Knowing Neurons

Are children with Angelman syndrome really happy?

This post was updated on April 24, 2019 to incorporate feedback from parents. Names have been changed to protect anonymity. What is health? What is happiness? We generally imagine the… Read more

How Neuroimaging Changes Our View of Science & Humanity

Magritte’s comments on our fascination with the unknown rings true not just in artistic surrealism, but also in many of our scientific research endeavors. The human mind is continually fascinated… Read more

Reading: The Brain’s Best Hijacker

What are you doing right now? I’m no psychic, but I can say for certain one thing that you’re doing: reading. You’re reading this sentence, word by word, and extracting… Read more

Self Reflected: The Best of Neuroscience and Art

The phrase, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” seems especially true for scientists. What we study becomes not only intellectually beautiful, but also literally beautiful: the form is… Read more

Bite-size Science: Epigenetics help protect the aging brain

Epigenetics change which genes are active and which are inactive. Research over the past few years has shown that these changes are important for protecting the brain from neurodegeneration and… Read more

Can Neuroscience Explain the Mandela Effect?

Would you trust a memory if it felt as real as all your others? And other people confirmed they remember it, too? What if the memory turned out to be… Read more

Stimulating Neural Circuits with Magnetism

Brain stimulation might sound like some Frankensteinian demonstration from a Victorian science fair. But in reality, it is a contemporary technique making a huge impact in neuroscience by addressing a… Read more

Meet our newest team member Kayleen Schreiber

We have someone new joining our team!  She is a neuroscience PhD student at the University of Iowa, and she studies speech perception – but let’s let the animation she created… Read more

Digging Out the “Earworms:” Involuntary Musical Imagery Correlates with Cortical Structure

You don’t know you know this song, but you definitely know this song: “Hey Mickey you’re so fine, you’re so fine you…” Did the end of the lyric materialize in… Read more

A Tale of Monogamy and Dopamine

In a recent hack, private information from nearly 30 million users was leaked from Ashley Madison, a “dating” website intended to facilitate extramarital affairs.  The sheer number of Ashley Madison… Read more

Smells Like Teen Synapses: A Look Inside Adolescent Brains and Behaviors

“I would there were no age between sixteen and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child,… Read more

Mapping Brain Connectivity Using Graph Theory

Have you ever wondered why the same brain regions are often implicated again and again in many tasks and behaviors?  For instance, the prefrontal cortex is implicated in so many… Read more

Memory Hack: Manipulating the Brain’s Memory Cache

Imagine having a memory that haunts you, sneaks into your daily thoughts and turns over on itself in your dreams.  Escape seems impossible.  Now imagine you are injected with a… Read more

Keeping Memories Fresh by Keeping Glutamate In Check

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… Read more

2013: Making and Breaking Resolutions

Tomorrow, it will be 2013!  And while it may seem that the world around us has not changed, calendars and clocks remind us that it’s time to kick old habits,… Read more
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