Brain

PITTSBURGH—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.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Scientists report that they can predict who will improve most on an unfamiliar video game by looking at their brain waves.

They describe their findings in a paper in the journal Psychophysiology.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — We humans have a fairly erratic sense of time. We tend to misjudge the duration of events, particularly when they are emotional in nature. Disturbingly negative experiences, for example, seem to last much longer than they actually do. And highly positive experiences seem to pass more quickly than negative ones.

A breakthrough study conducted in Canada has found that training of the well-known brainwave in humans, the alpha rhythm, enhances a brain network responsible for cognitive-control. The training technique, termed neurofeedback, is being considered as a promising new method for restoring brain function in mental disorders.

Help is on the way for people who suffer from vocal cord dysfunction. Researchers are developing methods that will contribute to manufacturing voice prostheses with improved affective features. For example, for little girls who have lost their voices, the improved artificial voice devices can produce age-appropriate voices, instead of the usual voice of an adult male.

Parents consistently overestimate their children's optimism and downplay their worries, according to new research by psychologists at the University of California, Davis, Center for Mind and Brain.

The findings suggest that secondhand evaluations by parents or other adults of children's emotional well-being need to be treated with caution.

SALT LAKE CITY, Oct. 24, 2012 – Computer simulations provide new mathematical support for the "grandmother hypothesis" – a famous theory that humans evolved longer adult lifespans than apes because grandmothers helped feed their grandchildren.

"Grandmothering was the initial step toward making us who we are," says Kristen Hawkes, a distinguished professor of anthropology at the University of Utah and senior author of the new study published Oct. 24 by the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

A team of neuroscientists have proposed a new and potentially revolutionary way of determining the neuronal connectivity (the "connectome") of the whole brain of the mouse, in an essay published October 23 in the open access journal PLOS Biology.

STANFORD, Calif. — In a painless clinical procedure performed on a patient with electrodes temporarily implanted in his brain, Stanford University doctors pinpointed two nerve clusters that are critical for face perception. The findings could have practical value in treating people with prosopagnosia — the inability to distinguish one face from another — as well in gaining an understanding of why some of us are so much better than others at recognizing and remembering faces.

BOSTON – Although placebos have played a critical role in medicine and clinical research for more than 70 years, it has been a mystery why these inactive treatments help to alleviate symptoms in some patients – and not others. Now researchers have for the first time identified genetic differences between placebo responders and non-responders, providing an important new clue to what has come to be known as "the placebo effect."

Cold Spring Harbor, NY -- A team of neuroscientists has proposed a new and potentially revolutionary way of obtaining a neuronal connectivity map (the "connectome") of the whole brain of the mouse. The details are set forth in an essay published October 23 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology.

Sauder School of Business researchers at the University of British Columbia have found that a person's date of birth can affect their climb up the corporate ladder.

The Sauder study shows that only 6.13 per cent of an S&P 500 CEO sample was born in June and only 5.87 per cent of the sample was born in July. By comparison, people born in March and April represented 12.53 per cent and 10.67 per cent of the sample of CEOs.

Just like humans, domestic cats are often judged by their color, and the media and folklore help perpetuate these stereotypes. Take the snobbish, aloof, white kitty who promotes "Fancy Feast," and spooky images of black cats, which can be associated with bad luck and witches, especially around Halloween.

People with perfect pitch seem to possess their own inner pitch pipe, allowing them to sing a specific note without first hearing a reference tone. This skill has long been associated with early and extensive musical training, but new research suggests that perfect pitch may have as much to do with genetics as it does with learning an instrument or studying voice.

Do you get tired when others yawn? Does your dog get tired when you yawn? New research from Lund University establishes that dogs catch yawns from humans. But not if the dogs are too young. The study, published in Springer's journal Animal Cognition, found that, like humans, dogs show a developmental trend in susceptibility to contagious yawning.

While dogs above seven months of age catch human yawns, younger dogs are immune to yawn contagion.