brain

The Cambrian Explosion was a period in which more diverse and complex animals appeared in the fossil record. New theoretical research suggests that the early development of complex brains contributed to animals' ability to process information, and later to the emergence of diverse body shapes. Trilobite fossils. Illustration: depositphotos.com

Did the brain drive the Cambrian explosion?

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Prof. Ariel Chipman of the Hebrew University suggests that a complex brain evolved early in response to crowded and competitive marine environments, helping pave the way for the great diversity of animals.
New research suggests a possible link between serotonin activity in the brain and the worsening of tinnitus. Illustration: Avi Blizovsky via DALEE

Serotonin may worsen tinnitus through a dedicated brain pathway

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Neanderthal display at the Vienna Natural History Museum. Illustration: depositphotos.com

Neanderthals may have already carried the genetic basis for complex language

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Researchers at the University of Iowa have found that rare regulatory sequences in DNA, which strongly influence language abilities, appeared even before the split between modern humans and Neanderthals.
Structure of a nerve cell Illustration: depositphotos.com

Lessons in visualization

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With all due respect to electrical signals, the language of the brain is chemistry. In a pioneering study, researchers at Tel Aviv University have managed to use imaging devices to see this chemistry in action.
The brain network that links thought and movement, known as SCAN, was first described by researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine in 2023 and has now been identified in a new study as the neural basis of Parkinson’s disease. An experimental treatment targeting this network more than doubled the improvement in symptoms in a small group of Parkinson’s patients. The disease is characterized by hyperconnectivity between SCAN and the subcortex of the brain.

Parkinson's as a "mind-body network" problem: New brain target may improve non-invasive treatment

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(Toxoplasma gondii), a parasite found in cat feces. Illustration: depositphotos.com

Parasite carried by billions leads a 'secret life' inside the brain

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A study in Nature Communications reveals that Toxoplasma gondii cysts are not a dormant reservoir but a diverse system of subtypes, which may explain why there is currently no treatment that eradicates the cysts.
Image caption: Princeton researchers have found that the prefrontal cortex of primates reuses modular thinking blocks to solve similar tasks. This gives biological brains a flexibility that artificial intelligence still lacks. The insight could help improve AI systems so that they retain old skills even as they learn new ones. Credit: Adapted by Dan Wahaba (Princeton University), based on “Brain Silhouette 2” (Littleolred, CC0 1.0, freesvg.org) and “Lego bricks” (Benjamin D. Esham, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons).

The brain has a shortcut to learning that artificial intelligence can't copy

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Researchers have found that the brain repeatedly relies on the same cognitive “building blocks” when performing different types of tasks. By reassembling these blocks in new ways, the brain can rapidly generate behaviors
**Translation:** Fu and his colleagues have built the first artificial neurons that can connect directly to living neurons. Credit: Jun Yao.

Scientists have created an artificial neuron that "speaks" the language of the brain

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Cuddle with a cat. Illustration: depositphotos.com

What does owning a cat do to your brain (and theirs) and how does it relate to oxytocin?

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New research shows that the love hormone, oxytocin, not only strengthens social bonds between humans – but also deepens the connection with cats, with the key being gentle touch and mutual trust.
Football tackles cause damage to the player's brain. Illustration: depositphotos.com

Football tackles cause severe damage to the area of ​​the brain essential for cognition

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A new imaging technique developed at Columbia University has identified areas of the cerebral cortex – just behind the forehead – that are most severely damaged by repeated impacts from hitting a ball, a well-known phenomenon in hitters.
The brain and nervous system. Illustration: depositphotos.com

Is intelligence hereditary? Scientists discover genetic brain condition that allows for cognitive flexibility

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A new study based on brain scans of twins reveals that the brain's ability to maintain near-critical activity – essential for mental function – is influenced by genes, suggesting a direct link between heredity,
The human nervous system. Illustration: depositphotos.com

Brain cells continue to form even in old age, new study finds

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Cranes stop at Agmon Hula before continuing their migration north. Illustration: depositphotos.com

How does the bird never lose its way?

Technological adaptation of brain activity recording for birds allows us, for the first time, to answer the eternal question: How do they know where to fly?
An artistic illustration of the brain's "speed limit" – we think, process, and decide at a slow rate of 10 bits per second. Credit: J. Zheng

The surprising limit to human thinking speed – only 10 bits per second

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The paradox is that sensory input processing is done at a speed 100 million times faster than the speed of thought * Principal Investigator: "At any given moment, we extract only 10 bits out of a trillion that our senses perceive and use."
A female chimpanzee with her baby. Illustration: depositphotos.com

Sad chimpanzees give birth: childbirth is also a challenge for great apes

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Researchers simulated childbirth in chimpanzees and humans and measured the distance between the bony birth canal and the fetal head. The study shows that narrow birth canals relative to the size of the baby's head are not unique to humans
The Science Garden at the Davidson Institute for Science Education. Photo by Ido Kagan

