High on music.
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 […]
neurology
Create your own robo-roach at home!
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, […]
They just invented the wire. (Electrodes that release opiates in the brain.)
Laboratory Equipment reveals a quantum leap in tDCS – transcranial direct current stimulation, or zapping your brain to make it do things differently. As the […]
Reading really is fundamental. Neurologically. (Or: A Good Book Is Universal.)
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 […]
Rapping inside an MRI. (On freestyle neurology.)
Nature reveals something fascinating about what happens when a creative brain turns on the creativity: Freestyle rapping — in which a performer improvises a song […]
Why is dissonance noisy?
Nature explores the strange mathematics of yuck – the neurological reason why we find dissonant music hard to listen to: Consonant chords are, roughly speaking, […]
Confined to a wheelchair, but still rides a bike…
Guardian has some unusual insight into the human brain, thanks to a man whose Parkinson’s has left him confined to a wheelchair, but who is […]
They call Alzheimer’s “type-3 diabetes” – because it’s caused by junk food.
Guardian reports on the growing body of evidence that Alzheimer’s disease comes from what we eat – that the senility disease might actually be caused […]
Not quite video games for elderly brains, but almost.
Laboratory Equipment explores “brain fitness programs” and the way computer games can boost seniors’ memory and alertness: The [UCLA] team studied 59 participants with an […]
Butter-flavored Alzheimer’s.
ScienceBlogs pours it on with research that links a popular artificial butter flavor with one of the brain-destroying processes of Alzheimer’s disease: It found evidence […]
The Neuroscience of Gotye.
Fun to read Sound on Sound’s behind-the-mixing-board analysis of what made “Somebody That I Used To Know” so darn catchy – even though it breaks […]
Mutant women have super vision.
But do they need supervision? Discover reports on the the rare humans who can see colors the rest of us can’t: Living among us are […]
Reading the minds of comatose patients.
Nature profiles Adrian Owens, a man who uses brain scans to communicate with patients in a persistent vegetative state: Adrian Owen still gets animated when […]
Cannabis pills not effective against MS.
BBC breaks some not-terribly-encouraging news from the stoner desk. Neuromedical researchers have found marijuana-based meds don’t slow the progress multiple sclerosis: Lead researcher, Professor John […]
We only ever glimpse things in flashes….
Medical Xpress takes a closer look at the hazy, flickering way we really perceive the world: The [University of Glasgow] researchers studied a prominent brain […]