Neuroscience // Current

A Drug That Could Give You Perfect Visual Memory

Imagine if you could look at something once and remember it forever.... more

KevinFederline
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11 days ago
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32,000 gather in Chicago to share the latest breakthroughs in our understanding of the brain

The OneSci emperical research network has been selected as the official social media... more

braininformatics
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18 days ago
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New Study Finds Men Able to Control Sexual Arousal Can Also Control Their Emotions

Is sex a state of mind? A recent study from the University of British Columbia finds that while most men can regulate their physical and mental sexual arousal to some degree, the men most able to do so are able to control their other emotions as well.

“We suspect that if an individual is good at regulating one type of emotional response, he/she is probably good at regulating other emotional responses,” says Jason Winters, the study’s research head. “This has never been shown before.”

The study employed 16 randomly ordered video clips. Eight were erotic, and eight were funny (specifically, the funny video clips featured the least sexy comedian the researchers could find: Mitch Hedberg). Participants were instructed to control their response to certain videos, and simply to watch the others. They then rated their arousal following each clip, and were hooked up to machines that measured their erections.

Researchers wanted to know: Could men control sexual arousal, fooling both themselves and others?

“I’m trained in forensic psychology, and the original plan was to do this study with sexual offenders,” Winters tells LiveScience. “However, I needed to first establish that there is range of sexual arousal regulation abilities in the general male population.”

Indeed, participants were, on average, able to regulate their physiological sexual arousal when told to do so; in fact, they showed a 25 percent reduction in erectile response. “This is consistent with success rates from previous, well-controlled [measuring-device] faking studies in which success rates range from 26 to 38 percent,” Winters writes in his study.

The range of regulation abilities had nothing to do with age, sexual experience, or sexual compulsivity. However, sexual excitation, inhibition, and desire were related to regulation success: Men who were more easily excited were, unsurprisingly, less able to regulate; guys who tended to be sexually inhibited because of performance issues were better able to stave off an erection.

Furthermore, the study found that the men who were best able to control their response to the pornographic videos were also able to control their response to Mitch Hedberg. But for those who had difficulty regulating, reverse psychology could be to blame.

“The finding that was most surprising was that some men became more sexually aroused when they tried to regulate their sexual arousal,” Winters says. “In other words, they responded more strongly (both physiologically and self-reported) during trials in which they attempted to regulate their arousal than trials during which they merely watched the stimuli. We attributed this increased response to anxiety — in this case, demand anxiety. It’s sort of like when you tell someone not to think of a white elephant; those [who] are most anxious during the task have the most trouble not thinking about the white elephant.”

The study’s findings could have significant implications.

“The next step is to do a similar study with sexual offenders,” Winters says. “I suspect that sexual offenders will generally be very poor regulators, and that poor regulation is one of the factors that contributes to their offending.”Is sex a state of mind? A recent study from the University of British Columbia finds... more

EmperorThan
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21 days ago
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Mona Lisa's smile a mystery no more

If you have been puzzled by Mona Lisa's smile – how she's radiant one moment and... more

vincius
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22 days ago
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Lasers Write False, Fearful Memories into Brains of Flies

It sounds like a scene from an insect version of Total Recall: Using genetically engineered fruit flies and laser beams, researchers have found a way to embed false, fearful memories in the flies.

Researchers first tested normal flies in a chamber where a jets of air on either side brought two different odors into the container. The researchers delivered an electric shock each time a fly strayed into a particular odour stream, which taught the flies to prefer the other one: the flies learned to move in the direction of the shock-related odour 30 per cent less often [New Scientist].

Next, the researchers created a strain of genetically engineered flies with certain neurons that would be activated by a laser blast. Lead researcher Gero Miesenböck explains that with this technique, called optogenetics, researchers can use light to activate particular cell types that have been genetically engineered to express a light-responsive protein. When laser pulses hit the brain, cells expressing the light-sensitive protein activate. “It’s like sending a radio signal to a city but only those houses with a radios set to the right frequency will get the signal,” says Miesenböck [Nature News].

The flies were then put back in the chamber with the two jets of air, and every time they wandered into one of the odor streams, the laser was fired. Many of the flies were unaffected, but a select group quickly learned to avoid the odor stream associated with the laser pulse. Miesenböck says these flies feared that smell as if they had been conditioned to associate an electric shock with it. “Stimulating just these neurons gives the flies a memory of an unpleasant event that never happened,” he says [New Scientist].

In the genetic engineering process, the scientists had tweaked different neurons in different groups of flies. The contingent that did react to the laser all had 12 particular light-sensitive neurons, according to the study published in the journal Cell. Those 12 brain cells may be the root of associative learning, researchers say–at least in flies.It sounds like a scene from an insect version of Total Recall: Using genetically... more

EmperorThan
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23 days ago
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We Are All One

Neuroscientists search for the reasons we all share inner melody.

Progresshiv
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26 days ago
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Study shows a glass of water reduces pain just as well as a lollipop

A recent study published in the Journal of Neuroscience by authors Peggy Mason, PhD,... more

elle35
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28 days ago
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Study proves brain to brain communication through power of thought alone (VIDEO)

The University of Southampton recently demonstrated that communication from person to... more

elle35
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1 month ago
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Brain-Computer Interface Allows Person to Person Communication Through Power of Thought

New research from the University of Southampton has demonstrated that it is possible for communication from person to person through the power of thought -- with the help of electrodes, a computer and Internet connection.

Brain-Computer Interfacing (BCI) can be used for capturing brain signals and translating them into commands that allow humans to control (just by thinking) devices such as computers, robots, rehabilitation technology and virtual reality environments.

