getting rid of these toxins as efficiently, and explain why sleep deprivation has such strong and immediate consequences. Although as essential and universal to the animal kingdom as air and water, sleep is a riddle that has baffled scientists and philosophers for centuries. One line of thinking was that sleep helps animals to conserve energy by forcing a period of rest. Another puzzle involves why different animals require different amounts of sleep per night.
Dopamine regulates the motivation to act Printer friendly version Share 10 January 2013 Asociación RUVID The widespread belief that dopamine regulates pleasure could go down in history with the latest research results on the role of this neurotransmitter. The neuroscience journal Neuron publishes an article by researchers at the Universitat Jaume I of Castellón that reviews the prevailing theory on dopamine and poses a major paradigm shift with applications in diseases related to lack of motivation and mental fatigue and depression, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, etc. and diseases where there is excessive motivation and persistence as in the case of addictions. "It was believed that dopamine regulated pleasure and reward and that we release it when we obtain something that satisfies us, but in fact the latest scientific evidence shows that this neurotransmitter acts before that, it actually encourages us to act. Application for depression and addiction Attached files Dopamine