Science Daily draws a clearer map than ever before showing how complicated networks of neurons – not individual neurons – make thoughts happen:

They do not correspond to a simple stimulus/response linkage, but arise from the networking of different neural circuits. Scientists funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) propose that the field of brain research should expand [...]

Frida Polli, one of the financial folks at Forbes, is offering us a look at the sausage-factory of neuroscience funding:

In 2007, after 6 years of PhD work, I arrived at the McGovern Institute at MIT, a mecca for neuroscience research. Nobel laureates roamed the halls. Brilliant MIT undergrads competed to work in your lab. Crews from CBS showed [...]

Nature examines the biology of fear – and how researchers have succeeded in creating fear in the fearless:

Many studies on animals over the years have shown that the amygdala, a small, almond-shaped structure located deep inside the brain, is crucial for the fear response. This finding has been confirmed in studies of humans.

Justin Feinstein at the University of Iowa [...]

That’s what Science Daily says scientists have been doing when they hook up a probe precise enough to detect a single idea begin to form in a specific brain cell:

“Our work is the first to show brain activities in real time in an intact animal during that animal’s natural behavior,” said Koichi Kawakami of Japan’s National Institute of [...]

Nature explores why our aging brains succumb to insomnia and forgetfulness at the same time:

Ageing is associated with the gradual loss of brain cells, sleep disturbances and declining memory function, but how these factors are related to each other has been unclear.

Neuroscientist Bryce Mander at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues recruited 33 healthy adults — [...]

NPR’s Tom Huizenga wants to know why he gets blissed out when he hears a great musical performance. So he asks musical neurologist Dan Levitin what’s going on:

The McGill University professor confirmed that I’m far from alone in experiencing these very strong reactions to music. And it seems my analogy to drugs wasn’t far off.

“It’s not surprising that [...]

I looove DIY projects, and this one’s a doozy. Techli’s got the inside scoop on a Chicago science-artist’s system for not only creating remote-controlled cockroaches, but using a Twitter feed to control it:

[Brittany] Ransom set up the twitter account @TweetRoach and designated the hashtags #TweetRoachRight to coax the cockroach to turn right and #TweetRoachLeft to coax the cockroach [...]

Laboratory Equipment reveals a quantum leap in tDCS – transcranial direct current stimulation, or zapping your brain to make it do things differently. As the regular reader knows well, folks have already used tDCS to enter creative states… but now they’ve found out how to use electricity to release painkilling chemicals in the brain:

In their current study, [Alexandre] [...]

Nature reveals that no matter what language you’re reading, your brain lights up the same way when you do it:

Previous studies have suggested that alphabetic writing systems (such as French) and logographic ones (such as Chinese, in which single characters represent entire words) writing systems might engage different networks in the brain.

To explore this question, [Stanislas Dehaene, a [...]