Tomorrow is April Fool’s Day here in the United States, and in several other countries around the world. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a day for tricksters to play mischievous, surprising pranks on other people. What happens in the brain when someone surprises you in that way? Find out in this article by my co-founder Dr. Michael Merzenich. |
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Best regards, Jeff Zimman Co-founder Posit Science |
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| | The Creative Brain: Taking the Road Less Traveled A new imaging study suggests that how different regions of the brain connect to one another is unique in the brains of highly creative people. While the average person’s brain tends to connect via more established routes and pass through neural hubs, the brains of highly creative people tend to take the backroads. Learn more. |
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Studies on Vision Show Time Is Relative Recent studies have shown that when it comes to our visual processing, our brains do not seem to process input in chronological time. The first study, from researchers at the University College London, showed that when study participants expected a series of cause-and-effect (A led to B led to C), they ended up “seeing” that event even when it did not occur chronologically (in fact, A led to C led to B). Learn more about this study. Other recent research has shown how our minds merge recent events (covering the past 15 seconds or so) to create a visual world that makes the most sense. Learn more. |
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Why We Deplete Shared Resources A new study sheds light on why people are most likely to preserve their private resources, while depleting shared ones. Through an interesting economic game centered on fishing in a private versus public lake, researchers discovered that the when too many fish were caught in either case, activity in the ventrum striatal (a part of the brain sometimes called “the pleasure center”) was suppressed. But a closer look shows that in the case of the public lake, people fished to the point of depletion, while in their private lakes they managed the fish population. Learn more. |
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Do Antibiotics Affect Cognition? A recent large-scale study conducted by researchers at Harvard Medical School has found a correlation between longer-term antibiotic use in midlife and cognitive decline later in life. It may have to do with how antibiotics affect the gut microbiome, but more research is needed. Learn more. |
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All About the Brain Do you want to know more about the brain and how it works? The Society for Neuroscience, in collaboration with others, has created a great website that contains a wealth of information on the basics of cognitive function (such as this interactive introduction to the different parts of the brain) as well as fascinating articles about our amazing brains. Learn more at brainfacts.org! |
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The Downsides of a “Western-Style” Diet Many studies have shown that diet affects cognition—with the “Mediterranean diet” coming out as a front-runner in brain-healthy cuisine. A new study shows that a so-called “western-style diet,” consisting of fast food replete with sugar and saturated fat, not only impairs cognition—even after only one week—but also creates a dynamic in the brain that leads to overeating. Learn more. |
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The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss (2022) By Mary-Frances O’Connor In this accessible, heartfelt book, neuroscientist and grief expert Mary-Frances O'Connor examines how loss affects the brain--and how, ultimately, many people adapt (though some do not). She explains that facing a loss is a learning process: the brain encodes love so a person we love becomes a part of us, and learning to live without the subject of that love requires rewiring of the brain to understand life without that person in it. This is often a slow process, and one that requires support from others. Ultimately, The Grieving Brain shares lessons that may help people experiencing loss bear it with better understanding. Learn more about this important work. |
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