Scientific American

Shocks to the Brain Improve Mathematical Abilities

Thu, 16 May 2013 16:15:00 EST

From Nature magazine

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Inside the Mind of a Psychopath

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:00:08 EST

Psychopaths are responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime. These people are primarily identified by an extreme lack of empathy. Now a study finds that when psychopaths see images of people in pain, there’s a pattern of activity in their brains that is quite different from brain activity in non-psychopaths.

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Could a Neural Implant Correct Errant Thoughts?

Thu, 09 May 2013 08:00:00 EST

Most people make good decisions most of the time. But when drug addiction, disease or brain injury enters the picture, rational thinking can go awry. What if the damaged brain just needed a little reminder of how it feels to choose wisely?

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A Toxic Cascade: When the Brain Consumes Itself [Slide Show]

Mon, 06 May 2013 08:00:00 EST

In recent years neuroscientists have come upon an astonishing revelation: Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Lou Gehrig’s and other major brain diseases may have a similar underlying cause. They may all result from the mis-folding of proteins in a process similar to the one linked to mad cow and other prion-based diseases. The growing number of research findings that point to this conclusion are set out in “Seeds of Dementia,” by Lary C. Walker and Mathias Jucker in the May issue. The accompanying slide show illustrates this cascading process of one protein corrupting another, leading to the buildup of toxic aggregations, which underlie diseases that cause brain cell degeneration.

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Video Game Play Sharpens Elderly Minds

Fri, 03 May 2013 16:03:08 EST

Wanna help grandma keep her mind sharp? Consider throwing out her crossword puzzles and giving her a joystick. Because a study finds that elderly people who played a video game for at least 10 hours gained three years of protection from cognitive decline. Gamers also became quicker at processing information. The research is in the journal PLoS ONE. [Fredric D. Wolinsky et al., A Randomized Controlled Trial of Cognitive Training Using a Visual Speed of Processing Intervention in Middle Aged and Older Adults ]

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Disappointingly, D j Vu not a Glitch in the Matrix

Thu, 02 May 2013 13:45:00 EST

Ed. note: this blog was originally posted at Sleights of Mind. [caption id="attachment_783" align="alignleft" width="300" caption=""Deja-Vu x", By Doris Redrupp: http://smillakatz.blogspot.com/2011/01/deja-vu.html"] [/caption] [More]

Neuroscientists Weigh In on Obama's BRAIN Initiative

Thu, 02 May 2013 08:00:00 EST

In February, President Barack Obama hinted that the White House would soon announce a large-scale initiative aimed at mapping the activity in the brain at the cellular level. Several scientists confirmed the project would probably be based on the Brain Activity Map proposal outlined in Neuron in June 2012. Scientific American Mind asked a few top neuroscientists what they think.

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Are Doctors Diagnosing Too Many Kids with ADHD?

Wed, 01 May 2013 08:00:00 EST

A German children's book from 1845 by Heinrich Hoffman featured “Fidgety Philip,” a boy who was so restless he would writhe and tilt wildly in his chair at the dinner table. Once, using the tablecloth as an anchor, he dragged all the dishes onto the floor. Yet it was not until 1902 that a British pediatrician, George Frederic Still, described what we now recognize as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Since Still's day, the disorder has gone by a host of names, including organic drivenness, hyperkinetic syndrome, attention-deficit disorder and now ADHD.

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Specific Neurons Respond to Massage

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 08:00:00 EST

Itching is not the only sensation to arise from unique neurons. A team at the California Institute of Technology has identified neurons that transmit the pleasurable sensations of massage, at least in mice. The cells responded to gentle rubbing but not to pinching or poking. Activation of the cells requires “a pressure component,” says lead investigator David Anderson, a neuroscientist at Caltech, “much like you would apply if you were stroking your cat.”

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Scientists Identify Neurons That Register Itch

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 07:30:00 EST

What is an itch? Scientists have speculated that it is a mild manifestation of pain or perhaps a malfunction of overly sensitive nerve endings stuck in a feedback loop. They have even wondered whether itching is mostly psychological (just think about bed bugs for a minute). Now a study rules out these possibilities by succeeding where past attempts have failed: a group of neuroscientists have finally isolated a unique type of nerve cell that makes us itch and only itch.

