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Is consciousness continuous or discrete? Maybe it’s both, argue researchers
Two major theories have fueled a now 1,500 year-long debate started by Saint Augustine: Is consciousness continuous, where we are conscious at each single point in time, or is it discrete, where we are conscious only at certain moments of time? In an Opinion published September 3 in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, psychophysicists […]
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Schizophrenia: Nurture cannot overcome nature
In the great nature vs. nurture debate, nature just got a win. UCI research led by Amal Alachkar found that too much of a certain amino acid in utero caused schizophrenia in mice despite the quality of postpartum caregiving – and the study suggests that the same would be true with humans.
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When Doing Good Boosts Health, Well-Being
Performing acts of kindness and helping other people can be good for people’s health and well-being, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. But not all good-hearted behavior is equally beneficial to the giver. The strength of the link depends on many factors, including the type of kindness, the definition of well-being, and […]
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New era in brain monitoring technology could improve diagnosis of epilepsy and lead to personalized treatment options
Today, the way a physician gets an idea of how many seizures a person with epilepsy has had is through the patient’s own record of seizure activity in his day-to-day life. Despite all the technological advances in devices monitoring the human body, a patient’s seizure diary, as it is often called, remains the only means […]
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Warning witnesses of the possibility of misinformation helps protect their memory accuracy
Warning witnesses about the threat of misinformation—before or after an event—significantly reduces the negative impact of misinformation on memory, according to new research performed at Tufts University.
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Unravelling the potential of the unconscious mind
We are conscious beings, yet most of the activity in our brains remains nonconscious. Can we harness this hidden pool of information? The international team used a state-of-the-art method to read nonconscious brain states in real-time. This technique used brain scanning to monitor and detect the occurrence of specific complex patterns of activity, that were […]
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Unlocking the mysteries of the brain
How does our brain store information? Seeking an answer, researchers at CHU Sainte-Justine Hospital and Université de Montréal have made a major discovery in understanding the mechanisms underlying learning and memory formation. The results of their study are presented in Nature Communications. Led by Professor Roberto Araya, the team studied the function and morphological transformation […]
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People can make better choices when it benefits others
Humans are often motivated by self-interest. Participants in one study, for example, learned a game faster when they earned money for themselves as opposed to another person. However, this pattern changes when physical harm enters the equation. As social beings, we need to learn to avoid actions that hurt others and it turns out that […]
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How the brain’s internal states affect decision-making
Matthew Smith and Byron Yu, along with former Ph.D. student Ben Cowley (Ph.D., SCS ’18), have studied the neural basis through which internal states in the brain affect decision-making over an extended period of time. Through recording the activity of populations of neurons simultaneously in two brain areas, they were able to gain unprecedented insight […]
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Autism-Cholesterol Link
Researchers at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northwestern University have identified a subtype of autism arising from a cluster of genes that regulate cholesterol metabolism and brain development. The researchers say their findings, published Aug. 10 in Nature Medicine, can inform both the design of precision-targeted therapies for this specific form of […]