Neurology
Shifting behavior can change your brain
Wednesday, March 30th, 2011According to research in the field of neuroscience, behavioral interventions can cause lasting changes within the brain. Neuroscientist Richard Davidson suggests that behavioral interventions can change brain circuitry more effectively than some medicines. He has shown that anxiety can cause changes in the prefrontal cortex, a brain region involved in working memory tasks. He suggests [...]
The Brain, Habits and Goals
Thursday, March 24th, 2011Researchers find similarities in brain activity for both habits and goals A team of researchers has found that pursuing carefully planned goals and engaging in more automatic habits shows overlapping neurological mechanisms. Because the findings, which appear in the latest issue of the journal Neuron, show a neurological linkage between goal-directed and habitual, and perhaps [...]
Brain Trickery 3 : First Impressions
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010Human beings constantly make inferences about other people’s state of mind, usually without even realizing they are doing it. Cognitive scientists call this ability “theory of mind,” and until recently, not much has been known about the brain mechanisms underlying it.
Brain Trickery 2 : Shifty Eyeballs
Monday, August 9th, 2010Neurobiologists have pinpointed brain regions critical to one of the brain’s more remarkable feats—piecing together a continuous view of the world by integrating snippets of visual input from constantly moving eyes. Since the eyeball has only a narrow field of clear view, it must continually make tiny shifts to sample the visual world. And during these shifts, which last thousandths of a second, people are essentially blind.
Brain Trickery 1 : False Memories
Monday, August 9th, 2010Memories do not exist as complete representations in your brain in the way that we often seem to think they are. In a very real sense each and every memory is a reconstruction.