A new map based on brain scan data collected by the Human Connectome Project. The data revealed 180 new regions.
Credit Matthew F. Glasser, David C. Van Essen
The brain looks like a featureless expanse of folds and bulges, but it’s actually carved up into invisible territories. Each is specialized: Some groups of neurons become active when we recognize faces, others when we read, others when we raise our hands.
On Wednesday, in what many experts are calling a milestone in neuroscience, researchers published a spectacular new map of the brain, detailing nearly 100 previously unknown regions — an unprecedented glimpse into the machinery of the human mind.
Scientists will rely on this guide as they attempt to understand virtually every aspect of the brain, from how it develops in children and […]
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Thursday, July 21st, 2016
Reuters Staff Reporters, - The Raw Story/Reuters
Stephan: When I was a boy there was a woman who lived down the street who had a large and complex aquarium filled with exotic fish. If you were well-behaved and quiet she would let you go into her library where the aquarium took up about half a wall and you could sit and watch.
She always said the fish knew her, and it certainly seemed that way to me, because we she went close to the aquarium they would cluster and all point towards her.
When I was older I told this to a biologist friend of my father who dismissed the idea as "nonsense, fish don't have the brains to recognize individual humans.
It turns out she may have been right and he may have been wrong.
Archerfish
Scientists have shown for the first time how a species of tropical fish can distinguish between human faces. The archerfish used in experiments could demonstrate the ability to a high degree of accuracy; despite lacking the crucial neocortex part of the brain which other animals use for sophisticated visual recognition.
The research, conducted by scientists from the University of Oxford and Australia’s University of Queensland, wanted to test the long-held belief that differentiating between human faces could only be accomplished by more sophisticated animals, such as primates.
The archerfish, found largely in Australia and southeast Asia, was chosen for its ability to spit a jet of water; a technique it uses to shoot down insect prey even above the water level.
In laboratory-based tests, an archerfish was presented with two different images of human faces and trained to ‘choose’ one of them by shooting a jet of water at it.
“We present them with different stimuli, and it can be a whole range of different things. But what we do is we give them different options […]
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Thursday, July 21st, 2016
Vann R. Newkirk II , - The Atlantic
Stephan: Yet another proof that Marijuana prohibition has been a dreadfully wrong policy. But, as you will see in this article it is easy to understand why Big Pharma is opposed to legalization and works so hard to block it -- Marijuana is cheap and effective and cuts into Big Pharma's profits.
Credit: jedmorey.com
Things aren’t going so hot in the public-health war against the opioid epidemic that is sweeping America right now. Deaths from opioid overdoses hit an all-time high in 2014, the latest year for which there’s official data, and there isn’t much reason to believe the epidemic will be over any time soon. New legislation provides for a range of policy options for addressing the epidemic, but all will likely be woefully underfunded. States hit the hardest by the crisis are passing their own legislation to combat it, but the different elements of health-care regulation, criminal law, and public-health law that are involved make the scope of the problem difficult to deal with. All the while, groups like elderly Americans are becoming increasingly vulnerable to opioid addiction.
At the same time, seniors already beset by the fears of the opioid crisis are faced with another major issue: Health care—especially prescription drugs—is getting more and more expensive. The twin issues of prescription drug costs and opioids have been among the country’s […]
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There’s quite a bit of new polling out today on the 2016 presidential race, and as it turns out, no matter which candidate you’re rooting for, there’s fresh data to make you feel good – and bad.
