A 3D model developed by West Virginia University neuroscientists shows how implantable stimulators—the kind used to treat chronic pain—can target neurons that control specific muscles to provide rehabilitation for people with neurological disorders such as stroke and spinal cord injuries.
A study shows our brains use basic sound rates and patterns to distinguish music from speech, offering insights to enhance therapies for speech impairments like aphasia.
Music and speech are among the most frequent types of sounds we hear. But how do we identify what we think are differences between the two?
Continue reading “The Frequencies of Cognition: Exploring How Our Brains Differentiate Sounds” »
Menstruation can often come with a degree of discomfort as the uterus prepares to shed. For some, the effects can be horrendous.
It’s estimated that some 5 to 8 percent of women experience moderate to severe symptoms that have a noticeably negative impact on their lives, mental health, and ability to function normally. These premenstrual disorders, or PMDs, affect millions of women globally, yet we know shockingly little about their long-term consequences.
Now, a new nationwide observational study in Sweden has shown that women with PMDs have an increased risk of suicide. In fact, they’re more than twice as likely to die by suicide as women without PMDs. It’s a sobering figure, one that strongly suggests more work needs to be done to understand PMDs, and help the people who suffer from them.
First written: Dec 14, 2018, Last update: Jan 2, 2019.
How can we think about the relationship between the conscious and the physical? In this essay, I wish to propose a way of thinking about it that might be fruitful and surprisingly intuitive, namely to think of consciousness as waves.
The idea is quite simple: one kind of conscious experience corresponds to, or rather conforms to description in terms of, one kind of wave. And by combining different kinds of waves, we can obtain an experience with many different properties in one.
NOTE on Aut-generated English caption: in 1:08–1:12, auto-generated English caption says “Inner Dilemma” but actually it is “Yoneda lemma”(Thanks Junko and M…
According to the philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett, a conscious state is a brain state that is spread out in both space and time. It is spread out in the brain across multiple instances of what Dennett calls “content fixations.” These content fixations are the “multiple drafts” in the theory’s name. Each of these drafts compete for domination in the cognitive system. This domination is what Dennett calls “fame in the brain.” Read more about it here: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/M…
#philosophyofmind
Regular physical activity can offer major rejuvenation powers, helping people retain strength as they age while buffering against illness and injury. As a growing body of research suggests, this includes valuable protection throughout our bodies – including our brains.
According to a new study by researchers from the University of Queensland in Australia, exercise can slow or even prevent cognitive decline in mice, with a “profound and selective effect” on certain types of brain cell.
On top of demonstrating such an intriguing phenomenon in a fellow mammal, the new study also sheds light on how this effect is triggered inside the brains of physically active mice.
