When you are faced with a choice—say, whether to have ice cream or chocolate cake for dessert—sets of brain cells just above your eyes fire as you weigh your options. Animal studies have shown that each option activates ...
Nov 2, 2020
2
93
Imagine that you're late for work and desperately searching for your car keys. You've looked all over the house but cannot seem to find them anywhere. All of a sudden you realize your keys have been sitting right in front ...
Oct 7, 2020
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176
Caregivers learn to decipher differences in newborn cries through a combination of hard-wired instincts and on-the-job experience, a new study in rodents shows.
Oct 7, 2020
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20
It's a classic visual illusion: Two gray dots appear on a background that consists of a gradient from light gray to black. Although the two dots are identical, they appear very different based on where they are placed against ...
Jun 17, 2020
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180
What happens in the hippocampus even before people attempt to form memories may impact whether they remember.
Jun 1, 2020
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1602
Neuroscientists at the University of Pittsburgh Brain Institute have traced neural pathways that connect the brain to the stomach, providing a biological mechanism to explain how stress can foster ulcer development.
May 18, 2020
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1901
Scientists have discovered an earlier origin to the human language pathway in the brain, pushing back its evolutionary origin by at least 20 million years.
Apr 20, 2020
4
545
Speech and music are two fundamentally human activities that are decoded in different brain hemispheres. A new study used a unique approach to reveal why this specialization exists.
Feb 27, 2020
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196
In a sleepy haze, reaching out and grabbing the coffee cup in front of you seems to happen on autopilot. But your caffeine-deprived brain is working hard. It's collecting sensory information and other kinds of feedback—clues ...
Dec 25, 2019
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68
A new survey of the activity of nearly 60,000 neurons in the mouse visual system reveals how far we have to go to understand how the brain computes. Published today in the international journal Nature Neuroscience, the analysis ...
Dec 16, 2019
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820
