All human languages contain two levels of structure, said Iris Berent, a psychology professor in Northeasterns College of Science. One is syntax, or the ordering of words in a sentence. The other is phonology, or the sound structure of individual words.
psychology
Research wrests partial control of a memory
Scripps Research Institute scientists and their colleagues have successfully harnessed neurons in mouse brains, allowing them to at least partially control a specific memory. Though just an initial step, the researchers hope such work will eventually lead to better understanding of how memories form in the brain, and possibly even to ways to weaken harmful thoughts for those with conditions such as schizophrenia and post traumatic stress disorder.
Seeing movement: Why the world in our head stays still when we move our eyes
Scientists from Germany discovered new functions of brain regions that are responsible for seeing movement.
Study shows vision is necessary for spatial awareness tasks
(Medical Xpress) — People who lose their sight at a later stage in life have a greater spatial awareness than if they were born blind, according to scientists at Queen Mary, University of London.
Friendly to a fault, yet tense: Personality traits traced in brain
A personality profile marked by overly gregarious yet anxious behavior is rooted in abnormal development of a circuit hub buried deep in the front center of the brain, say scientists at the National Institutes of Health. They used three different types of brain imaging to pinpoint the suspect brain area in people with Williams syndrome, a rare genetic disorder characterized by these behaviors. Matching the scans to scores on a personality rating scale revealed that the more an individual with Williams syndrome showed these personality/temperament traits, the more abnormalities there were in the brain structure, called the insula.