Neuroscience

How our body 'listens' to vibrations

The sensation of a mobile phone vibrating is familiar. The perception of these vibrations derives from specialized receptors that transduce them into neural signals sent to the brain. But how does the brain encode their physical ...

Alzheimer's disease & dementia

Brain wave stimulation may improve Alzheimer's symptoms

By exposing mice to a unique combination of light and sound, MIT neuroscientists have shown that they can improve cognitive and memory impairments similar to those seen in Alzheimer's patients.

Neuroscience

Pitch perfect: Brain differences behind a rare musical ability

New research published in JNeurosci reports features of the brain in musicians with absolute, or perfect, pitch (AP) that likely enable individuals with this rare ability—shared by Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven—to precisely ...

Neuroscience

Diving deeper into developmental dyslexia

Men with dyslexia have altered structural connections between the thalamus and auditory cortex on the left side of the brain, new research published in JNeurosci reveals. The study extends similar observations of the dyslexic ...

Neuroscience

Sound changes the way rodents sense touch

The brain assigns sensory information from the eyes, ears and skin to different regions: the visual cortex, auditory cortex and somatosensory cortex. However, it is clear that there are anatomical connections between these ...

Neuroscience

The brain predicts words before they are pronounced

The brain is not only able to finish the sentences of others: A study by the Basque research centre BCBL has shown for the first time that it can also anticipate an auditory stimulus and determine the phonemes and specific ...

Neuroscience

Brain has natural noise-cancelling circuit

To ensure that a mouse hears the sounds of an approaching cat better than it hears the sounds its own footsteps make, the mouse's brain has a built-in noise-cancelling circuit.

Neuroscience

Study: 'Sound' differences between age groups

By exploring differences in the way younger and older adults respond to sounds, Western neuroscientists have found that our brains become more sensitive to sounds as we age, likely leading to hearing challenges over a lifetime.

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