The science garden at the Weizmann/Davidson Institute was inaugurated

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The Klor Science Garden of the Davidson Institute for Science Education - the educational arm of the Weizmann Institute of Science, has undergone an upgrade in recent years so that it also reflects fields of knowledge that did not exist 25 years ago
Reading thoughts before they become words. The figure was prepared using DALEE software after reading the article.

mind reading? Researchers have developed a method that will allow us to know what we are going to say before we speak

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Individual neurons could recognize, for example, when we are about to touch our tongue to our palate to say the letter D * This will enable the development of prostheses for those suffering from speech problems
Credit - the research group of Prof. Aviv Metzer and Dr. Tal Shahar

MRI scans can provide information about the iron balance in the brain to help monitor and diagnose various diseases, in a non-invasive manner

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This new measurement method, developed by the doctoral student Shir Filo and Prof. Metzer, will allow the extraction of precise biological values ​​on the brain, so that it will be possible to derive from an MRI test similar indices to those obtained from a test
Sniper fish. Photo: Dr. Orit Nafha, University of Haifa

Prosocial behavior in fish

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A new study conducted at the University of Haifa found that even the sniper fish, which lack the "higher" areas of the cerebral cortex, which are seen as being responsible for social behavior, act in a pro-social way towards their friends, until they feel "cheated"

חולטה-השולל בהישולל בהישורים, the true reason for ליירירי הדיור ושיטה הגאוניט ההופקת את מעציעה השולל לעבדים מודריםים

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Chapter nine from the book: "The Free Man - Evolutionary Psychology, Brain Research and Understanding the Mind"
Microglial cells (in green) in the hippocampus region of the brain of an adult mouse, forming contact points with a new neuron (in red)

The biology of depression

Degeneration of the cells of the immune system in the brain may be the biological cause of depression, and there may be substances that can restore these cells - and be antidepressants

Does consciousness arise from quantum mechanics?

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In 1990 Penrose and Moroff hypothesized that the source of consciousness is in the fractal structure of the microtubules. The movement of the particles on the fractal is apparently explained with the help of the laws of quantum mechanics but this has never been proven. now
face recognition. Image by teguhjati pras from Pixabay

Researchers from Weizmann discovered a match between facial coding patterns in the human brain and artificial intelligence systems

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Bat news. Photo: Weizmann Institute Press Releases Press Clips for Press Releases Awards and Appointments Institute Visitors Download the "Institute Magazine" application free of charge for iPAD and Android devices Unique tours of the Weizmann Institute of Science Weizmann House Facebook Scientists of the Weizmann Institute of Science measured for the first time nerve cell activity in bats during flight April 18 2013 Neurobiology The findings, obtained using a miniaturized wireless system, provide the first information on how mammals orientate in 24D space ** Dr. Ulanovsky will talk about his research at the "Science on the Bar" event on April 76 (Otto Bar, Ibn Gvirol XNUMX) The ability to navigate and orient oneself in space is necessary for survival - it is what makes it possible to find food and shelter, avoid madmen, and more. A study by Dr. Nahum Ulanovsky and research student Michael Yertzev from the Weizmann Institute of Science, published today (Friday) in the scientific journal Science, reveals for the first time how XNUMXD space is represented in the brain of mammals. The research was done using a unique miniaturized system, developed especially for this purpose, which allows measuring the activity of individual nerve cells during flight. The question of how animals orient themselves in space has been widely studied, but so far only in a two-dimensional context. It is known that there are "place cells", which are nerve cells located in the hippocampus - a brain structure related to memory, and in particular spatial memory. Each of the place cells is responsible for a defined area in space, and sends an electrical signal when the animal is in that area. In this way, all the place cells create, together, a complete representation of the entire space. But in fact, the navigation of many animals, and of humans, is done in three-dimensional space. And yet, attempts to expand the canvas from two dimensions to three encountered difficulties. One of the most prominent attempts in this field was carried out in collaboration between the University of Arizona and the American space agency, NASA. As part of it, rats were launched into space (on the space shuttle). In the end, the experiment did not provide the necessary data since the rats did move in zero gravity in three-dimensional space, but in fact they ran on a linear, one-dimensional track. Other attempts, which used projections of the XNUMXD space onto a XNUMXD surface, also failed. The conclusion was that in order to understand movement in three-dimensional space it is necessary to allow the animal to move in a way that fills all three dimensions; That is, flying animals must be studied. Dr. Ulanovsky chose an Israeli fruit bat - an animal convenient for experiments, and relatively large, so it is possible to connect wireless measurement and recording systems to it, which do not interfere with its free movement. The development effort of the sophisticated measurement system lasted for several years, in cooperation between Dr. Ulanovsky and a commercial company in the USA. In the end, a wireless, light system was obtained (weighing 12 grams, about 7% of the bat's weight), with electrodes that measure the activity of individual nerve cells in the bat's brain. Another challenge faced by the scientists was to adapt the behavior of the bats to the purpose of the experiment. Naturally, the bats fly to their destination - for example, to the fruit tree - in a straight line, i.e. in a one-dimensional way, whereas for the purpose of the experiment they had to fly freely so that they fill a three-dimensional volume. The solution to the problem is found in a previous study by Dr. Ulanovsky, in which he followed fruit bats in the wild using miniature GPS devices and discovered, among other things, that when the bats reach the fruit tree, they circle it and move in a way that fills the entire space around the tree. To simulate this situation in the laboratory - which is a kind of artificial cave equipped with equipment for full monitoring of the bats - an artificial "tree" made of metal rods, to which bowls of fruit are attached, was installed. Measuring the activity of nerve cells in the bats' hippocampus showed for the first time that the representation of XNUMXD space in the brain is similar to a XNUMXD representation: each of the place cells is responsible for identifying a specific area in the "cave" space, and sends an electrical signal when the bat enters this area. The entire population of place cells forms a full coverage of the entire "cave" volume. A careful examination of the areas for which the place cells are responsible provided a solution to a controversial question - is there "equality" in the perception of the three dimensions, for example, is the resolution of the perception of height in the brain the same as that of length and width. The findings show that the area each of the place cells is responsible for is spherical, meaning that the resolution is indeed uniform in all three dimensions. The researchers point out that it is possible that in non-flying animals, which actually move in a flat space, the level of resolution in the different axes is not uniform. It is possible, for example, that such animals should be more sensitive to changes in the axis of length and width, and less to changes in the axis of height. Regarding humans, this is a particularly interesting question, since on the one hand they evolved from monkeys that jump in three-dimensional space, from branch to branch, but on the other hand, their characteristic movement is in two-dimensional space. The research findings provide new insights into the basic functions of the brain: navigation, spatial memory, and spatial perception, and this is largely thanks to the development of the innovative technology that made it possible for the first time to glimpse the insides of the brain of a naturally flying animal. Dr. Ulanovsky believes that in the long term, brain research will turn to natural research as much as possible, that is, it will investigate the brain basis of animal behavior in laboratory facilities in which the conditions in nature are imitated, or even when they are found in their natural environment, while performing natural tasks. Israeli fruit bat. Photo: Dr. Yossi Yuval/Weizmann Institute for Israeli Fruit Bat Science. Photo: Dr. Yossi Yuval/Weizmann Institute of Science

