http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. In a study recently published in IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, neurobiologists at the University of Chicago show how an organism can sense a tactile stimulus, in real time, through an artificial sensor in a prosthetic hand. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-prosthetic.html Neuroscience Fri, 10 May 2013 08:44:06 EST news287394236 This past weekend teams from the National Football League used statistics like height, weight and speed to draft the best college players, and in a few weeks, armchair enthusiasts will use similar measures to select players for their own fantasy football teams. Neuroscientists at Carnegie Mellon University are taking a similar approach to compile "dream teams" of neurons using a statistics-based method that can evaluate the fitness of individual neurons. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-neuroscientists-statistical-fantasy-teams-neurons.html Neuroscience Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:00:08 EST news286453050 (Medical Xpress)—The phrase "practice makes perfect" has a neural basis in the brain. Researchers have discovered a set of common changes in the brain upon learning a new skill. They have essentially detected a neural marker for the reorganization the brain undergoes when a person practices and become proficient at a task. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-scientists-brains-skills.html Neuroscience Fri, 05 Apr 2013 06:50:08 EST news284363366 Professor of neurology, physician, and author Oliver Sacks M.D. has outlined case studies of hallucinations of musical notation, and commented on the neural basis of such hallucinations, in a new paper for the neurology journal Brain. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-hallucinations-musical-notation.html Neuroscience Thu, 04 Apr 2013 11:05:27 EST news284292321 All too often, stress turns addiction recovery into relapse, but years of basic brain research have provided scientists with insight that might allow them develop a medicine to help. A new study in the journal Neuron pinpoints the neural basis for stress-related relapse in rat models to an unprecedented degree. The advance could accelerate progress toward a medicine that prevents stress from undermining addiction recovery. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-stress-induced-drug-relapse-rats.html Neuroscience Wed, 06 Mar 2013 12:00:13 EST news281792676 A new theory of brain function by Peter Ulric Tse, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at Dartmouth College, suggests that free will is real and has a biophysical basis in the microscopic workings of our brain cells. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-dartmouth-neuroscientist-free-neural-basis.html Neuroscience Fri, 01 Mar 2013 10:50:37 EST news281357417 Aphasia, an impairment in speaking and understanding language after a stroke, is frustrating both for victims and their loved ones. In two talks Saturday, Feb. 16, 2013, at the conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, Sheila Blumstein, the Albert D. Mead Professor of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences at Brown University, will describe how she has been translating decades of brain science research into a potential therapy for improving speech production in these patients. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-speech-networks-aphasia.html Neuroscience Sat, 16 Feb 2013 13:06:40 EST news280242373 (Medical Xpress)—When you walk into a darkened room, your first instinct is to feel around for a light switch. You slide your hand along the wall, feeling the transition from the doorframe to the painted drywall, and then up and down until you find the metal or plastic plate of the switch. During the process you use your sense of touch to develop an image in your mind of the wall's surface and make a better guess for where the switch is. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-lot.html Neuroscience Tue, 11 Dec 2012 15:18:45 EST news274461512 Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin have shown that synchronization emerges between brains when making music together, and even when musicians play different voices. In a study published November 29th in Frontiers in Neuroscience, Johanna Sänger and her team used electrodes to record the brain waves of guitarists while they played different voices of the same duet. The results point to brain synchronicity that cannot be explained away by similitudes in external stimulation but can be attributed to a more profound interpersonal coordination. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-musical-duets-brains-rhythms.html Neuroscience Thu, 29 Nov 2012 02:00:01 EST news273344674 German neurophysiologists have developed a new method to study widespread networks of neurons responsible for our memory. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-neural-interaction-periods-silence.html Neuroscience Wed, 21 Nov 2012 13:00:14 EST news272724699 Scientists from the University of Leicester have hit upon unique forms of spinal nerve activity that shape output of nerve cell networks controlling motor behaviours. