Will brain control (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this show) someday make us all obedient servants? In the quest to understand how the brain turns sensory input into behavior, scientists have used precisely-targeted lasers to take over an animal’s brain, instruct it to turn in any direction they choose, and even to implant false sensory information, fooling the animal into thinking food was nearby.
read more
Our language and literature are so full of metaphors that we rarely notice them–but our BRAIN does. For instance, when a character’s personality is described as "rough" or "smooth," we can relate to what this means because we’ve felt surfaces like this in the past. It turns out that the parietal operculum, the part of the brain that senses texture through touch, is activated whenever we read or hear a sensual metaphor.
read more
Male DNA is commonly found in the brains of women, most likely derived from prior pregnancy with a male fetus. While the medical implications of male DNA and male cells in the brain are unknown, the harboring of genetic material and cells that were exchanged between fetus and mother during pregnancy has been linked to autoimmune diseases and cancer, sometimes for better and other times for worse.
Researcher William F. N. Chan says that his findings support the likelihood that fetal cells frequently cross the human blood-brain barrier and that what scientists call "microchimerism" in the brain is relatively common.
read more
Recent research into how the brain develops suggests that people are better equipped to make major life decisions in their late 20s than earlier in the decade. It turns out that the brain is still evolving into its adult shape well into a our 30’s, getting rid of unused connections and strengthening those that remain. The front part of the brain, called the prefrontal cortex, is one of the last brain regions to mature. This is the area responsible for planning, prioritizing and controlling impulses.
read more