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News tagged with brain

Talking works: UB professor develops method to analyze creative problem solving

(Phys.org) -- Talk -- if it's the right kind -- can increase creativity, leading students to create useful, new ideas that solve problems, a University at Buffalo professor has found by using a statistical tool that he invented.

Other Sciences / Social Sciences

created May 25, 2012 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Newly discovered sensory organ in the chin of baleen whales allows them to be world's largest hunters

Lunge feeding in rorqual whales (a group that includes blue, humpback and fin whales) is unique among mammals, but details of how it works have remained elusive. Now, scientists from the Smithsonian Institution ...

Biology / Plants & Animals

created May 23, 2012 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (4) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

The living fossils of brain evolution

(Phys.org) -- In the course of its evolution, the architecture of the mouse brain may have barely changed. Similar to the tiny ancestors of modern mammals that lived about 80 million years ago, nerve cells ...

Biology / Evolution

created May 23, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

New technique reveals unseen information in DNA code

Imagine reading an entire book, but then realizing that your glasses did not allow you to distinguish "g" from "q." What details did you miss? Geneticists faced a similar problem with the recent discovery ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created May 17, 2012 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (13) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Brainput system takes some brain strain off multi-taskers

(Phys.org) -- A research team made up of members from Indiana University, Tufts and MIT and led by Erin Treacy Solovey, a has built a brain monitoring system that offloads some of the computer related activities ...

Technology / Hi Tech & Innovation

created May 16, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0 | with audio podcast report

Spanish researchers monitor a chicken's brain

Researchers from Carlos III University in Madrid are part of a team that, for the first time ever, has been able to monitor the brain activity of a chicken embryo and to confirm that superior brain activity ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created May 14, 2012 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Bee research breakthrough might lead to artificial vision

(Phys.org) -- An international research breakthrough with bees means machines might soon be able to see almost as well as humans.

Biology / Plants & Animals

created May 14, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 1

Visualization provides decision-makers with the big picture

The human brain is not very well-equipped for analysing multidimensional data. In his doctoral dissertation, Mikko Berg, M.Sc. (Tech.) examined how graphical visualizations can help people to understand complex data. One ...

Other Sciences / Social Sciences

created May 11, 2012 | popularity 3 / 5 (1) | comments 0

Five-limbed brittle stars move bilaterally, like people

It appears that the brittle star, the humble, five-limbed dragnet of the seabed, moves very similarly to us.

Biology / Plants & Animals

created May 10, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (3) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Anthropologist finds explanation for hominin brain evolution in famous fossil

(Phys.org) -- One of the world’s most important fossils has a story to tell about the brain evolution of modern humans and their ancestors, according to Florida State University evolutionary anthropologist ...

Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

created May 07, 2012 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (17) | comments 12 | with audio podcast

Better housing conditions for zebrafish could improve research results

Changing the conditions that zebrafish are kept in could have an impact on their behaviour in animal studies and the reliability of results, according to scientists from Queen Mary, University of London.

Biology / Plants & Animals

created May 03, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Insects master abstract concepts

An insect's brain is capable of constructing and handling abstract concepts. It can even use two different concepts simultaneously in order to make a decision when faced with a new situation.

Biology / Plants & Animals

created May 03, 2012 | popularity 4 / 5 (2) | comments 4

Researchers gain better understanding of mechanism behind tau spreading in the brain

Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have gained insight into the mechanism by which a pathological brain protein called tau contributes to the progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other neurodegenerative ...

Chemistry / Biochemistry

created May 02, 2012 | popularity not rated yet | comments 1 | with audio podcast

'Green' nanoparticles, that may enhance medication delivery and improve MRI performance

Researchers at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital have shown a new category of "green" nanoparticles comprised of a non-toxic, protein-based nanotechnology that can non-invasively cross the blood brain barrier and is capable ...

Nanotechnology / Bio & Medicine

created May 02, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

More light shed on how pigeons navigate

(Phys.org) -- Pigeons are renowned for their ability to find their way home from a release point hundreds of miles away, but scientists have never fully understood how they are able to achieve the feat. Now ...

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Apr 27, 2012 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (3) | comments 1 | with audio podcast report

Brain

The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate, and most invertebrate, animals. Some primitive animals such as jellyfish and starfish have a decentralized nervous system without a brain, while sponges lack any nervous system at all. In vertebrates, the brain is located in the head, protected by the skull and close to the primary sensory apparatus of vision, hearing, balance, taste, and smell.

Brains can be extremely complex. The cerebral cortex of the human brain contains roughly 15-33 billion neurons depending on gender and age, linked with up to 10,000 synaptic connections each. Each cubic millimeter of cerebral cortex contains roughly one billion synapses. These neurons communicate with one another by means of long protoplasmic fibers called axons, which carry trains of signal pulses called action potentials to distant parts of the brain or body and target them to specific recipient cells.

The most important biological function of the brain is to generate behaviors that promote the welfare of an animal. Brains control behavior either by activating muscles, or by causing secretion of chemicals such as hormones. Even single-celled organisms may be capable of extracting information from the environment and acting in response to it. Sponges, which lack a central nervous system, are capable of coordinated body contractions and even locomotion. In vertebrates, the spinal cord by itself contains neural circuitry capable of generating reflex responses as well as simple motor patterns such as swimming or walking. However, sophisticated control of behavior on the basis of complex sensory input requires the information-integrating capabilities of a centralized brain.

Despite rapid scientific progress, much about how brains work remains a mystery. The operations of individual neurons and synapses are now understood in considerable detail, but the way they cooperate in ensembles of thousands or millions has been very difficult to decipher. Methods of observation such as EEG recording and functional brain imaging tell us that brain operations are highly organized, but these methods do not have the resolution to reveal the activity of individual neurons.

For more information about Brain, read the full article at Wikipedia.
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