When animals hunt or forage for food, they must constantly weigh whether the chance of a meal is worth the risk of being spotted by a predator. The same conflict between cost and benefit is at the heart of many of the decisions ...
Apr 24, 2017
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In what are believed to be the first studies of their kind, Cedars-Sinai researchers recording the real-time firing of individual nerve cells in the brain found that a specific type of neuron in a structure called the amygdala ...
Nov 20, 2013
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We're all familiar with the startle reflex—that sudden, uncontrollable jerk that occurs when we're surprised by a noise or other unexpected stimulus. But the brain also has an important pre-attentive mechanism to tamp down ...
Aug 9, 2021
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Knowing when it's time for a meal—and when to stop eating again—is important to survive and to stay healthy, for humans and animals alike. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence have investigated ...
May 24, 2023
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The brain's emotion-processing center—the amygdala—is one of several brain regions involved in social behavior. But the exact role that this almond-shaped structure plays in the so-called 'social brain' remains mysterious. ...
Mar 4, 2021
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Stress eating is something many people are familiar with, but how the brain links positive reinforcement like food to emotional states like fear or anxiety is not well-understood. The wiring in the mouse brain, however, is ...
Mar 22, 2017
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The 20th century has seen an explosion of scientific efforts made to reveal the biological substrates of cognitive functions. Emotions and cognitive processes interact to build up complex behavioural responses and to drive ...
Jan 23, 2017
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(Medical Xpress)—It takes a lot to make a memory. New proteins have to be synthesized, neuron structures altered. While some of these memory-building mechanisms are known, many are not. Some recent studies have indicated ...
Jan 30, 2013
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Erasing unwanted memories is still the stuff of science fiction, but Weizmann Institute scientists have now managed to erase one type of memory in mice. In a study reported in Nature Neuroscience, they succeeded in shutting ...
Apr 10, 2017
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Are we born to fear punishment or crave rewards? Or do those capacities evolve with experience? Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Professor Bo Li and his lab found that mice have pre-programmed circuits that process "positive" ...
Oct 18, 2021
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