“Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that helps control the brain’s reward and pleasure centers. Dopamine also helps regulate movement and emotional response, and it enables us not only to see rewards, but to take action to move toward them.” – Psychology Today
Source: 10 Ways to Increase the Dopamine In Your Brain
Russell Poldrack scanned his brain to create the most detailed map of brain connectivity ever.
Source: Stanford psychologist’s 18-month study of his own brain reveals surprises
The singer, Dr. Rachel Yehuda showed that the gene expression of pregnant Holocaust & 9/11 survivors were altered by the experiences, as were those of their children. But here she’s just having fun!
“When you see Neuro Complete on the label, know that our infant formula offers complete nutrition for babies 0-12 months. Neuro Complete contains key ingredients that are on the minds of healthcare professionals that address cognitive, motor, communications, and social function.+
Member’s Mark “Neuro Complete” Ad site
The longer your dog stares at you, the more you love her!
Originally posted on The brain is sooooo cool!:
Whenever I teach eye movements, I am reminded of how exciting they are. I like that eye movements appear mundane, common, and perhaps even uninteresting. They fly under most people’s wow-o-cool-o-radar, giving all the appearance of a nuts-and-bolts system without lofty aspirations. Despite this unpretentious appearance, eye movements are incredibly interesting and also of the utmost importance to our social selves. There is so much more to eye movements than may at first meet our gaze.
I remember first learning the basics of gaze control in graduate school. The system is delightfully logical and beautifully aligned with our vestibular system. But that is a story for another day. Today I want to tell three stories.
Unilateral eye movement
Virtually all eye movements are conjugate, meaning that the eyes both move and that they move in the same direction. Examples of this are:
and so…
View original 1,184 more words
I am thankful for science and people who science. Not just because I have epilepsy and without pharmacology I would sporadically behave like an alien breakdancer. I’m not just thankful for the surgeons who implanted my cyborg hip and Alice in my synthetic hip, Trixie. I’m grateful to the material sciences who developed the titanium and ceramic substances to the engineers figure out the exact angle that the implants should good rest most strongly and snugly within. I’m grateful to the immunologist who rigorously test the parts to make sure my body won’t rejecting it.
And again, through my various surgeries, big love to the pharmacologists for the Dilaudid.
I am specifically grateful to those who science human behavior even more acutely, sciencers of the brain for making it easier to forgive people.
You have to struggle to be mad at someone when you realize their argumentativeness may be nothing more sinister than an overactive insula or their lethargy a mere underproduction of dopamine receptors for their appearance heartlessness a not uncommon malfunction in the either the anterior or posterior pituitary.
Studying the effects of brains on human behavior reminds me best we are all born in the bodies we did not design, into a world we did not create having reactions to which on one can explain.
The writer Evelyn Waugh says to, understand all is to condone all. I do not condone all but hey, I’m still studying here.
[Guest post by Nick Kolenda] If you’re a digital marketer, then you know the feeling. You poured your heart and soul into a recent campaign, and you can’t wait to see the results. A few days later, you check the […]
Source: The Neuroscience of Conversion Optimization – Neuromarketing
“Cognitive dominance is critical to winning in a complex world, experts say.”
WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Nov. 10, 2015) — “Human performance will be as important, if not more important, than technology in 2030,” predicted a high-level Army intelligence expert.
The reason is that “we’ve seen an erosion in our technological advantage to overmatch adversaries,” a trend that will continue, said Thomas Greco, G-2 for the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command.
Greco and Dr. Kira Hutchinson, director, intelligence/engagement, TRADOC, G-2, spoke during a Nov. 9 media teleconference that summarized findings of the Mad Scientist 2015 conference’s “Human Dimension 2025 and Beyond: Building Cohesive Teams to Win in a Complex World,” held Oct. 27 – 28 on Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Mad Scientist is an annual event that brings together thousands of U.S. and international leading scientists, innovators and thinkers from industry and academia at the conference and through virtual attendance.
“It’s about asking disruptive questions,” Greco said of the goal of Mad Scientist, and it’s about “challenging the Army’s traditional-held beliefs and group think.”
Read more: Mad Scientists: Brainpower next frontier in Army’s arsenal | Article | The United States Army
According to the researchers, creativity is our ability to think in new and original ways to solve problems.
Source: How the Brain Forms Original and Creative Ideas | Neuroscience News
There’s a lot of stuff about happiness on the internet, but what do neuroscientists say can *really* make you happy? Here are 4 things backed by research.
Source: New Neuroscience Reveals 4 Rituals That Will Make You Happy
‘Adult entertainment’ may be the ultimate misnomer.
[This is a great example of an article having little to so with neuroscience save the use of the word.]
Two hundred years ago in the U.K., if you said you were going to a “gentleman’s club,” it was understood you were going to a private upper-class establishment where you could relax, read, play parlor games, get a meal, and gossip with others of your class. Today, in the U.S., if you said you were going to a “gentleman’s club,” it is assumed you will be paying to see a striptease in a low-lit bar.
Is this really what should typify a “gentleman”?
Pornography is often classified, along with other sexually oriented businesses, as “adult” entertainment—something for “mature” audiences. If this meant that these kinds of entertainment are “not suitable for children” then few would protest.
The very thing in the brain that is the mark of adulthood and maturity is the thing that is eroded as we view more porn. It is as if the brain is reverting, becoming more childlike. “Adult” entertainment is actually making us more juvenile.
That said, it would be foolish to use this as an argument that pornography is suitable for adults. Heroin and methamphetamines are also “not suitable for children,” but this does not mean, ipso facto, that they are healthy for those over the age of 18.
Differences Between Male and Female Brain Area? Big Data Says Not Really
A research study at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science has debunked the widely-held belief that the hippocampus, a crucial part of the brain that consolidates new memories and helps connect emotions to the senses, is larger in females than in males.
Lise Eliot, PhD, associate professor of neuroscienceat the university’s medical school, headed a team of students in a meta-analysis of structural MRI volumes that found no significant difference in hippocampal size between men and women. Meta-analysis is a statistical technique that allows researchers to combine the findings from many independent studies into a comprehensive review. The team examined findings from 76 published papers, involving more than 6,000 healthy individuals.
Source: Differences Between Male and Female Brain Area? Big Data Says Not Really | Neuroscience News
Believe or not this is also a delightful example and explanation of how brains handle sounds.
YOU can increase the size of your muscles by pumping iron and improve your stamina with aerobic training. Can you get smarter by exercising — or altering — your brain?
This is hardly an idle question considering that cognitive decline is a nearly universal feature of aging. Starting at age 55, our hippocampus, a brain region critical to memory,shrinks 1 to 2 percent every year, to say nothing of the fact that over 40 percent of Americans age 74 and older have Alzheimer’s disease. The number afflicted is expected to grow rapidly as the baby boom generation ages. Given these grim statistics, it’s no wonder that Americans are a captive market for anything, from supposed smart drugs and supplements to brain training, that promises to boost normal mental functioning or to stem its all-too-common decline… read more: Can You Get Smarter? – The New York Times
C2ST Artist in Residence Aaron Freeman pretends to interview Stanford University Neurobiology professor Robert Sapolsky on the difference between the brains of Chicago Cubs fans and those of lesser beings. According to Sapolsky part of the difference may have to do with higher sustained levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine.
