Cells that transmit nerve impulses in the part of elephants’ brains responsible for functions such as learning and memory are structured differently from those of any other mammal.
Could this be the world’s largest Fitbit?
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By understanding sleep across animals we can gain insights into improving the quality of human sleep. It can also help to bolster conservation management strategies for the animals in question.
Little does this woman know what happens to her brain when she licks the ice cream.
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Yossi Rathner, Swinburne University of Technology and Mark Schier, Swinburne University of Technology
It’s a long, hot summer’s day and you’re looking forward to an ice cream. But within seconds of your first bite, you feel a headache coming on: a brain freeze. What’s going on?
What exactly is addiction? What role, if any, does choice play? And if addiction involves choice, how can we call it a “brain disease,” with its implications of involuntariness?
First found in jellyfish, but now inserted into all kinds of organisms, GFPs illuminate biological structures and processes that researchers otherwise couldn’t see.
Not just on the dancefloor… the praying mantis can throw some crazy shapes in mid-air.
Malcolm Burrows
Notorious for their gruesome cannibalism, praying mantises have a hidden talent. Controlling the spin on their jumps allows juveniles to make precision landings, before their wings have developed.
Try putting an ice-cube in your mouth. The insides of your mouth and tongue instantly turn numb. Hold it in still and you will feel pain. Now try sucking on peppermint. The mint itself is at room temperature…
People are notoriously bad at filtering choices - being faced with too many leads us to choose poorly.
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Helen Westerman, The Conversation and Emil Jeyaratnam, The Conversation
We are faced with a myriad of choice in our lives - but an emerging body of work suggests the more choice we’re faced with, the more likely we’ll make a poor decision. The conundrum is called the “curse…
Neuroeconomics is a burgeoning field aimed at helping us understand decision-making.
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Whether choosing a dinner, a car, a spouse or an investment, experts now know what part of the brain our likes and dislikes are encoded, how we represent alternatives, and even how we choose. This has…
Tübingen neurobiologists Lena Veit und Professor Andreas Nieder have demonstrated how the brains of crows produce intelligent…
Some have suggested there’s a rise in the use of so called ‘smart drugs’ – but how much do we know about their use and effects?
Brain image from www.shutterstock.com
The use of drugs to improve academic performance goes by a number of names – “academic doping”, “cosmetic neurology”, “neuroenhancement”. A recent survey suggested that Australian university students are…
Neuroscience is used to explain everything from sexual attraction to voting habits to why we buy particular products.
Flickr/mutsmuts
In May last year, a new attraction called The Ascent opened for a brief season in Brooklyn, New York. Described as “part art installation, part adventure ride and part spiritual journey,” The Ascent consisted…
You might feel great after going for a jog, but is the “high” purely psychological?
Tobyotter
A new study is tapping into a phenomenon most of us have heard about and some of us might claim to have experienced at some point – “runner’s high”. In doing so, this study touches on something fundamentally…