Just to the left and above this sentence is a picture of me.
Like most places on the web where discussion takes place, The Conversation places a profile picture of each author next to their writing. Indeed…
Booze won’t kill your brain cells but it can still harm your brain.
Image from shutterstock.com
Do you ever wake up with a raging hangover and picture the row of brain cells that you suspect have have started to decay? Or wonder whether that final glass of wine was too much for those tiny cells…
Plans are afoot to map the brain, but the scientific methods of US scientists involved may be too ambitious.
shutterstock.com
Recently, I wrote a sceptical article for The Conversation on the subject of new proposals for computer mapping of the brain.
The two top contenders are the European Human Brain Project (HBP – which has…
The race to map the human brain may be more political than scientific.
brewbooks
In the past month, we have seen two major announcements of huge projects to map the brain – the European Human Brain Project (HBP) and the Obama Brain Activity Map (BAM).
What you may not have noticed…
Different parts of the brain do different things, but there’s more overlap than you might think.
Brain image from www.shutterstock.com
If I had been asked 15 years ago to write a short piece about what the different parts of the brain did, it would have been a fairly straightforward task. Not any more.
Over the last 15 years, the methods…
Birdbrains or copycats: Aesop’s fable offers insight as to how children and birds think.
'Playingwithbrushes'
Humans are very good at innovating and it would seem reasonable to expect our children would be too. But a recent study questions these assumptions, suggesting young children’s ability to problem-solve…
Despite being considered a scientific taboo in the past, the study of consciousness is slowly gaining momentum.
emmakate deuchars
Until 20 years ago, scientists interested in empirical work on consciousness – our private subjective experiences – hid it by minimising or eliminating the “c-word”, the use of which was a career-limiting…
The jury is still out on whether mobile phones cause cancer.
yago.com
Neurosurgeon Charlie Teo is, to many of his patients, the “angel” who cuts where other surgeons fear to go. He feels strongly about the possibility that using mobile phones might increase the risk of brain…
We can already control computers with our thoughts, but how deep does the rabbit hole go?
Warner Bros. Pictures
The growth of augmented reality (AR) will almost certainly change the way we visually experience the everyday world. And, as discussed previously on The Conversation, it’s likely to be Google’s Project…
Humanity’s control of fire has led to a vastly changed atmosphere.
Jason A Samfield
The evidence for a rapid shift in state of the terrestrial atmosphere-ocean system over the last two centuries (see figure 1) requires a deep time perspective, beyond events of the day. Tracing the original…
Are you a rational thinker, or do you make decisions based on intuition?
alistairh
Are you the “lazy” or the “deliberate” thinker? Why can’t we have a hybrid?
Something has been bugging me for quite a while – how difficult it is to strike a balance between thinking fast, albeit impulsively…
Long term cannabis use has been known to harm the brain but new research shows some of this damage was there to begin with.
Wiros
Cannabis remains the most commonly consumed illicit drug in the world, with more than a third of Australians reporting that they have used it at some point in their lives.
This is despite growing evidence…
Hesitation might be our crowning achievement.
nana untel
Understanding what is special, if anything, about the human brain is a scientific problem of such magnitude it has defied all manner of investigation for centuries.
And human consciousness, our experience…
Neuroimaging is commonplace, but do you know what you’re getting into?
Katrina Lawrence/AFP
This month, fMRI brain imaging celebrates its 20th anniversary. And so it should. It has come to dominate cognitive neuroscience.
Massive amounts of precious funding are poured into it and thousands of…
The brain repairs itself only minimally following damage or disease.
x-ray delta one
Welcome to the sixth and final part of On the Brain, a Conversation series by people whose job it is to know as much as there is to know about the body’s most complex organ. Here, Professor Malcolm Horne…
Addicts have choices, but those choices might be severely constrained.
davidblume
By Neil Levy, The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health
Welcome to part four of On the brain, a Conversation series by people whose job it is to know as much as there is to know about the body’s most complex organ. Here, Neil Levy, Head of Neuroethics at Florey…
Susceptibility to addiction can be seen as a form of Russian Roulette.
kriffster
By Andrew J. Lawrence, The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health
Welcome to part three of On the brain, a Conversation series by people whose job it is to know as much as there is to know about the body’s most complex organ. Here, Professor Andrew J. Lawrence, the Florey…
Everything from playing sport to speaking a foreign language is better when done automatically.
pfv
Welcome to part two of On the brain, a Conversation series by people whose job it is to know as much as there is to know about the body’s most complex organ. Here, Malcolm Horne,
deputy director of the…
Neuroscience has made great gains but the best is yet to come.
Jenn and Tony Bot
By Geoffrey Donnan, The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health
Welcome to On the brain, a new Conversation series by people whose job it is to know as much as there is to know about the body’s most complex organ. Here, Professor Geoffrey Donnan, a world-renowned stroke…
Our understanding of how people’s minds perceive time is still rudimentary.
numb3r
Our perception of time is something we take for granted. It drags. It goes too fast. It’s always there in the background, ticking away.
But the means by which we measure, interpret and remember the flow…