This experiment goes a step further and was conducted by Dr Christopher James from the University's Institute of Sound and Vibration Research. The aim was to expand the current limits of this technology and show that brain-to-brain (B2B) communication is possible.

Dr James comments: "Whilst BCI is no longer a new thing and person to person communication via the nervous system was shown previously in work by Professor Kevin Warwick from the University of Reading, here we show, for the first time, true brain to brain interfacing. We have yet to grasp the full implications of this but there are various scenarios where B2B could be of benefit such as helping people with severe debilitating muscle wasting diseases, or with the so-called 'locked-in' syndrome, to communicate and it also has applications for gaming."

His experiment had one person using BCI to transmit thoughts, translated as a series of binary digits, over the internet to another person whose computer receives the digits and transmits them to the second user's brain through flashing an LED lamp.

While attached to an EEG amplifier, the first person would generate and transmit a series of binary digits, imagining moving their left arm for zero and their right arm for one. The second person was also attached to an EEG amplifier and their PC would pick up the stream of binary digits and flash an LED lamp at two different frequencies, one for zero and the other one for one. The pattern of the flashing LEDs is too subtle to be picked by the second person, but it is picked up by electrodes measuring the visual cortex of the recipient.

The encoded information is then extracted from the brain activity of the second user and the PC can decipher whether a zero or a one was transmitted. This shows true brain-to-brain activity.

Dr James is part of the University of Southampton's Brain-Computer Interfacing Research Programme, which brings together biomedical engineering and the clinical sciences and provides a cohesive scientific basis for rehabilitation research and management. Projects are driven by clinical problems, using cutting-edge signal processing research to produce an investigative tool for advancing knowledge of neurophysiological mechanisms, as well as providing a practical therapeutic system to be used outside a specialised BCI laboratory.New research from the University of Southampton has demonstrated that it is possible... more

EmperorThan
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1 month ago
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Brain scans gauge horror flick fear factor

Peter Katz and MindSign Neuromarketing use an fMRI brain scanner to see how just how... more

philipcarlsen
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1 month ago
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Virgin "Fantastic Journey" Ad - BrainMovie

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON THE VIRGIN "FANTASTIC JOURNEY" COMMERCIAL. THIS IS WHAT A... more

philipcarlsen
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1 month ago
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Flight of the remote-controlled cyborg beetle : Neurophilosophy

Earlier this year we were amazed when University of California researchers controlled... more

Tyrannous
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1 month ago
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Neurocinema changes the way you watch movies

MindSign Neuromarketing is changing how we watch movies.

philipcarlsen
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1 month ago
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A Mind’s Eye for Business

The emerging field of neuromarketing is untangling the knots that bind specific brain... more

philipcarlsen
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2 months ago
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"Painless" Suffering: Anything to keep the Consumption Rate Going

Nothing in the world of animal cruelty tends to surprise me these days. However, once in a while, something comes along that sickens and disturbs me at a level that can only be described as indescribable. This is one of those days: Pain-free animals could take suffering out of farming ( http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327243.400-painfree-animals-could-take-suffering-out-of-farming.html )

This article basically proposes that, rather than eliminate (or at least reduce) meat consumption, stop nonhuman animal testing, and stop genetic engineering and its massive negative effects on animals and the environment, that we should instead genetically engineer animals not to feel pain so that factory farming (which makes up 99% of animal product production) may continue.

Wait, it gets worse...

The neuroscientists proposing such measures did their work using animals they created various forms of brain damage in (by way of lesions, surgeries, or genetic engineering) and then placed them in electrical shock chambers to see which ones could tolerate the shocks the longest or the most frequently. Countless animals suffer in these painful and cruel experiments every day for these kinds of ideas. The researchers then speak of how it would not be economic to give cows brain surgery in mass amounts, so they must find a way to engineer them to have brain damage that will reduce their ability to feel pain.

Basically, rather than encourage a vegan diet, or at least one with less animal products, which would solve the animal factory farming problem, they want to engineer animals without certain abilities to feel pain, ignore the fact that suffering is based on far more than physical pain, and create animals who would make their consumers feel less guilty about consuming them, because they would be genetically engineered to "suffer" less.

These scientists and theorists completely ignore a few very important factors. Let us ignore the ethical and environmental problems with genetic engineering, simply because they would take far too long to discuss and because I believe it is popular to be against genetic engineering. Instead, let's examine the psychological factors involved in this.

1. Animal suffering is not caused by physical pain alone. If a female cow experienced no physical pain while being placed on a "rape rack", repeatedly impregnated by farmers, only to have her babies taken from her to be made into veal, while she was hooked up to machines, she would still suffer greatly.

2. The brain is full of connections. To eliminate one part of the brain's functioning is impossible without also affecting most if not all of the rest of the functioning in the brain. There is no feasible way to remove the "pain areas" of the brain alone without causing deficits elsewhere.

3. Pain is a necessary part of functioning and survival for all animals. Pain teaches us when we are hurt, when we need to reposition ourselves, when we have something wrong with us, and so on. Removing physical pain from an animal would likely cause MORE suffering than allowing an animal to feel pain as the animal could and would likely suffer multiple problems and injuries which s/he could not identify as well as suffer other cognitive deficits in areas that are closely connected to areas of the brain which respond to pain.

To do something so insane to these animals who are already suffering the imprisonment, exploitation, objectification, and commodification of farming simply for human over consumption, would also involve massive amounts of nonhuman animal testing involving a lot of pain. This proposal can be seen as nothing more than a fraud and a money-making scheme in which those who seek to profit from animal exploitation may continue on, and increase their activity, while confusing the public into believing that they are actually helping animals.Nothing in the world of animal cruelty tends to surprise me these days. However, once... more