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Is evil over? Has science finally driven a stake through its dark heart? Or at least emptied the word of useful meaning, reduced the notion of a numinous nonmaterial malevolent force to a glitch in a tangled cluster of neurons, the brain? Yes, according to many neuroscientists, who are emerging as the new high priests of the secrets of the psyche, explainers of human behavior in general. A phenomenon attested to by a recent torrent of pop-sci brain books with titles like Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain. Not secret in most of these works is the disdain for...

Scientists are a step closer to constructing a digital version of the human visual system. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed an algorithm that can be applied to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) imagery to show a moving image a person is seeing. Neuroscientists have been using fMRI to study the human visual system for years, which involves measuring changes in blood oxygen levels in the brain. This works fine for studying how we see static images, but it falls short when it comes to moving imagery. Individual neuronal activity occurs over a much faster time scale,...

Looking for patterns in life and then infusing them with meaning, from alien intervention to federal conspiracy. Superstitions arise as the result of the spurious identification of patterns. Even pigeons are superstitious. In an experiment where food is delivered randomly, pigeons will note what they were doing when the pellet arrived, such as twirling to the left and then pecking a button, and perform the maneuver over and over until the next pellet arrives. A pigeon rain dance. The behavior is not much different than in the case of a baseball player who forgets to shave one morning, hits a...

Enlarge Image Lefty or righty? A new study links a larger anterior cingulate cortex (left) to politically liberal views and a larger right amygdala to conservatism. Credit: R. Kanai et al., Current Biology, 21 (26 April 2011) Politics can be a touchy topic, especially when it comes to neuroscience. Researchers who've dared to tackle questions about how people's political leanings might be reflected in the brain have often earned scoffs and scoldings from their colleagues. A provocative new study is likely to be no exception. It claims to find features of brain anatomy that differ between people who identify...

Sandra Witelson has spent much of her career studying the relationship between brain structure and function, and the differences in these between men and women. A neuroscientist from the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Dr. Witelson has assembled a massive collection of brains for research and is known for studying Albert Einstein's brain and what made it unique. She sat down with The Wall Street Journal's Rebecca Blumenstein to discuss how brain differences can affect the skills, behavior, thinking and aspirations of men and women, and how that might relate to their careers....

Paranoia is one of the most unpleasant "side effects" of marijuana. It's also a key experience shared by marijuana smokers and people with schizophrenia. But exactly how does smoking a joint cause the feeling that dark forces are conspiring to do you wrong? New research in rats may help explain the source of this distress. The study, led by Steven Laviolette at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, involved training rats to fear the scent of either almond or peppermint. The scents were delivered to rats in a cage either with black-and-white striped walls or with black polka dots...

The man who took the knife and slit the throat of the woman whose money and body he wanted could not help himself. But the judge who sentenced that man to jail for life sure knew what he was doing. The judge had freedom, he could make a choice. He should have considered that the murderer had none. The murder’s brain made the murderer do what the murderer did (the personal pronoun is out of place here). The judge’s brain was under no constraints. The judge could have let the murder go. And, no, it’s not that mysterious entity Society...

Vol. 330 no. 6011 pp. 1612-1613 DOI: 10.1126/science.330.6011.1612 News IntroductionTen years ago, Karl Deisseroth was stuck. A psychiatrist and neuroscientist, he wanted to learn how different brain circuits affect behavior—and what went awry in the brains of his patients with schizophrenia and depression. But the tools of his trade were too crude: Electrodes inserted into the brain would stimulate too many cells in their vicinity. So in 2004, Deisseroth and his students invented a new tool. They inserted a gene for a light-activated algal protein into mice brains, where it entered nerve cells. By stimulating those cells with a laser,...

The two economists call their paper “Mental Retirement,” and their argument has intrigued behavioral researchers. Data from the United States, England and 11 other European countries suggest that the earlier people retire, the more quickly their memories decline. The implication, the economists and others say, is that there really seems to be something to the “use it or lose it” notion — if people want to preserve their memories and reasoning abilities, they may have to keep active. “It’s incredibly interesting and exciting,” said Laura L. Carstensen, director of the Center on Longevity at Stanford University. “It suggests that work...

