No Fear
In an interesting article in the magazine Nautilus, J.B. MacKinnon, reports that a brain scan (fMRI) of free solo climber, Alex Honnold’s brain explains why he is so willing to risk his life to climb rocks without a rope. The fear circuitry in his brain is dysfunctional. Alex Honnold climbing without a rope You may…
Read MoreTracking Dinosaur Intelligence: What Fossil Footprints Reveal about the Dinosaur’s Brain
Displaying the sleuthing skills of Sherlock Holmes, Jerry Harris carefully tracks the footprints to a point where they disintegrate into a muddle of scratches. He vividly deduces what transpired here. “Came up out of Lake Dixie,” Harris says, pointing to prints leading up the slope. “Sat down on the side of…
Read MoreEctoplasm–Ghostbusters to spooky twitching nerves
“He slimed me!” Venkman spits out in disgust, writhing in sticky ectoplasm in a memorable scene from the 1984 movie Ghostbusters. Ectoplasm, the mysterious stuff of the supernatural world, also makes nerve axons twitch every time they fire, but almost nobody talks about it.
Read MoreThe Neuroscience of Violence, Again
The first dead person I ever saw was a policeman. . .
Read MoreBrexit from a Neuroscience Perspective
A surprising outcome of my four-year investigation into the neuroscience of human aggression for my new book Why We Snap, was how the reductionist approach that I took to understand individual violent behavior in terms of the specific neural circuits responsible, exploded in scope to illuminate human aggressive behavior in mass–between groups of people, from…
Read MoreNeuroscience Explains Why Dinosaurs Couldn’t Get Any Bigger
Long-necked Sauropods, like Brontosaurus, were the largest animals on earth, but their brain, not their leg strength, is what kept them from getting any bigger. With their heads soaring 60 feet above the ground, Sauropods were gigantic animals, about the same height and length of The White House. Imagine the tremendous bone strength and muscle…
Read MoreListening with Light: Deaf Can Hear Using Lasers
Cochlear implants have restored hearing to thousands of deaf people, but what about when deafness is caused by a damaged cochlea or nonfunctional auditory nerve? A possible solution is to bypass the cochlea and stimulate the brain directly. Scientists are developing a new technology that uses laser light instead of electricity to stimulate brain cells…
Read MoreThe Neuroscience of Violence
We are on the brink of a new understanding of the neuroscience of violence. Like detectives slipping a fiber optic camera under a door, neuroscientists insert a fiber optic microcamera into the brain of an experimental animal and watch the neural circuits of rage respond during violent behavior.
Read MoreBegging for Food from Mr. President and the First Lady
No, not that President! Thousands of people are captivated by the live video stream of a pair of bald eagles, named Mr. President and The First Lady, nesting on top of a Tulip Poplar tree at the U.S. National Arboretum. The reality peek into the life of a pair of breeding eagles, together with new…
Read MoreMarijuana Causes 7-Fold Increased Risk of Violent Behavior
New research reported in the journal <em>Psychological Medicine</em>, concludes that continued use of cannabis causes violent behavior as a direct result of changes in brain function that are caused by smoking marijuana over many years.
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