Detecting drier or wetter conditions is crucial for insect survival. We’ve long known they can do this – now researchers have discovered the genetic and neural basis for their humidity-sensing system.
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.
Sensory information comes into the system, and we initiate actions in response. Quantifying how quickly that happens is tricky – especially since our own perceptions of the timing aren’t quite right.
This year’s Nobel Prize in medicine recognises work on “cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain.” Those cells are found in the hippocampus. It is just one tiny part of the brain, but this…
Computers and brains work in virtually opposite ways. Computers are laboriously programmed for specific tasks. Brains learn from experience and can perform a wide variety of complicated tasks that are…
Let’s say Martians land on the Earth and wish to understand more about humans. Someone hands them a copy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare and says: “When you understand what’s in there, you will understand…