New Scientist has an amazing new therapy for patients in a vegetative state – using the same direct current-stimulation that increases creative “flow” to turn their brains back on all the way:

The team worked with 55 people who had experienced a traumatic brain injury or lack of oxygen to the brain and were in a minimally conscious or vegetative [...]

At least if we’re flies, it does. Nature has more on the laser beam that puts flies in the mood for love:

Optogenetics — triggering neurons with light — has been successful in mice but has not been pursued much in flies, says Barry Dickson, a neuroscientist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Farm Research Campus in Ashburn, Virginia. [...]

Nature explains the unusual effects that chloride ions can have on our developing brains, and what that means for a drug that seems to help autistic kids socialize:

The findings, reported today in Science, do not suggest that autism spectrum disorders can be prevented in children. But researchers not involved in the study say that they add support to [...]

Science Daily reveals the tricks that the present plays on our memories:

This the first study to show specifically how memory is faulty, and how it can insert things from the present into memories of the past when those memories are retrieved. The study shows the exact point in time when that incorrectly recalled information gets implanted into an [...]

Washington Post has more on how a bit of literature can alter the structure of your brain:

“Stories shape our lives and in some cases help define a person,” says neuroscientist Gregory Berns, lead author of the study and the director of Emory University’s Center for Neuropolicy. “We want to understand how stories get into your brain, and what [...]

University of Arizona brain researchers are using EEG machines to detect everyday invisible objects – the things your brain sees that it’s keeping from you:

“We were asking the question of whether the brain was processing the meaning of the objects that are on the outside of these silhouettes,” [doctoral candidate Jay] Sanguinetti said. “The specific question was, ‘Does [...]

An up-close look at chemoreceptors, chemical-sensing nerves, from the 1950s.

Not a flower, nor a machine, but somewhere between both. Found in the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

ScienceDaily keeps an eye out for creepy-crawlies with news that primate vision may have evolved *specifically* to identify snakes:

In a paper published Oct. 28 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, [Lynne] Isbell; Hisao Nishijo and Quan Van Le at Toyama University, Japan; and Rafael Maior and Carlos Tomaz at the University of Brasilia, Brazil; and [...]

PhysOrg is sending out the call, as the Pentagon prepares to team up with brain-tech DIYers:

[...A]t the Maker Faire in New York, a new low-cost EEG recording front end was debuted at DARPA’s booth. Known as OpenBCI, the device can process eight channels of high quality EEG data, and interface it to popular platforms like Arduino. Arduinos [...]