Every March, Brain Awareness Week (BAW, for short) unifies the world in celebration of the brain and mind! In order to raise awareness about how the brain works, what neuroscientists…
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On January 6, 1995, a large five-foot-six 270-pound middle-aged man robbed two Pittsburgh banks in broad daylight. He didn’t wear a mask or any sort of disguise. And he smiled…
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Knowing Neurons had an amazing year, and we are so thankful for all your support throughout our journey! Here are some highlights from 2016!…
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When babies are born, they cannot see very well, but their vision vastly improves as they continue to develop. Sometimes, the eyes don’t communicate well with the brain, and vision…
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We are excited to announce that we received the Society for Neuroscience 2016 Next Generation Award. This award recognizes SfN chapter members who have made outstanding contributions to public communication,…
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It is no surprise that a child prefers its mother’s voice to those of strangers. Beginning in the womb, a fetus’s developing auditory pathways sense the sounds and vibrations of…
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Our sense of sight is arguably our most important sense. Imagine how different your life would be if soon after birth, you lost the ability to see. For over 1.4…
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Your brain is the most remarkable thing about you because it makes you you. So, when Dean Burnett, Ph.D. chose to describe all that the brain does to make you…
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Our eyes contain millions of color-sensitive cells, called cones, which maximally respond to red, green, and blue light. With just these three types of color receptors, we can see the…
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What if you could take a pill to enhance your cognitive abilities? What if this pill could help you ace a test, get more work done efficiently, and truly multitask? …
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This infographic was made in collaboration with Frontiers for Young Minds. Check out the infographic we made for them here.
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Written by Jillian Shaw.
Graphics by Jooyeun Lee.…
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2015 was a great year for neuroscience and an incredible year for Knowing Neurons. With the launch of our 52 Brain Facts, Brain Books, YouTube channel, and Instagram account, we now have over 5,800 subscribers,…
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Recently, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Anna Akana and Brad Gage for their podcast called “Explain Things To Me,” a show that features conversations with experts in various fields,…
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I propose to consider the following question, ‘Can machines think?’
Thus begins Alan Turing’s paper “Computing machinery and intelligence.” It’s 1950 England, and the world’s first computer is being used…
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We are another year older, perhaps a little wiser, and probably more forgetful. Indeed, making memories is quite a process in the brain: specific synaptic connections are strengthened and new…
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There’s always one person snoring through the talk you’re trying to listen to at SfN. That person might even be you at some point during this meeting! Whether you are…
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If you think about it, the surface of the human body, the skin, is actually one huge sheet of tactile receptors. The dozens…
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Snap! Crackle! Pop!
Those are the sounds that Professors David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel heard in the early 1950s when they recorded from neurons in the visual cortex of a…
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When we see the world, there is a huge amount of processing that occurs in the neural circuits of the retina, thalamus, and…
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This is an exciting time for neuroscience! The Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine was just awarded to three neuroscientists “for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system…
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It’s 1861, and the French neurologist Paul Broca is examining a new patient. Dr. Broca is puzzled because all the patient can say is “tan.” When Dr. Broca asks him…
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Admit it! You’ve taken one of those online quizzes to see if you’re more “right-brained” or “left-brained.” Too bad it’s all bunk! Popular culture would have you believe that…
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Walking around in the real world, as opposed to the uncluttered hallways of your school, requires flexible and adaptive fine-tuning of the basic alternating stepping pattern of our two legs.…
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Every year, people all over the world get together to celebrate the brain! During Brain Awareness Week, scientists, families, schools, and communities work to raise public awareness about the progress…
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Our senses connect us to the world. Your visual system lets you know that there is a yellow car ahead of you, and your auditory system lets you know that…
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How many advertisements do you see each day? If you could count them all (billboards, television commercials, sidebar advertisements on your Facebook feed), it would add up to almost 5,000! …
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Have you ever tried to go to sleep hungry? Believe me, it doesn’t work. You just end up lying in bed, listening to your stomach growl, and dreaming about your…
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Attention all brain enthusiasts! (Yes, zombies, I’m also talking to you.) Announcing a brand new campaign for neuroscience education: NEURO.tv! This non-profit initiative features prominent scientists and philosophers, who partake…
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This is BIG week for neuroscience!
Each year more than 30,000 neuroscientists from more than 80 countries come together in the largest scientific meeting in the world! At the Society…
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Perhaps the biggest goal in neuroscience is to understand how individual neurons interact with each other in both space and time. The more detailed our understanding of complex neural networks…
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I’m going to ask you a question, and you have to be honest. Promise? OK. Here’s the question: how much time do you spend on Facebook each day? Take a…
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What makes a Nobel Prize winner? Intelligence? Determination? Luck? How about chocolate? Believe it or not, a paper published last October found that the average per capita chocolate consumption correlates well with the…
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Neurodegenerative disorders, like Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s disease, are devastating. As you can imagine, witnessing the slow and progressive loss of a loved one’s mental and emotional states is an extremely…
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Last week, President Obama announced the Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, a 10-year project to map the human brain. President Obama introduced BRAIN as a way of encouraging…
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Every year, 1.5 million Americans sustain traumatic brain injuries (TBI), which occur when sudden traumas damage the brain. TBI commonly occurs when the head suddenly and violently hits an object, as in…
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The sense of hearing is a critical part of how we experience life and the world around us. It is so important, in fact, that the ears are fully formed…
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You are sitting at your computer quietly reading this article when – BOOM! – there is a sharp loud noise behind you! You instinctively stop what you are doing, jump…
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Have you ever noticed how much time cats spend cleaning themselves? I’m sure they believe that “cleanliness is next to Godliness,” but spending 15% of their day grooming seems a…
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What if you change your mind with the flip of a light switch? Over the past decade, optogenetics has become an important component of neuroscience research. By introducing genes that…
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It’s 1920, and an epidemic is in full effect. Encephalitis lethargica (also known as sleepy sickness) has spread across the globe, leaving some of its victims as still as statues,…
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If you’ve ever done Karaoke, then you know how horribly some people sing, especially when the background music is too loud for them to hear themselves. The ability to adjust…
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One of the fundamental goals of cognitive and systems neuroscience is to create a computer program that can simulate the activity of the human brain, from single neurons, through network…
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Have you ever woken up minutes before your alarm sounded? This strange phenomenon isn’t just a bizarre coincidence! Like most living things, we have an extremely accurate and powerful internal…
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