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-biologists-unique-spinal-nerve-cell.html Neuroscience Thu, 08 Nov 2012 12:00:21 EST news271581059 (Medical Xpress)—Inside the brain, an unpredictable race—like a political campaign—is being run. Multiple candidates, each with a network of supporters, have organized themselves into various left- and right-wing clusters—like grassroots political teams working feverishly to reinforce a vision that bands them together. While scientists know that neurons in the brain anatomically organize themselves into these network camps, or clusters, the implications of such groupings on neural dynamics have remained unclear until now. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-grassroots-neurons-wire-dominance-brain.html Neuroscience Wed, 24 Oct 2012 13:42:16 EST news270304920 A new study by researchers at UT Dallas' Center for Vital Longevity, Duke University, and the University of Michigan has found that the strength of communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain predicts performance on basic arithmetic problems. The findings shed light on the neural basis of human math abilities and suggest a possible route to aiding those who suffer from dyscalculia— an inability to understand and manipulate numbers. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-math-ability-requires-crosstalk-brain.html Neuroscience Wed, 29 Aug 2012 10:54:52 EST news265456482 Studies of lucid dreamers visualize which centers of the brain become active when we become aware of ourselves. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-seat-meta-consciousness-brain.html Neuroscience Fri, 27 Jul 2012 10:57:48 EST news262605426 When grabbing a coffee mug out of a cluttered cabinet or choosing a pen to quickly sign a document, what brain processes guide your choices? http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-brain-visual-perception-unconsciously-affects.html Neuroscience Wed, 23 May 2012 10:04:53 EST news256986216 Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on my parahippocampal gyrus. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-suspicion-resides-regions-brain.html Neuroscience Thu, 17 May 2012 12:29:33 EST news256476542 Neuroscientists from Western University have taken the all-important first step towards understanding the neural basis of size constancy or the ability to see an object as having the same size despite the fact that its image on the retina changes constantly with viewing distance. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-advances-size-perception.html Neuroscience Mon, 12 Mar 2012 18:25:57 EST news250795534 At New York University, Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Steve Fleming is exploring the neural basis of metacognition: how we think about thinking, and how we assess the accuracy of our decisions, judgements and other aspects of our mental performance. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-metacognition-dont.html Neuroscience Mon, 27 Feb 2012 09:01:20 EST news249555665 For Bradley Duchaine, there is definitely more than meets the eye where faces are concerned. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-pretty-professor-neural-basis-prosopagnosia.html Psychology & Psychiatry Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:37:47 EST news247322241 Doctors use similar brain mechanisms to make diagnoses and to name objects, according to a study published in the Dec. 14 issue of the online journal PLoS ONE and led by Marcio Melo of the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-doctors.html Neuroscience Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:27:06 EST news243106017 (Medical Xpress) -- We experience an interesting phenomenon when the contrast of an image flickers as it moves across our visual field – namely, an illusory reversal in the direction of motion. Moreover, this reverse-phi illusion occurs in a surprisingly wide range of species, indicating that this is a common evolutionary adaptation. Recently, researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Farm Research Campus demonstrated that motion-sensitive neurons in the brain of the ubiquitous fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster respond to the reverse-phi illusion and generate a change in its flight behavior. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-06-ghosts-machine-neural-basis-visual.html Neuroscience Wed, 22 Jun 2011 08:00:02 EST news227895068 It is common knowledge that bats and dolphins echolocate, emitting bursts of sounds and then listening to the echoes that bounce back to detect objects. What is less well-known is that people can echolocate too. In fact, there are blind people who have learned to make clicks with their mouths and to use the returning echoes from those clicks to sense their surroundings. Some of these individuals are so adept at echolocation that they can use this skill to navigate unknown environments, and participate in activities such as mountain biking and basketball. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-i-can-hear-a-building.html Neuroscience Wed, 25 May 2011 17:48:38 EST news225564496 Today, there is increasing exposure of individuals to a public audience. Television shows and the internet provide platforms for this and, at times, allow observing others' flaws and norm transgressions. Regardless of whether the person observed realizes their flaw or not, observers in the audience experience vicarious embarrassment. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-04-flaws-pain.html Psychology & Psychiatry Wed, 13 Apr 2011 17:48:30 EST news221935679