A synaesthesia-like effect in which people 'hear' silent flashes or movement, such as in popular 'noisy GIFs' and memes, could be due to a reduction of inhibition of signals that travel between visual and auditory areas of the brain,...
Ask a dozen people about their greatest fears, and you'll likely get a dozen different responses. That, along with the complexity of the human brain, makes fear—and its close cousin, anxiety—difficult to study. For this reason, clinical anti-anxiety medicines...
A recent study by a University of Arkansas researcher, Darya Zabelina, assistant professor of psychology, takes a new approach to measuring the association between creativity and cognitive control, that is, the mind's ability to override impulses and make decisions...
How does stress -- which, among other things, causes our bodies to divert resources from non-essential functions -- affect the basic exchange of materials that underlies our everyday life? Weizmann Institute of Science researchers investigated this question by looking...
Our daily lives include hundreds of routine habits. Brushing our teeth, driving to work, or putting away the dishes are just a few of the tasks that our brains have automated to the point that we hardly need to...
For the first time, scientists report using transcranial alternating current stimulation, or tACS, to target a specific kind of brain activity during sleep and strengthen memory in healthy people.Image credit: Flickr/Joe Green
When you sleep, your brain is busy storing...
Led by Philippe Peigneux, ULB Neuroscience Institute, a group of researchers found that our learning capabilities are limited during slow wave sleep. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), they showed that while our brain is still able to perceive sounds during sleep,...
Green: NAc-projecting prefrontal cortex neurons become active during the presentation of a reward-predictive cue, and this activity drives reward-seeking behavior. Purple: PVT-projecting prefrontal cortex neurons inhibited during reward-predictive cue. Credit: The Stuber Lab (UNC School of Medicine)
The prefrontal cortex,...
Cooperation -- between family members, friends, coworkers and even governments around the world -- is viewed as a cornerstone of human society. But not everyone cooperates equally, as anyone who's worked on a group project knows. And one factor...
Relentless cognitive decline as we age is worrisome, and it is widely thought to be an unavoidable negative aspect of normal aging. Researchers at the Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas, however, say their research...
This image shows regions of the white matter skeleton in which connectivity in IED subjects was significantly lower than healthy controls.
Credit: Lee, et al, Neuropsychopharmacology
People with intermittent explosive disorder (IED), or impulsive aggression, have a weakened connection between regions...
