Neuroscience In The News On May 9

These are articles that I found of interest relating to news about Neuroscience.  In this issue, I have highlighted articles about everyone's brain being different, what is attention, and the discovery of a new protein in nerve growth.

Please check out the article links below and feel free to comment with other information related to these subjects.  I enjoy learning as much as I can about the brain and passing this information on to everyone else that shares these passions.

This is for the week beginning May 9, 2016.

Please come back each week and hopefully I will have some more highlights.  Feel free to share with me ones that you have found and I may highlight those as well.

Feel free to check out the highlighted articles from May 2, 2016

Everyone's Brain Is Different

Everyone's brain is different. Until recently neuroscience has tended to gloss this over by averaging results from many brain scans in trying to elicit general truths about how the organ works. But in a major development within the field researchers have begun documenting how brain activity differs between individuals. Such differences had been largely thought of as transient and uninteresting but studies are starting to show that they are innate properties of people's brains, and that knowing them better might ultimately help treat neurological disorders.

The latest study, published April 8 in Science, found that the brain activity of individuals who were just biding their time in a brain scanner contained enough information to predict how their brains would function during a range of ordinary activities.

Article Link:

• New Evidence Points To Personal Brain Signatures
• Source:  www.scientificamerican.com
• Ido Tavor and Saad Jbabdi, University Of Oxford

What Is Attention?

Neuroscientists from Tübingen and Okasaki (Japan) have uncovered a mechanism that might clarify the meaning of "attention." This often non-quantifiable term is supposed to describe how strongly we react to a visual stimulus.  For several decades, "attention" was thought to be a barely definable state of certain brain regions.

Following up on these observations, Hafed and his team arrived at a hypothesis: what if the rhythm and direction of microsaccades directly trigger attentional capture and IOR?

Article Link:

• What Is Attention?
• Source:  www.laboratoryequipment.com
• Dr. Ziad Hafed, Centre for Integrative Neuroscience

New Protein In Nerve Growth

In the first research to be published on this protein's role in the nervous system, Benjamin Harrison, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Anatomical Sciences and Neurobiology and lead author of the article, and his colleagues show that CD2AP, an adaptor protein, orchestrates a complex arrangement of other proteins that controls the branching of nerve axons, the tendrils reaching out from the nerve cell to connect to other nerve cells, skin and organs. This nerve growth occurs in uninjured nerve cells as they extend their reach and create new connections.

Article Link:

• A New Player Revealed In Nerve Growth Process
• Source:  www.ScienceDaily.com
• Benjamin Harrison, Ph.D., University Of Louisville

Group Think

I'm always amazed at humans and society.  We know how to bring others into line with group think.  Sure, you can say what you want and we have a freedom (at least in this country) to say what we want, but if it goes against group think, there will be heck to pay.  It may be in politics or religions or in the job, community, or family.

Before you think that you don't participate in this, try saying something in your circle of people that goes against what they think or believe.  See how far you get before you get the rolling of the eyes, the clicking of the shocked faces or the silence of the key people.  See how long it takes before you notice how people look at you differently or out of disbelief.  See how long it takes before they gang up and smack you down?  Even in the groups that say they don't do this!

We have so many ways that we keep our circle in life within our means of what we want to hear, believe, speak, or think.  It happens every day.  Virtually no one is immune or able to hold this off.

In jobs, they want the best and the brightest, but when it comes to a differing opinion, they often want you to not share that with the boss.  After all, he/she doesn't understand what you all do, so it is far easier to just keep it between you and your immediate group and not rock the boat.