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New Treatments Tackle Multiple Sclerosis (preview)

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 07:06:00 EST

Six years ago, when she was 24, Rachelle Alston woke up one morning and noticed she was having trouble seeing out of her left eye. “Everything was blurry from the bridge of my nose down,” recalls the slim Seattle native. “I thought my contacts must have scratched my eye or I had dry eyes, so I left my contacts out and went to work.”

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Is the World's Top Neuroscience Group Quashing Dissent on the U.S. BRAIN Initiative?

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 17:45:00 EST

Fresh from attending President Barack Obama’s announcement of the BRAIN Initiative at the White House on April 2nd, Society for Neuroscience president Larry Swanson, a neurobiologist at the University of Southern California , composed this letter to SFN’s nearly 42,000 members.

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New Music Tickles or Bores Brain Region

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 07:30:08 EST

When you hear an unfamiliar tune, how do you wind up either tapping your foot or plugging your ears? A study finds that a specific brain region gives the song a thumbs up or down. The research is in the journal Science. [Valorie N. Salimpoor et al., Interactions Between the Nucleus Accumbens and Auditory Cortices Predict Music Reward Value ]

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Getting to Know Your Inner Charlatan

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 15:30:00 EST

I slunk into my social studies classroom with my head down. Graded homework assignments sat on the corner of my teacher's desk. As my fellow seventh grade students chatted before class began, I casually slid my late homework into the middle of the pile. When our teacher later distributed the papers, he would see mine was not graded, assume he'd missed it, and I'd be off scot-free. Indeed, my ploy worked like a charm.

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The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 07:30:00 EST

In a viral YouTube video from October 2011 a one-year-old girl sweeps her fingers across an iPad's touchscreen, shuffling groups of icons. In the following scenes she appears to pinch, swipe and prod the pages of paper magazines as though they too were screens. When nothing happens, she pushes against her leg, confirming that her finger works just fine--or so a title card would have us believe. [More]

How Real-Time Brain Scanning Could Alleviate Pain (preview)

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 08:00:00 EST

Melanie Thernstrom lies motionless inside the large, noisy bore of a functional MRI scanner at Stanford University. She tries to ignore the machine's loud whirring as she trains her attention on a screen mounted inside the scanner, right in front of her eyes. An image of a flame bobs and flickers, shifting subtly in size. To her, the flame is a representation of the searing pain in her neck and shoulder, with its fluctuations reflecting the rise and fall of her discomfort. To the neuroscientists scrutinizing her through a window from the control room next door, the flame is a measure of the activity in a part of her brain.

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Throughout History, Defining Schizophrenia Has Remained a Challenge [Timeline]

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 08:00:00 EST

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An Internal Sedative Could Help Treat Troubled Slumber

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 14:00:00 EST

Imagine you get nine hours of sleep every night, squeeze in long naps whenever you can, and yet every waking hour is a blur of exhaustion, poor focus and longing for the next time your head will hit the pillow. That is the reality for people with primary hypersomnia, a poorly understood, rare condition of perpetual sleepiness and lethargy.

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Faulty Sleep Mechanism Might Cause Trauma to Linger

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 08:00:00 EST

Scientists have long known that once we nod off, certain memories grow stronger. One recent theory suggests that forgetting, too, is an essential function of sleep [see “Sleep's Secret Repairs,” by Jason Castro; Scientific American Mind, May/June 2012]. Researchers now suspect that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may emerge from flaws in sleep's forgetting process. Two studies presented at the 2012 meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans indicate that sleep might offer a window of opportunity for weakening memories and providing relief from lingering reminders of trauma.

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What's Next for Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine?

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 07:00:00 EST

Researchers are now experimenting with stem cells--progenitor cells that can develop into many different types of tissue--to coax the bodies of a few individuals to heal themselves. Some of the most advanced clinical trials so far involve treating congestive heart disease and regrowing muscles in soldiers who were wounded in an explosion . But new developments are happening so quickly that investigators have come up with a new name--regenerative medicine--to describe the emerging field.

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