Clumps of human nerve cells thrived in rat brains
To coax human nerve cells in a laboratory to thrive, there are three magic words: location, location, location. Many experiments grow human nerve cells in lab dishes. But a new study enlists some real estate that’s a bit more unconventional: the brain of a rat. Implanted clusters of human neurons grow bigger and more complex…
What’s it like to live with deep brain stimulation for depression?
Electricity Saved My Brain This is the fourth part in a series on deep brain stimulation for depression. Read from the beginning. [Content note: This story contains discussion of suicide.] “The only thing I’ll slightly complain about — and it’s very vain — I only wish the batteries in your chest didn’t show up so…
Your Child’s Short Attention Span Is Actually Helping Them Learn
Photo: FamVeld (Shutterstock)A child’s short attention span can be something to behold. One moment, they are playing with their train, the next moment they’re spinning in circles, and now they are asking to watch a TV show, when all you want them to do is put their shoes away like you asked. However, as a…
Mom’s voice holds a special place in kids’ brains. That changes...
Young kids’ brains are especially tuned to their mothers’ voices. Teenagers’ brains, in their typical rebellious glory, are most decidedly not. That conclusion, described April 28 in the Journal of Neuroscience, may seem laughably obvious to parents of teenagers, including neuroscientist Daniel Abrams of Stanford University School of Medicine. “I have two teenaged boys myself,…
Looking at memories of what took place based upon where it...
We remember things from our own first-person perspective, the way we experienced them. The hippocampus is the region where these egocentric, episodic memories are made. Yet the hippocampus also encodes spatial information in a decidedly non-egocentric manner, using place cells and grid cells to form a generalized map of the external environment. How does one…
A very specific kind of brain cell dies off in people...
Deep in the human brain, a very specific kind of cell dies during Parkinson’s disease. For the first time, researchers have sorted large numbers of human brain cells in the substantia nigra into 10 distinct types. Just one is especially vulnerable in Parkinson’s disease, the team reports May 5 in Nature Neuroscience. The result could…
Light from outside the skull can switch on afferent neuron in...
CHICAGO — Light pulses from outside a monkey’s brain can activate nerve cells deep within. This external control, described October 20 at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, might someday help scientists treat brain diseases such as epilepsy. Controlling nerve cell behavior with light, a method called optogenetics, often requires thin optical fibers…
Handwriting may boost brain connections more than typing does
Writing out the same word again and again in cursive may bring back bad memories for some, but handwriting can boost connectivity across brain regions, some of which are implicated in learning and memory, a new study shows. When asked to handwrite words, college students showed increased connectivity across the brain, particularly in brain waves…
Hallucinating mice bring us one action more detailed to what’s going...
Enlarge / Dumbo and Timothy Q. Mouse hallucinate pink elephants on parade in a famous animated sequence from Disney's Dumbo (1941). Scientists have imaged neurons of mice under the influence of a hallucinogen for a new study. People under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs like LSD often experience vivid visual hallucinations. But exactly what is…
Surprisingly, humans recognize joyful screams faster than fearful screams
Screams of joy appear to be easier for our brains to comprehend than screams of fear, a new study suggests. The results add a surprising new layer to scientists’ long-held notion that our brains are wired to quickly recognize and respond to fearful screams as a survival mechanism (SN: 7/16/15). The study looked at different…
