Touch is essential for hand use, however, brain-controlled prosthetic limbs have not been endowed with this critical sense. Now, a study from researchers at the University of Pittsburgh develops a … Continue Reading New brain-computer interface restores the sense of touch in the hand of a paralyzed man.
Signs of autism, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder often take years to manifest. Studying suspect disease genes in the brain early in life could prove valuable in the development of new … Continue Reading Study maps autism-linked protein in neurodevelopment.
Neuroplasticity, or brain plasticity, is an umbrella term that describes lasting change to the brain throughout life. One of the fundamental principles of how neuroplasticity functions is linked to the … Continue Reading Researchers identify previously unknown subtype of neuron in the visual cortex.
Dopamine deficiency in the basal ganglia is known to cause severe motor dysfunctions such as slowness of movement, or bradykinesia, as seen in Parkinson’s disease. Dopamine binds D1 and D2 receptors … Continue Reading Study identifies the cause of slowness of movement in Parkinson’s disease.
Human multitasking is the apparent performance by an individual of handling more than one task, or activity, at the same time. Studies have shown that some people can be trained … Continue Reading Neuroimaging study maps the neural basis of multitasking.
Humans are unique among social creatures in their willingness to bear personal costs to punish those who have harmed others. Despite the centrality of such third-party punishment decisions to modern … Continue Reading Neuroimaging identifies uniquely human brain region responsible for judgment.
Antidepressants are recommended as a first-line treatment of severe depression and for the treatment of mild-to-moderate depression that persists after conservative measures such as cognitive therapy. Experts recommend against their … Continue Reading Study maps structural brain changes caused by antidepressants.
Autism is a lifelong neurodevelopmental disorder that affects how a person communicates with, and relates to, other people. Repetitive and restricted behaviour is perhaps the most widely recognized of the … Continue Reading Neuroimaging maps behaviour, brain structure difference in girls and boys with autism.
Parkinson’s disease (PD) belongs to a group of conditions called motor system disorders, which are the result of the loss of dopamine-producing brain cells. The four primary symptoms of PD … Continue Reading Study shows magnetic stimulation effectively treats frozen gait in Parkinson’s.
For designers of brain-computer interfaces, whose goal is to translate neural patterns into commands for a prosthetic device, it may be important to know that the emerging plan to execute … Continue Reading Researchers begin to hone cybernetics by mapping grip pressure variance in the brain.
Currently there is no effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, so the focus is on prevention. In the future, medical teams may be able to provide patients with useful and actionable … Continue Reading Cardiovascular risk factors linked to Alzheimer’s disease in human study.
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have found that the three-dimensional shape of the cerebral cortex, the wrinkled outer layer of the brain controlling many functions of thinking … Continue Reading First large-scale study finds topography of cerebral cortex differs with ancestral genetics.
Speech is produced in the human cerebral cortex and previous studies have shown that the brain waves associated with speech processes can be directly recorded with electrodes located on the … Continue Reading Researchers develop world’s first thought-based ‘brain-to-text’ system.
Certain vision-impaired individuals have the ability to use echoes from tongue or finger clicks to recognize objects in the distance, and some use echolocation as a replacement for vision. Research from … Continue Reading Study shows that human vision-impaired ‘echolocators’ can substitute echolocation for vision.
Researchers at the University of Colorado suggest that the portion of the brain devoted to hearing can become reorganized, reassigned to other functions, even with early-stage hearing loss, and may … Continue Reading Researchers begin to map brain functioning in age-related hearing loss.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute, VU University Amsterdam and Max Planck Florida Institute state that they have succeeded in reconstructing the neuronal networks that interconnect the elementary units of … Continue Reading New 3d neuronal labeling technique provides most comprehensive study of cortical circuitry to date.