This brain area might be why some robotics send out chills...
A new analysis of brain scans may explain why hyperrealistic androids and animated characters can be creepy. By measuring people’s neural activity as they viewed pictures of humans and robots, researchers identified a region of the brain that seems to underlie the “uncanny valley” effect — the unsettling sensation sometimes caused by robots or animations…
Vision cells can pull double task in the brain, identifying both...
Some nerve cells in the brain are multitaskers, responding to both color and shape, a survey of over 4,000 neurons in the visual systems of macaque monkeys finds. The finding, described in the June 28 Science, counters earlier ideas that vision cells nestled in the back of the brain each handle information about only one…
Female rats deal with sex predisposition too
When researchers release a new finding about the brain, it’s often mice or rats who have run the mazes and taken the tests for science. People might wonder: Are rodents good substitutes for humans? Maybe for men, but what about women? That’s less likely, because most neuroscience experiments don’t use female rodents — a fact…
Improving a gut germs assists mice battle an ALS-like illness
A friendly gut bacterium can help lessen ALS symptoms, a study of mice suggests. Mice that develop a degenerative nerve disease similar to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease, fared better when bacteria making vitamin B3 were living in their intestines, researchers report July 22 in Nature. Those results suggest that gut microbes…
Electrodes reveal a look of memories emerging in a brain
Seconds before a memory pops up, certain nerve cells jolt into collective action. The discovery of this signal, described in the Aug. 16 Science, sheds light on the mysterious brain processes that store and recall information. Electrodes implanted in the brains of epilepsy patients picked up neural signals in the hippocampus, a key memory center,…
Afferent neuron from individuals with autism grow uncommonly huge and quick
Young nerve cells derived from people with autism are precocious, growing bigger and developing sooner than cells taken from people without autism, a new study shows. The results, described January 7 in Nature Neuroscience, hint that in some cases nerve cells veer off course early in brain development to ultimately cause the disorder. As a…
Both fish and human beings have REM-like sleep
No one should have to sleep with the fishes, but new research on zebrafish suggests that we sleep like them. Sleeping zebrafish have brain activity similar to both deep slow-wave sleep and rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep that’s found in mammals, researchers report July 10 in Nature. And the team may have tracked down…
