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Experts have long thought that the human brain is one of the first organs to rot and decompose after we die, but new research suggests that is not the case. And in fact, it turns out that brains preserve quite well, according to a team of scientists at Oxford University - though they don't know how nearly a third of the brains lasted as long as they have. Until now, any time archaeologists found an old, well-preserved brain, it was regarded as something of an oddity - or at least the product of intentional preservation efforts by ancient people.

The human brain is truly awesome.A typical, healthy one houses some 200 billion nerve cells, which are connected to one another via hundreds of trillions of synapses. Each synapse functions like a microprocessor, and tens of thousands of them can connect a single neuron to other nerve cells. In the cerebral cortex alone, there are roughly 125 trillion synapses, which is about how many stars fill 1,500 Milky Way galaxies. This is a visual reconstruction from array-tomography data of synapses in the mouse somatosensory cortex, which is responsive to whisker stimulation.(Credit: Stephen Smith/Stanford) These synapses are, of course, so tiny...

The Male Brain. By Louann Brizendine, M.D. New York: Broadway Books, 2010. www.crownpublishing.com. 271 pp. $24.99. Psychiatrist Louann Brizendine, currently of the University of California, San Francisco and formerly of Harvard Medical School, has published the predictable followup to her bestselling book The Female Brain. This may be the most accessible book I have ever read that has slightly more than half its length taken up with appendices, notes, references, and the index. In 135 easy-to-read pages, Brizendine lays out the basic functioning of the male brain. Despite the number of books addressing these general topics, the author stands...

I won't post anything here because I'm not sure of their rules.

July 28, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Scientists are stunned to discover that a ten-year-old German girl's brain has rewired itself to allow her to see out of one eye as though she has two, even though half of her brain tissue was entirely missing from birth. In a report published this week in the online version of the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Lars Muckli, a neuroscientist at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, said, "Despite lacking one hemisphere, she's capable of living a normal life."The girl, called AH in the study, was born with only one...

When we daydream about the future, we tend to focus on the fabulous belongings we're going to have. Jet packs, flying cars, weapons to kill aliens, cell phones that make today's sleek models look clunky -- you name it, we're going to have it. We don't tend to focus, however, on who we'll be in the future. Most of us probably picture ourselves exactly the same, though maybe thinner, as surely we'll all have robot personal trainers by then. While we see the world's technology evolving to meet our needs, we may not think about how we ourselves might be...

The origin of the human brain has been traced back to primitive central nervous systems in worms and bugs, researchers now say. Humans and other vertebrates evolved from an ancient common ancestor that also gave rise to insects and worms, scientists have long known. But they're of course quite different today. Vertebrates have a spinal cord running along their backs, but insects and annelid worms such as earthworms, which have simple organs that barely resemble a brain, have clusters of nerves organized in a chain along their bellies. So biologists have long assumed these systems—key to ultimately putting a brain...

Humpback whales have "human" brain cells Mon Nov 27, 1:40 AM ET Humpback whales have a type of brain cell seen only in humans, the great apes, and other cetaceans such as dolphins, U.S. researchers reported on Monday. This might mean such whales are more intelligent than they have been given credit for, and suggests the basis for complex brains either evolved more than once, or has gone unused by most species of animals, the researchers said. The finding may help explain some of the behaviours seen in whales, such as intricate communication skills, the formation of alliances, cooperation, cultural...