Neuroscience In The News On Feb 22

These are articles that I found of interest relating to news about Neuroscience.  In this issue, I have highlighted articles about human behavior and the brain, moral decision making, sleep and memory, and how mothers pass on a brain wired for depression.  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 February 22, 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.

Collapse Of Freud and Marx On Cognitive Science

Perhaps Wolfe’s most astute observation was cultural: how the collapse of Freud and Marx had pushed people into using the language of cognitive science for explanations of human behavior. He also noticed that the link between the actual science and the conclusions people drew from it were often tenuous, and his article foreshadowed an explosion of dubious media stories about brain centers for infidelity, neural circuits for political orientation, and chemical imbalances for mental illness.

Article Link:

• Neuroscience And The Premature Death Of The Soul
• By Vaughn Bell

Intention and Permissiability in Moral Decision Making

The ability to distinguish between the effects an agent intended versus those that were side-effects are critical in general for social cognition  and  in  particular  for  assigning  responsibility and assessing moral permissibility. Our goal here is to understand these processes in computational terms.

Article Link:

• Interference of Intention and Permissibility In Moral Decision Making
• Max Kleiman-Weiner, Tobias Gerstenberg, Sydney Levine, Joshua B. Tenebaum

Best To Sleep On It

The new discoveries, made by researchers from Bristol's Centre for Synaptic Plasticity, provide further evidence for the benefits of a good night's sleep. Patterns of brain activity that occur during the day are replayed at fast-forward speed during sleep.  Replay of brain activity during sleep is dependent on the emotional state of the person when they are learning.

Article Link:

• Best To Sleep On It:  Brain Activity Patterns During Sleep Consolidate Memory
• University Of Bristol Research Team

Mothers May Pass On Wired Brain For Depression

Mothers may pass on vulnerability to depression in much the same way they give their daughters green eyes or curly hair – girls might inherit a brain structure that’s predisposed to mood disorders, a small U.S. study suggests.  Previous behavioral health studies have pointed to a strong link between psychiatric problems in mothers and similar mood disorders in their daughters, Hoeft and colleagues note in The Journal of Neuroscience.

Article Link:

• Mothers May Pass Daughters A Brain Wired For Depression
• Dr. Fumiko Hoeft of the University Of California, San Francisco