New brain mechanism demonstrated in bats; Used for neural coding of physical space

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The jewel leper is a spectacular species both visually and from an evolutionary point of view. Its unique venom is capable of enslaving the minds of other insects. Source: Muhammad Mahdi Karim, GNU Free Documentation License.

How a wasp turns a cockroach into a zombie under her control

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Timestamp of events burned into the brain. Illustration: Weizmann Institute

once in a lifetime experience

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The hexagonal structure of the lattice cells

Knitted - between space and time

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Taliarch mapping. The image is from http://mipav.cit.nih.gov

Taliarch's coordinate system - one of the maps for the human mind

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Advertisement for the 11th edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica (May 1913)

About the day Wikipedia will be streamed directly into the brain

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Prof. Ruth Sperling

A grant to Prof. Sperling from the Hebrew University and Prof. Stamm from the University of Kentucky for obesity research

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the brain

An important publication for Prof. Amos Korchin

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Brain exercise. Integrating images within Wikimedia

Brainwashing - "brain exercise" - is it useful?

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The science system was able to predict that in the future we will be able to predict the future

Futurism - what's next?

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The cerebral hemispheres

Psychopaths behave in a lack of empathy similar to people with a frontal head injury

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A fresco from Pompeii from the first century (now in the National Museum of Naples) shows Larix pulling an arrow from the leg of Aeneas while Aeneas' son - Lalulus Ascanius - cries next to his father. On the left - Anas's mother - the goddess Venus

Another word about altruism

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A normal brain (left) and an Alzheimer's disease brain (right)

Medicine - Alzheimer's: to delay the decline of the screen

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Orexin A

Medicine - to put the addiction to sleep

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Trigeminal nerve in yellow courtesy of btarski - see link to image source

Brain freeze

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Dr. Oded Lieberman

Neuroderm takes a step forward in the development of the drug for dermal insertion intended for Parkinson's patients

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The basal ganglia and related brain structures

deep inside the brain

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Homer Simpson's brain lobes

A brain scan determines the human ability to ``wonder about your essence''

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A face expressing fear from the book "The expressions of fear in mother and beast" written by Darwin

The pinnacle of courage

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Hagar Galbard-Shagiv and Dr. Roni Paz live in the film

I got up, showered, dressed - how do I remember this?

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Einstein

Einstein's other mind

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Application logo

Application, Pontifex and Kelal Biotechnology invest 9 million dollars in Abraham Pharmaceuticals

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MRI scan of the brain. From the Franklin Institute website

The mind readers

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Brain parts associated with autism.

Autism: a curable condition?

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sound waves

Early detection of Parkinson's using sound waves

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Experimental Alzheimer's antibody passes first safety test

Time to cut…

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