Scientists at the University of Liverpool (UK) have shown that the way that playwright William Shakespeare used language causes the brain to get "excited" in a peculiar way. Specifically, the English author's custom of converting verbs into nouns and nouns into verbs increases the dramatic effect of words without the reader ceasing to perceive their meaning.
According to a study just published in the journal Neuron, when we make quick decisions, the brain works differently, which leads us to make more mistakes. From the results of the research it is deduced that, "when faced with the same information, the brain performs a different analysis if it is under speed stress or precision stress".
Do we decide before looking at the evidence? A study carried out by researchers from the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) and the National Autonomous University of Mexico maintains that, when making decisions in contexts of great uncertainty, what we choose is not only based on sensory evidence, but also on mechanisms internal parts of the brain.
The answer is 678 nuns and a scientist. The nuns were the sisters of the Notre Dame Convent in Mankato, Minnesota, a group of particularly long-lived and lucid women. The scientist, David Snowdon, assessed the sisters' cognitive performance and analyzed their postmortem brains. His findings were surprising. The typical pathological signs of the disease appeared in the brains of many of these women. However, these same women had shown a lucidity in the last years of their lives apparently incompatible with the symptoms that we associate with Alzheimer's.
Female rats that have ever given birth respond differently to cocaine than those who have never been mothers, as revealed by a group of researchers from the University of Michigan (USA) at the meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans (USA).
It is thanks to the alpha waves of the brain, long ignored until, recently, they captured the attention of neuroscientists for their role in discerning what information should be ignored. These are waves that are responsible for "silencing" irrelevant brain activity, with inhibition pulses every 100 milliseconds.
Hypnosis is a method widely used as therapy to treat psychological conditions such as phobias and anxiety states. However, not all people are equally receptive to this technique and some patients cannot reach the trance state of hypnosis. Now, a group of researchers from Stanford University (USA) has discovered that, in these people, the activity of the areas of the brain related to attention and decision-making is lower than in those who are easily hypnotized.
A team of scientists from Harvard University (USA) has managed to control the behavior of a small transparent earthworm by manipulating the neurons of its tiny brain. The results, which are published in the journal Nature, represent an advance in the understanding of how the brain works.
Danni Büchner is invited to Sam Dylan's Halloween party. But the "Goodbye Germany" emigrant has no desire for many other party guests. And find clear words.
