brain regions

Lost your keys? Your cat? The brain can rapidly mobilize a search party
04/22/2013 - 09:49

A contact lens on the bathroom floor, an escaped hamster in the backyard, a car key in a bed of gravel: How are we able to focus so sharply to find that proverbial needle in a haystack? Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have discovered that when we embark on a targeted search, various visual and non-visual regions of the brain mobilize to track down a person, animal or thing.

 

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New algorithm to map neurological disease
09/05/2012 - 11:18

Disorders such as schizophrenia can originate in certain regions of the brain and then spread out to affect connected areas. Identifying these regions of the brain, and how they affect the other areas they communicate with, would allow drug companies to develop better treatments and could ultimately help doctors make a diagnosis. But interpreting the vast amounts of data produced by brain scans to identify these connecting regions has so far proved impossible.

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The seat of meta-consciousness in the brain
07/28/2012 - 21:31

Which areas of the brain help us to perceive our world in a self-reflective manner is difficult to measure. During wakefulness, we are always conscious of ourselves. In sleep, however, we are not. But there are people, known as lucid dreamers, who can become aware of dreaming during sleep.

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Long-term hormone treatment increases synapses in rat prefrontal cortex
07/09/2012 - 14:59

A new study of aged female rats found that long-term treatment with estrogen and a synthetic progesterone known as MPA increased levels of a protein marker of synapses in the prefrontal cortex, a brain region known to suffer significant losses in aging.

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Rare neurons discovered in monkey brains
05/21/2012 - 12:06

The anterior insular cortex is a small brain region that plays a crucial role in human self-awareness and in related neuropsychiatric disorders. A unique cell type – the von Economo neuron (VEN) – is located there. For a long time, the VEN was assumed to be unique to humans, great apes, whales and elephants. Henry Evrard, neuroanatomist at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany, now discovered that the VEN occurs also in the insula of macaque monkeys.

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Is there a general motivation centre in the depths of the brain?
02/22/2012 - 12:12

A team coordinated by Mathias Pessiglione, Inserm researcher at the “Centre de recherche en neurosciences de la Pitié Salpêtrière” (Inserm/UPMC-Université Pierre and Marie Curie/CNRS) have identified the part of the brain driving motivation during actions that combine physical and mental effort: the ventral striatum. The results of their study were published in PLoS Biology on 21 February 2012.

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