The evolution of brain wiring: Navigating to the neocortex
A new study is providing fascinating insight into how projections conveying sensory information in the brain are guided to their appropriate targets in different species. The research, published by Cell Press in the March ...
Memories take hold better during sleep: study
The best way to not forget a newly learned poem, card trick or algebra equation may be to take a quick nap, scientists surprised by their own findings reported Sunday.
Researchers identify 'Facebook neurons'
Carnegie Mellon University researchers have found that within the brain's neocortex lies a subnetwork of highly active neurons that behave much like people in social networks. Like Facebook, these neuronal ...
Collecting your thoughts: You can do it in your sleep!
(PhysOrg.com) -- It is one thing to learn a new piece of information, such as a new phone number or a new word, but quite another to get your brain to file it away so it is available when you need it.
Brain Versus Gut: Our Inborn Food Fight
Our brains are more like birds' than we thought
For more than a century, neuroscientists believed that the brains of humans and other mammals differed from the brains of other animals, such as birds (and so were presumably better). This belief was based, in part, upon ...
After 150, Facebook friends are meaningless
(PhysOrg.com) -- According to Oxford University's professor of evolutionary anthropology, Robin Dunbar, after you have amassed 150 friends on Facebook, any more are meaningless because the human brain can ...
Fatty acids clue for Alzheimer's
(PhysOrg.com) -- The amount of fatty acids in the brain varies between healthy people and those with Alzheimer's according to new research from the University of Bristol, UK, supported by the Alzheimer's Research ...
To make memories, new neurons must erase older ones
Short-term memory may depend in a surprising way on the ability of newly formed neurons to erase older connections. That's the conclusion of a report in the November 13th issue of the journal Cell that provid ...
Monkeys' grooming habits provide clues to how we socialise
(PhysOrg.com) -- A study of female monkeys' grooming habits provides new clues about the way humans socialise. New research reveals a link between the size of the neocortex in the brain, responsible for higher-level ...
The Role of Sleep in Learning New Words
(PhysOrg.com) -- A new study has demonstrated for the first time the importance of sleep in learning new words, and has shown the process has fast and slow components. The slow component is associated with ...
Sleep helps build long-term memories
(PhysOrg.com) -- Experts have long suspected that part of the process of turning fleeting short-term memories into lasting long-term memories occurs during sleep. Now, researchers at the RIKEN-MIT Center for ...
Stages of sleep have distinct influence on process of learning and memory
Research on the sleeping brain has revealed some fascinating stage-dependent interactions between areas involved in formation and storage of long term memories. The study, published by Cell Press in the February 26th issue ...