How a Special Smell Triggers a Memory
Does the smell of freshly baked cookies make you think of your grandmother’s house? Neuroscientists call this an associative memory.
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What do you think about when you sleep?
Sleep is when we process the experiences of the day and form long-term memories. But how does your brain decide which memories to keep?
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Brain Games Relieve Motion Sickness
New research suggests that doing brain training exercises to improve visuospatial skills could help reduce motion sickness.
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What Loneliness Looks Like in the Brain
Loneliness is recognizable in brain maps that capture levels of closeness with others and feelings of similarity to or difference from others.
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How Habits Are Formed
Do you have some bad habits that bother you, but you just can’t seem to break? That’s because habits are literally wired into your brain. Every single thought, action, and feeling changes your brain a little bit. For example, this is what loneliness can do to your brain. When repeated enough times, a habit is formed. Some are good, some are bad, but you’re not likely to forget any of them without serious effort. Learn about which parts of your brain are responsible for forming habits, how long it takes,…
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Cooking, Evolution, and Brain Growth
Cooking establishes the difference between animals and people. In fact, we’re not the only social animals that sit down to eat together, but we are the only ones who cook. But how is cooking linked to human brain’s growth and evolution? This is a video from Dr. Joe Hanson’s It’s Okay To Be Smart series. Cooking helped humans strengthen social bonds and cooperation. Although our brain uses one-fifth of the calories that we eat, we spend only 5 percent of our daily lives eating, while Chimpanzees and Gorillas spend more than half…
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A Fly Cruises the Smell Arena for Science
By Amanda Alvarez@neuroamanda Banana essence. Apple cider vinegar. Almond jelly dessert. Mentsuyu. These are just some of the smells tested on flies in Hokto Kazama’s lab—you might recognize the last one as the soy sauce-based broth in noodle soup. These smells and more are processed in a part of the fly brain only slightly bigger than half the width of a human hair. (We’re talking about fruit flies here, not house flies, so everything is even smaller than you imagined.) What goes on in the antennal lobe, as it’s known,…
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How and Why Do Brain Cells Die?
Sometimes our brain cells die, and researchers want to know why. Johns Hopkins University researchers may have found the answer.
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Sleep Makes Memories More Accessible, Vivid
You may have heard that sleeping protects memories from being forgotten. According to new research, however, sleep can also make those memories easier to access. The results of a new study from the University of Exeter and the Basque Centre for Cognition, Brain and Language suggest that after sleep we are more likely to recall facts we could not remember before. The beneficial impact of sleep on memory is well established, and the act of sleeping is known to help us remember the things that we did, or heard, the…
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Can Brainprints Replace Passwords?
By Kate S. How many passwords do you keep track of? How many have you forgotten? According to researchers from Binghamton University, remembering lots of complicated codes may one day be a thing of the past. The unique way your brain responds to certain words could be used to replace passwords. Studying Brain Biometrics The research team monitored the brain signals of 45 volunteers as they read a list of 75 acronyms, such as FBI and DVD. They recorded the brain’s reaction to each group of letters, focusing on the…
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