Don’t forget the genes!
Brain image via www.shutterstock.com.
It’s time for neurons to share the glory. Gene activity isn’t just a background utility of the brain, but an integral part of its operation.
I knew that brain was yours.
Emily S Finn
Typically, researchers pool a bunch of brain scans to figure out the average way brains handle certain tasks. Instead, could they pick out individual brain profiles from a stack of 126 people’s scans?
Brains are physical organs, but also the seat of something essential about us.
Heads via www.shutterstock.com.
New technologies bring questions that have belonged to the abstract realm of philosophers into concrete focus. Why do medical interventions in the brain feel different than those elsewhere in the body?
Whether or not you feel inclined to eat depends on the balance of the activity between two sets of neurons.
Dennis Skley/Flickr
Our bodies have a complex system to control food intake, driven by hormones. Hormone levels also change when we gain and lose weight.
Even in a dreary office, by understanding how your brain works you can change how it feels to be there.
from www.shutterstock.com
In many of the workplaces I visit as a neuroscientist, stressed workers behave much like addicted lab rats. But you don’t have to quit the rat race to start feeling better at work.
Around the world, tea is the most common drink after water.
jurek d./Flickr
Put the kettle on and relax with a cuppa; your brain, heart and waistline will thank you.
How does our brain remember things: ask a mathematician.
Flickr/rbbaird
Biology can only tell you so much about the workings of the brain. To understand how we think and remember things you need he help of a mathematician.
Don’t think the surgery worked.
Frankenstein by Shutterstock
Science fiction can’t become science fact if neuroscientists are to carry out some daring surgery.
Nobody’s perfect – not you, and not your kids. And that’s OK.
from www.shutterstock.com
Feeling guilty and out of your depth as a parent? You’re not alone – and there are ways to turn the guilt you’re feeling into positive changes for your family.
Shutterstock
New evidence shows going back to a problem after sleeping gives your brain a chance to process the information it needs to solve it.
Complex enough – without cancer.
JonO
By tampering with the machinery which allows aggressive cancer cells to adapt, we can disrupt their ecosystem.
Sophia being ‘protected’.
JoJo Whilden for Netflix
Solitary is used as a punishment but it doesn’t make for better prisoners.
Mystic rodent.
Starsandspirals
‘Place cells’ in the hippocampus are thought to guide us through our space but they may play a part in helping us to imagine future scenarios.
Depression isn’t a single condition with a single cause.
Lee Morley/Flickr
While there may be a connection between inflammation and depression, one doesn’t necessarily lead to the other.
How happy days can be remembered as they really were.
Surkov Vladimir/Shutterstock
A study has shown that it is possible to lift rats out of depression by reactivating happy memories. But could it work in humans?
Even if we could simulate the brain, could we make sense of it?
Betty Lee
Those in charge of the Human Brain Project are right to accept that building an artificial brain is easier said than done.
Beer goggles.
SuWatch
What happens to your brain when you drink?
Orange is the new blue.
Theen Moy
I recently wrote about the terrible sleep habits of the characters in House of Cards. I disapproved of Frank Underwood’s late-night computer work in the Oval Office, his new midnight iPad gaming habit…
Information digester.
Rotfloleb
From brain health to to diabetes – you can tell a lot from the eye.
Wellcome Image Award: Brain astrocyte cell taking up carbon nano-needles.
Khuloud T. al-Jamal, Serene Tay, Michael Cicirko
Our blood-brain barrier protects us by blocking out unwanted material but with age it also blocks waste from getting out.