the nerve blog |
The Elusive Engram: An Experiment in Memory Implantation
With each passing minute, multitudes of memories surge through our minds as we recollect past experiences and encode new ones. Since the dawn of introspective thought, humans have wondered where such experiences might be encoded, if a physical encoding is even possible [1]. Fast forward to the 20th century and we now have pioneering works from the […]
Autism Signs May Appear in First Months of Life
Before babies can crawl or walk, they explore the world around them by looking at it. This is a natural and necessary part of infant development, and it sets the stage for future brain growth. By using eye-tracking technology, scientists were able to measure the way infants look at and respond to different social cues. […]
A Thanksgiving Feast…with a Side of Neuroscience
It’s just about that time of year again – in just over a week’s time we’ll be sitting down to a huge feast consisting of turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes; we’ll be watching the Macy’s Parade soon to be followed by two football games; and we’ll be giving thanks for our reunion with our grandparents, […]
Temptation: The Effects of Immediate and Delayed Rewards
As we approach the loved holiday season, we also approach the dreaded weight gain that comes along with it. It probably won’t come as a surprise to you that our brain, specifically the hippocampus, plays a role in resisting immediate or delayed temptation. The hippocampus deals with memory, including recalling past events and imagining them […]
Mirror Neuron On the Wall
Most of us have heard about them but only a few appreciate the power of them. It was more than 20 years ago that scientists discovered the fascinating mirror neurons. It was at the University of Parma, Italy where the first glimpse of mirror neurons occurred. The study’s focus was actually to examine motor neurons […]
A Foray into Self-Perception: Altering Self-Image through Drugs
Before reading this post, I want you to take a look at the website of Bryan Lewis Saunders, specifically the portion that describes his escapade through drugs and self-image. It can be found at http://www.bryanlewissaunders.org/drugs/. As a brief summary, Saunders took one drug a day for several weeks straight, and drew a self-portrait during the […]
A Look Into the Disorder that Creates a Desire for Amputation
Imagine for a second feeling “overcomplete.” You have all of your limbs, and they are perfectly healthy. Yet, you feel as though your leg doesn’t belong to you. It shouldn’t be there, and you know it needs to go. The only way you can feel “whole” again is through its removal. You might be wondering […]
Addiction Annulled: A Brief Background on Cigarette Cessation
Tobacco use is widely considered to cause more preventable and premature deaths than any other factor in developed countries. In other words, a successful campaign against tobacco use would arguably save more lives globally than any other campaign for public health. There are many different ways of consuming tobacco, but for the purposes of this […]
Large Scale Neuronal Network Simulations Take Off
Google, IBM, Microsoft, Baidu, NEC and others use deep learning and neural networks in development of their most recent speech recognition and image analysis systems. Neural networks have countless other uses, so naturally there are tons of startups trying to use neural networks in new ways. The problem being faced with now, is how exactly […]
EyeWire: Crowd Sourced Research
Do you fancy yourself a scientist? Are you unable to work in a laboratory? Now with online crowd sourcing technology, you can be on the front line of cutting-edge discoveries. In the same fashion that people raise money through crowd sourcing on websites like KickStarter and GoFundMe, researchers at MIT have created a program […]