Human brain functions have been studied in the past using relatively simple stimuli, such as pictures of faces and isolated sounds or words. Researchers from Aalto University Department of Biomedical Engineering and Computational Science have now taken a highly different approach: they have studied brain functions in lifelike circumstances.
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Working with solvents tied to cognitive problems for less-educated people
Exposure to solvents at work may be associated with reduced thinking skills later in life for those who have less than a high school education, according to a study published in the May 29, 2012, print issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Scientists uncover deja vu mystery
In a groundbreaking study, researchers from the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom have discovered a link between the déjà vu phenomenon and structures in the human brain, effectively confirming the neurological origin of this phenomenon. Despite past studies investigating this phenomenon in healthy individuals, no concrete evidence had ever emerged … until now. The study is presented in the journal Cortex.
Understanding how our brain perceives space
European scientists looked into the cellular properties of neurons responsible for space coordination. Insight into the neuronal network of the entorhinal cortex will help understand what determines space and movement perception, and also how it is linked to brain-related disorders.
Of mice and mental models: Neuroscientific implications of risk-optimized behavior in the mouse
(Medical Xpress) — Regardless of an organism’s biological complexity, every encephalized animal continuously makes under-informed behavioral choices that can have serious consequences. Despite its ubiquity, however, there’s a long-standing question about its neurological basis – namely, whether these choices are made through probabilistic world models constructed by the brain, or by reinforcement of learned associations. Recently, however, scientists in the Department of Psychology at Rutgers University found that reinforcement cannot account for the rapidity with which mice modify their behavior when the chance of a given phenomenon changes. The researchers say this indicates that mice may have primordially-evolved neural capabilities to represent likelihood and perform calculations that optimize their resulting behavior – and therefore that such genetic mechanisms can be investigated and manipulated by genetic and other procedures.