When Anesthesia Goes Wrong
A teenage boy went into surgery for a broken arm and emerged with brain damage. His mother was determined to figure out what had happened.
cognition-neurology-perception
How I look at buildings, with aphantasia
A photograph is not a substitute
Why We Stay Afraid - Nautilus
A newly discovered brain region in mice solves a longstanding mystery about how fear lingers after threats fade
The Brain Doesn't Care How Clear Your Explanation Was
What happens before the explanation matters more than the explanation itself. Here's the neuroscience behind why.
People Who Can't Picture Anything Are Rewriting the Science of Imagination - Daily Neuron
Some people can't picture anything in their heads, and studying their brains is overturning a popular theory of how imagination works.
Aphantasia
Why music is a powerful tool to quiet stress in the brain
Music doesn’t just mask stress, it guides our brain back to a calm state
How the brain learns to read is an evolutionary mystery—a new study offers clues
Reading hasn't been around for long, evolutionary speaking. Instead, the brain recruits systems evolved for other purposes
The Secrets of Storytelling: Why We Love a Good Yarn
Our love for telling tales reveals the workings of the mind
The brain doesn’t just experience reality. It edits it into a story
Neuroscience is revealing how our brains are wired for narrative
The primary glue for what remains is cause and effect
therefore
A controversial Alzheimer’s surgery is said to reverse symptoms — here’s what scientists know
Jaw-dropping patient videos and miraculous testimonials ignited a frenzy in China over a technique that aims to improve drainage from the brain. Now it is entering trials worldwide.
Could Rocky’s musical language in Project Hail Mary actually work?
Linguists explain how a language built from musical notes could convey complex meaning and even support conversation
Brain medicines
Describe a Lever in Words and a Diagram
Section 2 of Chapter 5: Why the diagram succeeds when a sentence may fail, and how different modalities work in cognition?
Humans’ sense of smell is still evolving
A genetic study shows how smell capabilities were maintained in a hunter-gatherer population
Dogs can tell if you're scared or sad - Ars Technica
fMRI scans show happiness, fear, anger, and sadness have distinct brain activity patterns in doggy brains.
What we get wrong about dopamine
Sometimes dubbed the 'pleasure chemical', dopamine is often wildly misunderstood. Nikolay Kukushkin delves into what the much-discussed neurotransmitter really does to our brains.
Writing by Hand is Good for your Brain - Here's how to do it
Because I am known to write using a fountain pen on paper, a number of people have pointed me to this post and its underlying research. I won’t rehash what is said in those sources, but the gist of it is that when you write things down by hand you’re recruiting more of your…
Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer’s – how complex mental maps and spatial reasoning protect your brain
Working with and living in spatially complex environments may help delay cognitive decline, though more research is needed.
How Does Touch Lead To Pain Or Pleasure? | Quanta Magazine
Neuroscientist Ishmail Abdus-Saboor discusses efforts to understand how skin contact can be painful or pleasurable, and what touch-obsessed naked mole rats might teach us about human social behavior.
‘A completely new person’: can surgery help Alzheimer’s patients regain basic skills?
Researchers conducting clinical trial for operation that drains abnormal build-up of two protein types in brain.
What Would It Mean to See a New Color?
Olo can be described as the “greenest green,” though it can never be captured by a camera, Rivka Galchen writes. But its development tells us a lot about our color vision.
How Neuroscience Is Shaking the Foundation of Our Legal System | TheCollector
Can brain scans predict criminal intent? We examine the tense collision between modern neuroscience and the age-old foundations of our justice system.
What a Picture of a Dog Has to Do with Reason and Logic
What a Picture of a Dog Has to Do with Reason and Logic: People who can’t see images in their minds challenge an old philosophical standby
The Terrorist in the Brain
What can Robin Williams and Bruce Willis teach us about dementia? This article explores the complex biological realities of brain diseases, controversies in Alzheimer's research, the risks of new drugs, and the multi-billion-dollar industry exploiting our fear of cognitive…
Frontotemporal Dementia
Lewy Body Dementia
What Your Dog Actually Sees
Most people believe dogs see in black and white. They are wrong. Here is the surprising science behind canine vision and what it means for you and your dog.
