Tag Archives: brain

A new paper suggests that one of the most influential psychology paper of all time was grossly wrong, when it reported that the human brain could hold and process 7 chunks of information simultaneously in short term memory — but the new paper, which reduces the graspable elements to only 4, does not even provide an abstract, and it has a completely unrevealing title 0

Citation — to the upstart paper Gordon Parker, Acta is a four-letter word, Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica 126(6): 476–478 (December 2012) Citation — to the long-standing paper George A. Miller, The magical number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information, Psychology Review 63(2): 81-97, doi: 10.1037/h0043158 (March 1956) Citation — [...]

Functional MRI imaging shows changes in the level of amygdala arousal after Buddhist-like meditation training, even outside the meditative state —results from a very small study 0

Citation — to study Gaëlle Desbordes, Lobsang T. Negi, Thaddeus W. W. Pace, B. Alan Wallace, Charles L. Raison, and Eric L. Schwartz, Effects of mindful-attention and compassion meditation training on amygdala response to emotional stimuli in an ordinary, non-meditative state, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 6: 292, DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2012.00292 (01 November 2012) Citation — to [...]

Nothing new here, but interesting nonetheless — our brains are wired to deceive us — an experiment using mirrors to cause erroneously perceived directional torque, even when actually holding the weights in question — and a reminder about illusion’s deeper implications 0

Citation — to study Yangqing Xu, Shélan O’Keefe, Satoru Suzuki, and Steven L Franconeri, Visual influence on haptic torque perception, Perception 41(7): 862-870 (2012) Citation — to press release Hilary Hurd Anyaso, When Your Eyes Tell Your Hands What to Think, Northwestern University (28 September 2012) Findings From the press release: “When you pick up [...]

Heavy alcohol drinking may predispose mice to anxiety disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) — by “remodeling” neurons in the brain’s prefrontal cortex 0

Citation — to study Andrew Holmes, Paul J Fitzgerald, Kathryn P MacPherson, Lauren DeBrouse, Giovanni Colacicco, Shaun M Flynn, Sophie Masneuf, Kristen E Pleil, Chia Li, Catherine A Marcinkiewcz, Thomas L Kash, Ozge Gunduz-Cinar, and Marguerite Camp, Chronic alcohol remodels prefrontal neurons and disrupts NMDAR-mediated fear extinction encoding, Nature Neuroscience, doi:10.1038/nn.3204 (02 September 2012) Citation [...]

A grossly misleading headline and paragraph from Cell Press — were apparently distorted, so as to get people to read a less than surprising research article in its sister publication, Current Biology 0

Citation — to the study Timothy T. Brown, Joshua M. Kuperman, Yoonho Chung, Matthew Erhart, Connor McCabe, Donald J. Hagler, Vijay K. Venkatraman, Natacha Akshoomoff, David G. Amaral, Cinnamon S. Bloss, B.J. Casey, Linda Chang, Thomas M. Ernst, Jean A. Frazier, Jeffrey R. Gruen, Walter E. Kaufmann, Tal Kenet, David N. Kennedy, Sarah S. Murray, [...]

An otherwise excellent neuroscience study, which differentiates brain function in normal and Alzheimer’s dementia patients — is almost impenetrably written— and its Mayo Clinic press release is confusingly titled and jumps to an scientifically unwarranted conclusion 0

Citation — to study David T. Jones, Prashanthi Vemuri, Matthew C. Murphy, Jeffrey L. Gunter, Matthew L. Senjem, Mary M. Machulda, Scott A. Przybelski, Brian E. Gregg, Kejal Kantarci, David S. Knopman, Bradley F. Boeve, Ronald C. Petersen, and Clifford R. Jack Jr., Non-Stationarity in the “Resting Brain’s” Modular Architecture, PLoS ONE 7(6): e39731, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0039731 [...]

“Abnormalities” in structure-related gray and white matter brain volumes may predispose people to stimulant drug abuse — a study with obvious caveats 0

Knowing as little as we do about the intricacies of brain function, we are reduced to looking at gross correlations for insights into the human behavior that is allegedly based on it A comparison of 50 stimulant drug abusers, their 50 non-drug abusing siblings, and 50 “normals” indicated that 100 siblings all exhibited enlarged amydalas [...]

Slower older brains — reduced excitability of hippocampal CA1 pyramidal neurons in aging may be related to changes in sodium channel function 0

Getting “dumber” as we age may be explained (in part) by changes in neuronal sodium channel function The hippocampus is heavily involved in cognition.  It’s one of the first areas of the brain to show signs of damage characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease. A Pfizer-sponsored team at the University of Bristol (England) used the patch clamp [...]

Nanoparticle air pollution along traffic corridors damages brains 0

Nanoparticle enginnering is usually subject of exaggerated media optimism, but in reality nanoparticles’  first major impact is in making people literally less bright.  (Or more stupid, depending on one’s view of the human condition.) Nanoparticle air pollution (probably metallic) appears to increase deposition of amyloid-beta and alpha-synuclein in the human brain.  These deposits are customarily associated with Alzheimer’s and [...]