Tianqiao & Chrissy Chen Institute – Change perception, change your world | Chen Institute

For the past half century, neuroscientists have seen the visual cortex as the part of the brain that processes imagery. Visual information enters the brain via the retina and is processed one stage at a time by dedicated neural circuits, much like a car is assembled out of discrete components on an assembly line. Such […]

In an open marketplace, such as a farmers’ market where produce and other goods like candles and flowers are exchanged for money, the ideal prices for both consumers and sellers will quickly emerge. For example, if a seller tries to offer a bag of peaches for $10 but another vendor is willing to sell similar […]

UT Southwestern scientists have developed a genetically engineered mouse and imaging system that lets them visualize fluctuations in the circadian clocks of cell types in mice. The method, described online in the journal Neuron, gives new insight into which brain cells are important in maintaining the body’s master circadian clock. But they say the approach […]

Children with autism born to mothers who had immune conditions during their pregnancy are more likely to have behavioral and emotional problems, a UC Davis Health study has found. The study examined maternal immune history as a predictor of symptoms in children with autism. “We tested the ability of maternal immune history to predict ASD […]

Some highly effective medications also happen to be highly mysterious. Such is the case with the antidepressant drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs: They are the most common treatment for major depression and have been around for more than 40 years, yet scientists still do not know exactly how they work. Nor […]

By making use of an unexpected species difference between rats and mice, scientists have identified a system in the brain that controls how males behave when they become fathers. A central component in this system is the hormone, prolactin, which has previously been shown to prepare the female for motherhood. The researchers were also able […]

What would you do if you knew how long you had until Alzheimer’s disease set in? Don’t despair. New UC Berkeley research suggests one defense against this virulent form of dementia — for which no treatment currently exists — is deep, restorative sleep, and plenty of it.

Individuals who can unconsciously predict complex patterns, an ability called implicit pattern learning, are likely to hold stronger beliefs that there is a god who creates patterns of events in the universe, according to neuroscientists at Georgetown University.