Do you remember the part in The Princess Bride when Miracle Max pronounces Westley to be “only mostly dead,” instead of entirely dead? “Mostly dead,” he continues, “means slightly alive.” It’s a little unexpected , because we usually think of “dead” and “alive” as mutually exclusive. But just as Westley can be “slightly alive” even [...]
Tags: brain function, neurology, neuroscience of sleep, sleep, sleep deprivation
Posted April 29, 2011 by Marghi Merzenich under Neuroscience, Research studies
Virtual reality programs try to make you feel like you’re there (wherever there is) by imitating the sights and sounds of an experience as accurately as possible. But what about your other senses, like smell? Many people believe that smell holds a particularly vivid connection to memory and experience. You’ve probably felt it–you go into [...]
Tags: brain function, post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, smell, veterans, virtual reality
Posted April 5, 2011 by Marghi Merzenich under Neuroscience, Research studies
Today I got an email from the Alzheimer’s Association, with an offer for a downloadable paper titled “Generation Alzheimer’s: The Defining Disease of the Baby Boomers.” It’s a sobering look at how the aging of the baby boomers (the first of whom turned 65 earlier this month) will come with an extraordinarily high price in [...]
Tags: aging, Alzheimer's, baby boomers, boomers, brain function, cost of Alzheimer's
Posted January 28, 2011 by Marghi Merzenich under Alzheimer's disease, Research studies
Sometimes I wonder how anyone living hundreds of years ago survived into adulthood. My daughter wouldn’t have–she has had a couple of terrible illnesses that in an earlier era would have been untreatable. It wouldn’t take much: things as simple as an ear infection, a deep cut, or even being very near-sighted would have been [...]
Tags: brain function, depression, epilepsy, Frederic Chopin, mental illness, music
Posted January 26, 2011 by Marghi Merzenich under Neuroscience, Research studies
I’m always looking for another justification for going on vacation and leaving work behind. Fortunately, Jonah Lehrer, a fabulous science writer, has just given me another one: while away from the office in body and mind I’m more likely to solve difficult work-related problems. As Lehrer explains: “[P]erceptions of distance (and the distance can be [...]
Tags: brain function, creative thinking, Jonah Lehrer, scientific studies
Posted January 12, 2011 by Marghi Merzenich under Neuroscience, Research studies
This year, I have a lot of New Year’s resolutions. And that could be a problem, because I don’t have a great track record of sticking to my resolutions–especially if they involve stopping a bad habit (like drinking three diet Cokes a day or procrastinating all kinds of things). I always think my resolution sounds [...]
Tags: brain function, brain wiring, lifestyle, new year's resolutions
Posted January 3, 2011 by Marghi Merzenich under Brain plasticity, Neuroscience, Odds and Ends
According to scientists at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, eye movement can teach you a lot more about politics than you might guess. These scientists studied how liberals and conservatives respond to “gaze cues,” and found dramatic differences. The short version: the liberals generally followed the cues, the conservatives did not. Read about the study here. [...]
Tags: brain function, neurology, politics, politics and the brain, visual processing
Posted December 13, 2010 by Marghi Merzenich under Odds and Ends, Research studies
I usually think of of physical pain and emotional pain as fairly separate phenomena. Physical pain is caused by certain things (like a wound), and cured by certain things (like a pain medication). Emotional pain is usually caused by a totally different set of things (like a bad breakup) and cured by different things (like [...]
Tags: brain function, emotional pain, neurology, physical pain, scientific studies
Posted November 23, 2010 by Marghi Merzenich under Neuroscience, Odds and Ends, Research studies
There’s a lot of debate around the similarities and differences between humans and Neanderthals. Were Neanderthals truly a different species from humans, or a different type of the same species? Were they adaptive, cultural innovators like humans, or were they just the dumb cavemen often depicted? Their brains were big like ours… but did they [...]
Tags: brain evolution, brain function, brain shape, children, early humans, human evolution, neanderthal brain, scientific studies
Posted November 9, 2010 by Marghi Merzenich under Evolution of the Brain, Research studies
There are quite a few videos out there of little kids doing things at an extremely advanced level, given their age. Like this one, where a girl who’s not yet two years shows she knows the world map better than most adults, from Zimbabwe to Ecuador. (It’s pretty amazing.)
Tags: brain function, Brain plasticity, child geniuses, children, children's brains, intelligence, plasticity, video
Posted October 19, 2010 by Marghi Merzenich under Brain plasticity, Odds and Ends