News Stories relating to "brain"

Your boss and/or spouse will no longer have to guess what you're thinking. All they will have to do in the future is fire up their computers and find out! Is this ominous? (It's an incredible world out there!)

By combining fMRI brain scans with pattern-detection software, neuroscientists think they will be able to find out what people...

We wouldn't need to build artificial brains if we could improve the ones we already have. Complex physical manipulations such as juggling produce major changes in white matter (basic structure) of our brains. Neurologists discovered this when they gave fMRI scans to people who were taught to juggle before and after their 6 week course.

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People from different cultures often do not always read each other right. One example of this is the distance that they stand apart when talking face to face to strangers or acquaintances. In some cultures, people stand much closer to each other than we do, meaning that the American keeps backing up when talking with someone he doesn't know...

Where in the brain is what we call wisdom located? Neurobiologists think they have the answer to this question, which was once only addressed by religion and philosophy.

Psychiatrist Dilip V. Jeste says, "Defining wisdom is rather subjective, though there are many similarities in definition across time and cultures. However, our research...

The Master of the Key predicted this and now it's come true: computers of the future will mimic brains.

In BBC News, Jason Palmer quotes IBM researcher Dharmendra Modha as saying, "The mind has an amazing ability to integrate ambiguous information across the senses, and it can effortlessly create the categories of time, space, object,...

People from different cultures use their brains differently to solve the same tasks. This could explain things like why, in Western cultures anyway, blind tasting tests have shown that, to most people, more expensive wine actually TASTES better.

In BBC News, Kathryn Westcott reports that when researchers asked 21 volunteers to try...

Researchers have learned that rats are capable of complex, human-like thinking and planning and that when they dream, they "replay" the day's events in their minds, like a movie?something humans do too.

In a German research facility, researcher John-Dylan Haynes is reading the minds of volunteers with an MRI machine. He is scanning their brains while they make simple decisions, such as whether or not to add or subtract two numbers. The goal is to be able to figure out what decision they are going to make BEFORE they make it.

Scientists...

In the January 19 edition of the Wall Street Journal, Sharon Begley, author of Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Power to Transform Ourselves, describes how the Dalai Lama is working with neurologists to try to answer the question of how the mind shapes the brain.

Neurologists know that the...

Scientists who have studied primates in the wild have learned that yawning is "catching." Now researchers think that laughter is catching too.

In LiveScience.com, Andrea Thompson quotes neuroscientist Sophie Scott as saying, "We've known for some time that when we are talking to someone, we often mirror their behavior, copying the words...

Five years ago we posted a story about how the ancient prophets at Delphi in Greece may have been high on natural gas. Now scientists think that the culprit may have been carbon dioxide. Does this mean that the increasing levels of CO2 in OUR atmosphere will produce widespread wisdom? We certainly may need it in the future.

Children with Williams syndrome, a rare form of autism, love music and will spend hours listening to it. This is further evidence that the ability to compose and appreciate music lies in one specific portion of the brain. We already know that the ability to recognize other people and read a watch take place in specific parts of the brain....

Researcher Kevin Tracy has discovered a key mind/body link which explains why meditation and biofeedback works?why you can sometimes "think" yourself to health. He recently gave a paper on his discoveries at a conference honoring the Dalai Lama.

We make one of the most important decisions of our lives?whether or not to trust another person?in less than one second. Psychologist Alex Todorov flashed photographs to 200 volunteers for one second?and sometimes even LESS, and asked them to rate how trustworthy each face was. Even if they were given more time, their original, "snap" judgement...