How to Give Thanks Like a Neuroscientist
You’re on your way to the traditional Thanksgiving family get-together. You drive down a familiar street, locate your familiar house, and park in a familiar spot.… Read more
Neuroscience
Weird Animal Brain: Manta Ray
Last month, on the big island of Hawaii, I swam with giant, beautiful aliens. Or at least that’s what it felt like. I went night snorkeling with manta rays and… Read more
A Grand Vision: A Conversation with Lynne Kiorpes
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… Read more
Mental Health is a Part of Health: A Conversation with Shekhar Saxena
In a recent presidential town hall, President Obama looked directly into the camera and made a powerful statement about mental health. “If something inside you feels like it’s wounded, it’s… Read more
We won an award!
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,… Read more
Weird animal brain: Sharks
Everyone knows sharks are fierce predators. How exactly they hunt so well is in part due to their extra sixth sense: electroreception!… Read more
Weird animal brain: Bottlenose dolphin
Marine mammals, such as dolphins, whales, and porpoises, spend their entire lives at sea. Like us, they need to breathe, avoid danger, and care for their young. Like us, they… Read more
Weird animal brain: Jewel wasp
The jewel wasp’s venom is potent on two levels. … Read more
Garbage Smells Green and Gunshots Are Rainbows
The minds of individuals are like parallel universes, forever inaccessible to one another. Never do we truly see through the eyes of another person. It is common for us to… 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
Neuron See, Neuron Do: The Mirror Neuron System and Clinical Implications
If you grew up with siblings, it is likely that you have heard the phrase, ”Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” However, it wasn’t until a groundbreaking finding in… Read more
Idiot Brain: What Your Head is Really Up To, A Review
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… Read more
Learning from Disorder: The Paradox of Information in the Brain
In Dante’s Inferno, the fifth circle of Hell is a place where the wrathful fight each other for eternity. Similarly, I often consider YouTube comments to be an extracanonical circle… Read more
LSD: Psychedelic Thrill or Optimism Pill?
If you’re in a room with ten adults, chances are two of them are going to develop a mental illness –- and only one of them will receive proper treatment.… Read more
The Strange Relationship between Nicotine and Parkinson’s Disease
According to the World Health Organization, smoking is responsible for approximately 6 million deaths in the world every year or one fatality every six seconds. 71% of all lung cancers… Read more
Our Year in Neuroscience
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,… Read more
The Neuroscience of Star Wars
For the first time in over a decade, a new Star Wars film is upon us, and if you’re like the staff of Knowing Neurons, your nucleus accumbens is firing… Read more
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore Discusses the Mysterious Workings of the Adolescent Brain
What brain regions are employed when we interact with other people? Cognitive neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore explains the “social brain” in her TED talk and sheds light on the complex networks… Read more
Is the Brain Smarter than a Computer?
Knowing Neurons is proud to present our inaugural entry in a new series of YouTube videos! In this episode, Joel asks, “Is the brain smarter than a computer?” With Joel as… Read more
Explain Things To Me: Neuroscientist Kate Fehlhaber
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,… Read more
Ghost in the Machine: The Neuroscience of Consciousness
Some questions cannot be addressed by science. Like parallel universes, the consciousness of others is not something that can be directly observed, measured, or experienced. Rene Descartes famously said, “I… Read more
Hubel and Wiesel & the Neural Basis of Visual Perception
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… Read more
Understanding the Visual System: A Conversation with Botond Roska
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/174013562″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /] When we see the world, there is a huge amount of processing that occurs in the neural circuits of the retina, thalamus, and… Read more
Getting Technical: Methods in Neuroscience
It is an exciting time for neuroscience. The BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) is in the spotlight as a part of the new Presidential focus and recently… Read more
Get Ready for #SfN14 with #KnowingNeurons
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… Read more
Oh, Rats! They’ll Regret This.
We often find ourselves in decision-making dilemmas along the day. For instance, to reach work on time, would you rather take the shorter, faster route or the longer, scenic route?… Read more
This Week is Brain Awareness Week
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… Read more
The Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting 2013
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… Read more
What a Coincidence!
Coincidence is a peculiar thing. We typically think of a coincidence as the occurrence of two events that happen to occur at the same time, but that have no underlying… Read more
What do single cell green algae have to do with the state of the art of neuroscience?
Well, a lot actually! Green algae, or Chlamydomonas reinhardtii to be formal, are the unicellular organisms with a unique trait that has been helping make huge advances in modern neuroscience… Read more
The Brain: A Social Construction Site
Have you ever wondered how the social experiences you had early in life affected the way your brain developed? How was your cerebral architecture influenced by the games of ‘peek-a-boo’… Read more
A Close Look into the Alzheimer’s Brain
Your brain is able to store massive amounts of memories throughout your lifetime. There are cases, however, in which this ability progressively degrades and eventually disappears, giving way to problems… Read more
Ding! Fries are done!
Have you been at a restaurant and heard a bell ring in the kitchen to notify servers that a plate of food was ready to be served? Most likely, hearing… Read more
Can you learn while you sleep?
As a student, I have admittedly entertained the idea of learning by osmosis. Who wouldn’t want to catch some shut-eye with a textbook as your pillow and absorb all its… Read more
My, oh myelin!
How many neural processes are going on within your body as you read this sentence? The answer to this question is hard to fathom, I know, but give it a… Read more
Making New Blood Vessels Helps Neuronal Recovery
Our bodies possess unique and amazing capabilities for self-healing and repair. Time and again, we have witnessed (or experienced first-hand) someone with a broken bone injury. After some medical intervention,… Read more
The Reward Pathway Reinforces Behavior
If you think about it, most of our daily lives revolve around food: when our next meal will be, what it will be, and how yummy it will be! Evolutionarily,… Read more
Do You Crave Sweets?
My answer is YES, all the time, no exceptions! Do you remember when Miranda from “Sex and the City” was so addicted to chocolate cake that even after she threw… Read more
