neuroscience

See-through brain lets scientists spot the connections

Studying the brain can be a tricky business.

The interesting stuff, such as neurons and how they communicate, is obscured by things like fatty tissue. Usually, scientists just cut it up into paper-thin slices to study, like with Einstein's brain, but a team of scientists at Stanford University, led by Karl Deisseroth and Kwanghun Chung, have found what the director of the National Institute of Mental Health Thomas Insel is calling "one of the most important advances for doing neuroanatomy in decades."

The new technique lets researchers leave the brain intact, which puts an end to the damage that slicing can cause. It involves infusing the brain with acrylamide, which binds the proteins; once heated, it polymerizes, preserving the important molecules. Then, the brain is rinsed with sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) detergent, which strips the fatty lipids, leaving intact the proteins that the researchers wish to study. … Read more

A little black dress that speaks to schizophrenia

At first glance, it's a black dress festooned with colorful embroidery. But Nikki Day had much more than style in mind when threading the intricate pattern into the garment's left side.

The British fashion design and knitwear student researched the morphology of various classes of cortical neurons and then embroidered images to reflect the theory of schizophrenia as a disease of aberrant brain circuit connectivity.

"The dress is tight and slightly restricts movement to reflect the effect these brain cell malfunctions can have in limiting people with the disease in everyday life," she says. "The intricate needlework draws you in and before you know it you are discussing how the cortical neural circuits are formed." … Read more

Engineers hope to upload bees' brains into robots

Sometimes real science sounds more like science fiction. Just the phrase "bionic bees" sounds like something out of an old paperback.

But that's the goal of a new project from two U.K. universities, the University of Sheffield and the University of Sussex. Engineers from the schools are planning to scan the brains of bees and upload the data into flying robots with the hope that the machines will fly and act like the real thing.

The goal of the project is to create the first robots able to act on instinct. Researchers hope to implant a honey bee's sense of smell and sight into the flying machines, allowing the robots to act as autonomously as an insect rather than relying on preprogrammed instructions.… Read more

Internet addiction fueled by gene mutation, scientists say

Internet addiction is real, researchers out of the University of Bonn say, and its source can be explained at the molecular level.

Researchers from the school's departments of psychology and neuroscience report in the September 2012 issue of the Journal of Addiction Medicine that a simple variation on the CHRNA4 gene results in a significantly higher prevalence of Internet addiction -- and particularly in women.

"Internet addiction is not a figment of our imagination," lead author Christian Montag says in a news release. "The current data already shows that there are clear indications for genetic causes of Internet addiction... If such connections are better understood, this will also result in important indications for better therapies."… Read more

Human brain has more switches than all computers on Earth

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.

These synapses are, of course, so tiny (less than a thousandth of a millimeter in diameter) that humans haven't been able to see with great clarity what exactly they do and how, beyond knowing that their numbers vary over time. That is until now.

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have spent the past few years engineering a new imaging model, which they call array tomography, in conjunction with novel computational software, to stitch together image slices into a three-dimensional image that can be rotated, penetrated and navigated. Their work appears in the journal Neuron this week.

To test their model, the team took tissue samples from a mouse whose brain had been bioengineered to make larger neurons in the cerebral cortex express a fluorescent protein (found in jellyfish), making them glow yellow-green. Because of this glow, the researchers were able to see synapses against the background of neurons.… Read more

Microelectrodes help brain signals 'speak'

While still in its infancy and primitive, even crude, two grids of 16 microelectrodes implanted atop the brain of a volunteer with severe epileptic seizures are somewhat successfully decoding brain signals into a small set of words, thanks to work out of the University of Utah.

The volunteer, who was already having part of his skull temporarily removed so doctors could implant larger electrodes (see button-like numbers in photo) to locate the source of his seizures, agreed to also have these two grids of tiny electrodes implanted over the speech centers of his brain.

His brain signals were then recorded … Read more

Does your brain force you to choose Macs over PCs?

Listening to Apple fanboys face off against Microsofties is a little like listening to the Crips take on the Bloods. Both sides claim rational superiority in a tone imbued with the severest of emotions.

Today, I stumbled upon (literally) a piece of research that seemed to make sense of it all.

Our brains, according to researchers from the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University, are neurologically desperate to conform. Apparently, when we see our views differ from those of our peers and friends, our brain sets off an alarm, one that begs us to reconsider.

Not conforming brings with … Read more

Science finds a way to erase Wall Street's errors

Did you lose a lot of money in the markets over the last two weeks? Do you fear you will lose even more before the bell tolls today?

Please don't worry. Some scientists will soon be able to help you.

Yes, very soon, you will realize that these awful things never happened. You will realize you lost no money. You will realize there was no need for a bailout. You will realize that tomorrow truly is a new day and that yesterday was almost as new as tomorrow.

Whatever people tell you about the future--whether it be investing in … Read more

Right brain vs. left brain

It's long been thought that people are governed by one side of their brain. Left-brain thinkers are thought to be logical, practical types who are good at math and science; whereas right-brain people lean toward the fantasy and feelings of life, often turning out to be artists or big thinkers.

An article from Australia's Herald Sun has a mind-bending quiz that attempts to show you which type you are. So which direction is she spinning?

Neuroscience for kids, on the Web

When I was a high school student, I hated writing term papers. I thought the whole enterprise of collecting information was tedious and boring. I remember visiting the local college library to look for information for a term paper I was writing about Eleanor of Aquitaine. It was a struggle to find the five required references. I remember looking up books in the card catalog, then hunting them down on the shelves, and scouring each one for relevant information that I wrote down on index cards. Some books were missing, some were out of place. It took hours to gather enough information to begin even writing a paper.

Then there was the task of transforming these pieces of information into a coherent narrative, typed on an electric typewriter.

Boy do I feel old. But more to the point, it's ironic that I became a writer in the long run. It turns out that I love to do research, but only when I can get to the information I need as quickly as possible.… Read more