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Revealing the Wiring that Allows Us to Adapt to the Unexpected
Wouldn’t life be easy if everything happened as we anticipated? Luckily we have the orbitofrontal cortex, the area of the brain that adapts to the unexpected to make and monitor predictions about the world. Patients
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More self-aware people quit smoking easier
CNN: How your brain responds to anti-smoking messages may be useful in helping to kick the habit, a new study in the journal Nature Neuroscience reports. “People who are more likely to potentially see the
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Reflections on Mirror Neurons
In 1992, a team at the University of Parma, Italy discovered what have been termed “mirror neurons” in macaque monkeys: cells that fire both when the monkey took an action (like holding a banana) and
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Your love is my drug: looking at partner’s photo reduces pain
The Med Guru: Forget medication and therapies, a recent study by Stanford University in California, U.S., suggests that just looking at the partner’s photograph relieves the pain as much as taking a drug like cocaine.
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Following the Crowd: Brain Images Offer Clues to How and Why We Conform
HealthCanal: What is conformity? A true adoption of what other people think—or a guise to avoid social rejection? Scientists have been vexed sorting the two out, even when they’ve questioned people in private. Now three
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Should children learn a second language?
The Los Angeles Times: Does being bilingual help children learn to prioritize information, provide a defense against some effects of Alzheimer’s or just provide a great workout for the brain? All of the above, according
