Browsing: Neuroscience

How online fear feeds political smear campaigns, stock market rumors, and ISIS propaganda.

Imagine that a loved one, let’s say your brother, has suffered a serious brain injury. After languishing in a coma, he finally “emerges”—that is, he cycles between sleep and wakefulness, yanks his hand away when it’s pricked, is startled by loud noises, and so on. But it’s not clear that he’s ever truly awake; his […]

Glial cells are the brain’s architects, doctors, police, janitors, and gardeners.

Have you ever been walking in a dark alley and seen something that you thought was a crouching person, but it turned out to be a garbage bag or something similarly innocuous? Me too. Have you ever seen a person crouching in a dark alley and mistaken it for a garbage bag? Me neither. Why […]

The National Institutes of Health’s “Human Connectome Project” aims to elucidate the architecture of nerve fibers in the brain, as illustrated here. Patric Hagmann, Department of Radiology, University Hospital Lausanne (CHUV), Switzerland In 2005 neuroscientist Henry Markram embarked on a mission to create a supercomputer simulation of the human brain, known as the Blue Brain […]

Whole brain sections (top) and microscopic sections (bottom) illustrate the differences between the brains of a 65-year-old control subject (left) and John Grimsley (right), a long-time NFL player whose brain condition affected his behavior and who died in his 40s.BU CTE Center Steelers Pro Bowl center Mike Webster was never your typical meathead. During his […]

By gently squeezing maladjusted foals, veterinary researcher John Madigan recreates the experience of traveling through the birth canal, lowering the levels of certain neurosteroids and “waking up” the young horses.Joe Proudman / UC Davis As a toxicologist at the University of California, Davis, Isaac Pessah focuses on how different molecules regulate human brain function and […]

Parkinson’s disease gave her the gift of creativity.

After a chunk of his brain was removed, guitarist Pat Martino got his groove back.

In a world full of ambiguity, we see what we want to see.