How The Brain Pays Attention - NeuroLogica Blog
How much attention do you pay to...well, attention? Attention is one of those many brain functions that you don't notice or think about when it is working fine, but can become debilitating if it is impaired in any way, and we notice when it is stressed to the point of failure…
A Woman With Alzheimer’s Spoke in Full Sentences After Taking Psilocybin, Case Study Says
Researchers caution it’s only one case, but the report raises questions about whether psilocybin could restore dormant brain functions.
What happens brain lose sense of smell
Disturbances in this critical sense are often linked to problems with brain health, researchers are learning
For People with Misophonia, Everyday Noises Can Be Agony
Sloane Crosley, the author of “Grief Is for People,” reports on misophonia, the neurophysiological disorder characterized by a severe aversion to sound.
The Psychology of the Home Run in 1921 - bu Hugh S. Fullerton - Behavioral Scientist
Why was Babe Ruth so good at hitting a baseball? In 1921, a journalist and two psychologists brought the "home run king" into the lab to find out.
Brain wave patterns shed light on how you make memories
New research shows distinct patterns in waves of brain activity carry information when forming and recalling memories.
The biggest mystery in neuroscience, according to me. Worm brain simulation
Sixty years later and we still can't solve it
Routine vaccines may cut dementia risk—experts have startling hypothesis on how - Ars Technica
Vaccines may be training a part of our immune system long thought to be untrainable.
What happens to your brain under anesthesia? - Futurity
New findings challenge the widespread belief that anesthesia is simply a deep sleep. The reality is more complex, researchers found.
Congenitally Blind People Appear to be Protected from Schizophrenia
Sometimes clues to a disease come from the people who don't get it. A 1950 study of the psychological lives of blind people revealed that there are no cases of people who had been blind since birth developing schizophrenia. Double-checking through larger health records confirmed…
The Psychology of Nudges: Why the Smallest Design Element Can Shift the Biggest Outcomes - UX Magazine
Each nudge in your design is a silent choice about who you are designing for, the user or the business. This article deconstructs the psychology of micro-signals such as defaults, color hierarchy, and progress indicators and identifies where helpful guidance ends and…
Your Brain Does Something Weird When You Look at Emojis
When the human brain sees an emoji, it does the stupidest thing it could possibly do in that moment: it interprets it as a real human face.
Dopamine Depletion: The Hidden Driver of Alzheimer’s Memory Loss - Neuroscience News
Researchers discovered that an 80% drop in dopamine causes Alzheimer's memory loss. Restoring dopamine with Levodopa rescued memory in a landmark study.
The Scientific Reason Some People Literally Hear Colors
Some people move through the world with a completely different sensory experience than everyone else, and most of them have no idea it’s unusual. As ScienceAlert reports, somewhere between 1 and 4 percent of people have a neurological trait called synaesthesia, where activating…
Why thinking hard feels bad: the emotional root of deliberation
Doubt is not just a lack of information; it is an unpleasant emotional state. New psychological research reveals that this negative feeling serves as a necessary alarm bell, pushing the human brain to abandon mental shortcuts and think critically.
This negative feeling acts as an internal alarm bell
intuition
This is what happens in your brain when you can’t recall a word - Cella Wright
Dig into what causes the tip of the tongue phenomenon, where your brain struggles to recall a word or term from memory.--You’re sure you know your 3rd grade ...
Saving the Girl with Dementia
Saving the Girl with Dementia: It takes a family to drive research for a rare disease forward.
How the hypercuriosity of ADHD may have helped humans thrive | Aeon Essays
ADHD isn’t merely a dysfunction. It’s best understood as an impulsive motivational drive for novel information
Scientists built a tickle robot to solve one of biology’s strangest mysteries
Tickling may be evolutionarily ancient and recognized across cultures, but science has only scratched the surface of this topic
New Chef Program Helps People With Autism Find Jobs in Fine-Dining Restaurants
Culinary jobs have the potential to be a perfect fit, and a new effort is afoot to help autistic workers land them.
The Human Brain Is a Time Traveler
Looking to the future has always defined humanity. Will A.I. become the best crystal ball of all?
Metannoying
Your brain on "not X but Y"
This happens in seconds. A student with high verbal aptitude processes this almost instantaneously.
Psychometricians have called antonyms the most efficient measure of verbal intelligence in the toolkit: high g-loading, high discrimination at the top of the ability range, no contextual scaffolding.
What Are Psychedelic Entities? - NOEMA
The beings people often meet while using psychedelics resist tidy explanations.