Every September, millions of parents try a kind of psychological witchcraft, to transform their summer-glazed campers into fall students, their video-bugs into bookworms. Advice is cheap and all too familiar: Clear a quiet work space. Stick to a homework schedule. Set goals. Set boundaries. Do not bribe (except in emergencies). And check out the classroom. Does Junior’s learning style match the new teacher’s approach? Or the school’s philosophy? Maybe the child isn’t “a good fit” for the school. Such theories have developed in part because of sketchy education research that doesn’t offer clear guidance. Student traits and teaching styles surely...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A scan of brain activity can effectively read a person's mind, researchers said Thursday. British scientists from University College London found they could differentiate brain activity linked to different memories and thereby identify thought patterns by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The evidence suggests researchers can tell which memory of a past event a person is recalling from the pattern of their brain activity alone. "We've been able to look at brain activity for a specific episodic memory -- to look at actual memory traces," said senior author of the study, Eleanor Maguire. "We found that...

UA researchers find naps are an integral part of learning for infants, helping the developing brain retain new informationAnyone who grew up in a large family likely remembers hearing "Don't wake the baby." While it reinforces the message to older kids to keep it down, research shows that sleep also is an important part of how infants learn more about their new world. Rebecca Gomez, Richard Bootzin and Lynn Nadel in the psychology department at the University of Arizona in Tucson found that babies who are able to get in a little daytime nap are more likely to exhibit an...

Findings suggest that a biphasic sleep schedule not only refreshes the mind, but can make you smarterIf you see a student dozing in the library or a co-worker catching 40 winks in her cubicle, don't roll your eyes. New research from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that an hour's nap can dramatically boost and restore your brain power. Indeed, the findings suggest that a biphasic sleep schedule not only refreshes the mind, but can make you smarter. Conversely, the more hours we spend awake, the more sluggish our minds become, according to the findings. The results support previous data...

The mythology of the Wild West suggests the person who draws first in a gunfight is usually the first to get shot, and new findings now hint at a reason why this might happen. Inspired by Hollywood cowboy movies, Nobel Laureate atomic physicist Niels Bohr once conjectured why, during a duel, the gunslinger who drew first was the one to get shot — the intentional act of drawing and shooting is slower to carry out than the "quick draw" response to another gun. Anecdotal reports note that Bohr tested his idea using toy pistols, with the reactive Bohr apparently winning...

Driven to Distraction SAN FRANCISCO — On the day of the collision last month, visibility was good. The sidewalk was not under repair. As she walked, Tiffany Briggs, 25, was talking to her grandmother on her cellphone, lost in conversation. Very lost. “I ran into a truck,” Ms. Briggs said. It was parked in a driveway. Distracted driving has gained much attention lately because of the inflated crash risk posed by drivers using cellphones to talk and text. But there is another growing problem caused by lower-stakes multitasking — distracted walking — which combines a pedestrian, an electronic device and...

BUFFALO — Many 4-year-olds cannot count up to their own age when they arrive at preschool, and those at the Stanley M. Makowski Early Childhood Center are hardly prodigies. Most live in this city’s poorer districts and begin their academic life well behind the curve. But there they were on a recent Wednesday morning, three months into the school year, counting up to seven and higher, even doing some elementary addition and subtraction. At recess, one boy, Joshua, used a pointer to illustrate a math concept known as cardinality, by completing place settings on a whiteboard. “You just put one...

[PRESS RELEASE, 10 November 2009] Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have discovered a mechanism that controls the brain's ability to create lasting memories. In experiments on genetically manipulated mice, they were able to switch on and off the animals' ability to form lasting memories by adding a substance to their drinking water. The findings, which are published in the scientific journal PNAS, are of potential significance to the future treatment of Alzheimer's and stroke. Lars Olson Photo: Camilla Svensk "We are constantly being swamped with sensory impression," says Professor Lars Olson, who led the study. "After a while, the brain must...

A study in mice has hinted at the impact that early life trauma and stress can have on genes, and how they can result in behavioural problems. Scientists described the long-term effects of stress on baby mice in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Stressed mice produced hormones that "changed" their genes, affecting their behaviour throughout their lives. This work could provide clues to how stress and trauma in early life can lead to later problems...... The team found that mice that had been "abandoned" during their early lives were then less able to cope with stressful situations throughout their lives. The...

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Finding could offer insight into autism and other disorders Related Links: Dr. Ralph Adolphs Pasadena, Calif.—In a finding that sheds new light on the neural mechanisms involved in social behavior, neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have pinpointed the brain structure responsible for our sense of personal space.The discovery, described in the August 30 issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, could offer insight into autism and other disorders where social distance is an issue.The structure, the amygdala—a pair of almond-shaped regions located in the medial temporal lobes—was previously known to process strong negative emotions, such as anger and...