News Stories relating to "brain"

Half the people in the world have brains that are infected with Toxoplasma parasites. The eggs of this parasite live in the guts of cats until the parasites hatch and make their way up to the cat's brain. Are they dangerous? They can be, but in very subtle ways.

Bill Christensen writes in LiveScience.com that at first scientists didn't...

The New York Times recently interviewed professional baseball players, who all said that when they're on a hitting streak, the baseball looks the size of a grapefruit, but when they're doing badly, it looks about the size of an ant. The mind controls all sorts of things, including how we see ourselves and our bodies.

Whether you feel...

Newswise - If you slow down to peer at an auto accident, you may be unable to avoid having an accident yourself for a few seconds afterwards, since you momentarily become deaf and blind. The same thing happens when you watch pornography on TV?you may not see or hear your partner for a few seconds after an erotic scene.

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Scientists have discovered that marijuana doesn?t just get you "high," it actually stimulates brain growth. They want to find a way to use it to treat anxiety and depression, since some scientists believe that depression can begin when too few new brain cells are grown in the hippocampus. It may eventually be used as part of a program to treat...

Newswise - Ancient, preliterate cultures kept their legends and traditions alive with the use of memorization. Many lengthy poems and epics that were eventually written down, such as the works of Homer in ancient Greece, were memorized first. Scholars think that many parts of the Bible were kept in memory for a considerable...

A quirky or socially awkward approach to life might be the key to becoming a great artist, composer or inventor. New research shows that people who behave oddly, but are not psychotic or schizophrenic, are more creative because they use more of the right side of their brains. Psychologists believe that famous creative people, including Vincent...

The expression, "Don't blink or you?ll miss it," has taken on a new meaning. Researchers have found that parts of the brain actually shut down every time we blink. The average person blinks about 15 times per minute. So even though the mini-blackouts are instantaneous, they add up to about nine days per year when our brain is shut down?or one...

Despite the fact that he's not a scientist, the Dalai Lama will give the keynote lecture at a major neuroscience conference in November, about how Buddhist meditation affects the brain. Does he have any real information?apart from his Buddhist beliefs?to share with scientists?

David Adam writes in The Guardian that Chinese scientists are...

Newswise - The brain is more complex than we realize. For instance, theability to understand a sarcastic remark depends on asequence of complex skills based in specific parts of thebrain. Psychologists have discovered that in order to "getit," listeners must understand the speaker's real intentions(because even though the...

How are some people able to commit horrible crimes likeserial killings?and actually enjoy doing this? It all comesdown to the old-fashioned concept of empathy?the ability toput ourselves in someone else's shoes. At one time,scientists didn't understand how ANYONE was able to do this.Psychologists have identified people they?ve labeled"...

Some of our ancestors, who lived in Indonesia as recently as18,000 years ago, had tiny brains that were only about athird the size of modern human brains, yet they were capableof advanced thinking equal to our own. Scientists arecalling them "hobbits," after the little people in the popular films andbooks.

The journal Science reports...

There's a myth that we only use 10% of our brains, but aresearcher has discovered that we actually use about 80%,mostly on tasks that take place outside of our consciousknowledge. However, this activity does not take place inyoung children, so most of our brains may be busysubconsciously reprocessing earlier thoughts andexperiences.

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Mission accomplished: a collection of rat brain cells hasflown a virtual F-22 fighter jet from a Petri dish.

Approximately 25,000 interconnected rat neurons were culledfrom the motor cortex of mature rat embryos and ?seeded? ina Petri dish. The neurons soon formed a complex web ofinterconnections, transforming the collection of cells...

Chinese characters are so complex that it seems likeeveryone there would be dyslexic. However, despite having tomemorize 6,000 different characters, only about 7% ofChinese children have dyslexia, compared with as many as 15%in the U.S. This may be because the languages are processedin different parts of the brain.

Chinese schoolchildren...