Neuroscientific knowledge of how the brain processes the separate attributes of visual images has expanded exponentially in recent years. The mesmeric appeal of the artworks created by the Australian new…
Perseverance is a quality that plays a large role in the success or failure of many pursuits. It has never been entirely clear why this trait seems more apparent in some people than others, but a new piece…
The headlines The Guardian: Male and female brains wired differently, scans reveal The Atlantic: Male and female brains really are built differently The Independent: The hardwired difference between male…
Are you a left brain or a right brain person? I’ve never met a person who doesn’t know what I mean by this question. The idea that creative people use the right side of their brain more than logical people…
We live in a society that is fascinated by the brain – how it works, how it differs across individuals or changes over our lifetimes and how it makes us different to other species. And over the years…
Would you prefer a beer right now or a bottle of champagne next week? So begins an interesting new study published today in the journal PloS Biology. Of course these kinds of choices feature throughout…
Our ability to grasp and manipulate objects relies on feedback from our sense of touch. Without these signals from the hand, we would have trouble performing even the most basic activities of daily living…
Neil Levy, Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health
We live in an age of great public fascination with minds and brains; books about brain plasticity, for instance, regularly make the bestseller lists. This fascination is not merely the product of our thirst…
The brain and the mind are two sides of the same coin. We have always wanted to understand how our minds work but, until recently, lacked the tools to investigate the brain. The jelly-like tissue that…
If you’ve ever tried spinning in circles while looking up to the sky, you’ll know the accompanying dizziness that can follow. But what stops ballet dancers, who pirouette endlessly for a living, from falling…
It may seem silly to ask yourself if your index finger is part of your body, but that question is actually perfectly reasonable in neuroscience research - and has led to important insights into key brain…
Five years on from Lehman Brothers’ collapse and “where did it all go wrong?” analysis is all the rage. Answers have varied: poor regulation, malicious bankers, dozy politicians, greedy homeowners, and…
Despite long standing associations with mysticism and stage hypnotism, hypnosis has also been used for medical and scientific purposes. For well over a century, hypnosis has been used to treat a wide range…
Neil Levy, Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health
Is sex addiction real? That is, is it really a disorder, involving diminished control over behaviour? Questions such as these are difficult to answer because it’s always difficult to distinguish diminished…
Researchers in Japan have used the powerful K computer, one of the world’s fastest supercomputers, to simulate the complex neural structure of our brain. Using a popular suite of neuron simulating software…
If you’ve ever been frustrated by erratic memories, spare a thought for the mice involved in a study published in the journal Science. Researchers have been able to consistently create a “false memory…
Neil Levy, Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health
An American neuroscientist claims to have solved the problem of free will. Peter Tse, who works at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, says that the key to free will lies in how neurons can rewire each…