Questions tagged [brain]
Tag for questions regarding the brain. The brain is the portion of the central nervous system that is located within the skull. It functions as a primary receiver, organizer, and distributor of information for the body. It has a right half and a left half, each of which is called a hemisphere.
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Is dynamics between place cell spike & local theta activity comparable to principal/interneuron spikes and fast field oscillations (ripple events)?
Place cell spikes (pyramidal & granule) are phase-locked with local theta activity. They peak at the trough of theta.
Neuronal spikes (principal and interneuron) also seem to be influenced by the ...
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Is a decision caused by a prior brain state?
I apologise if this should be asked on another stack, such as PhysicsSE. If so, please let me know, and I'll delete the question. I tried a very similar question on Biology SE, and was referred here.
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Is the brain's network connected in the graph theoretic sense
In mathematics, a graph $G = (V, E)$ is connected if, given any pair of nodes $x, y$, there is a path $x\ldots y$.
The brain is of course an intractably large network and can be modeled with a ...
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Understanding Causal Relationship Between Variables In The Free Energy Principle
I have a question about the free energy principle, taken from Friston et al.'s paper A Free Energy Principle For The Brain:
$\begin{align}F&=-\int q(\theta)\ln\frac{p(\tilde y,\theta)}{q(\theta)}\...
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How to give rest to ones brain during the day?
I often work on/think about some kind of complicated problem until I realize my brain doesn’t yield the mental focus/concentration/working memory needed to make progress any more(, which sometimes ...
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What is the point of having two hemispheres if one works just as well?
Hemispherectomy is a surgical procedure employed to treat epilepsy where an entire hemisphere of the cortex is removed. Astonishingly, when it is performed on very young children, they are seemingly ...
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How is the distinction between discrete and continuous materialized in the brain
It's generally admitted that some things are continuous (e.g. quantity of water, the length of a stick) whereas some other are not (how many oranges do I have in my bag?).
In mathematics, discrete ...
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Why does handedness suggest that the brain is asymmetrical?
From The Human Mind, by Paul Bloom:
If you just look at a brain - if you remove it from somebody's head and put it on the table - it looks symmetrical. But it isn't. The asymmetry of the brain is ...
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Non-salience memories? [duplicate]
It is said that memories that are significant are remembered much more clearly due to salience. Yet, let us imagine a man named Fred. Fred does not have hyperthymesia as he forgets things like ...
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Which statistical analysis test to perform to find the difference in connectivity between regions of Default Mode Network?
I have three groups each with 30 participants. I have 30 binary adjacency/connectivity matrix for each group which represents the connectivity between regions of Default Mode Network . I want to find ...
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What are the brain chemicals associated with food cravings? Possible to treat it by manipulating brain chemicals?
It is frequently mentioned that physical factors such as hormonal imbalances have an impact on brain chemicals, especially when it comes to food cravings (source). What are the brain chemicals ...
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Could a superintelligent spider be more human like than a normal spider? (or any other animal) [closed]
From a text (1) about AI and, in particular, ASI (Artificial Superintelligence)
A guinea pig is a mammal and on some biological level, I feel a connection to it—but a spider is an insect, with an ...
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Why didn't the animal/human brain evolve to being able to create a comprehensive map of the environment?
I am just wondering about this.
I am a computer science student, and I have been looking into the SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) problem. The problem is that you want to both create a ...
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What are the biological reasons for hearing loss?
I recently stumbled upon an interesting online hearing test on YouTube, and it got me thinking about the root causes of hearing loss. I'm curious about the main contributing factors behind the loss of ...
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Roles of Brain Regions (neocortex and hippocampus) in Explicit (declarative) LTM
My question is what is the role of the hippocampus, neocortex and amygdala in the encoding, storage and retrieval of declarative (explicit) memory, specifically episodic and semantic
I am sort of ...
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Mesolimbic pathway
I am trying to gain a better understanding of the etymology of terms used in neuroscience as that helps me remember things. In this case I am trying to understand the phrase "mesolimbic pathway&...
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Transplant patients experiencing changes in preferences to match their donors
Similar to Where exactly do Emotions and Feelings arise in the human body?, I have been hearing of a phenomenon where transplant patients have been experiencing changes in preferences to match their ...
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Where exactly do Emotions and Feelings arise in the human body?
Traditionally, the heart region was always associated with emotions and feelings in humans. But in one recent philosophy lecture I watched on Youtube, the orator said that the right brain is, in fact, ...
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How does cocaine act as a stimulant?
I have scoured the first couple pages of Google attempting to discover how, neurochemically speaking, cocaine acts as a stimulant on the body. In regards to the Google query, "how does cocaine ...
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Error "File too small" When using spm_slice_vol, Fieldtrip MATLAB
When I was trying to convert a CT scan file's coordinate system into an approximation of the ACPC coordinate system on Fieldtrip MATLAB, there was error prompting that:
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What role does the brain play in some eye diseases such as myopia and astygmatism?
I wondered if the brain is partially responsible for some vision problems that are usually solely attributed to the eyes even if the primary dysfunction happens in the eye.
For instance,in eye ...
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Neuroplasticity: Does reading information subconsciously transform the brain towards believing said information? What level of skepticism prevents it?
I am focusing on subconscious belief changing.
Suppose you read a headline passively. It claims that the lottery has better odds than you think and partaking in the lottery once a week is a smart ...
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What brain chemical(s) is attributed to the deep satisfaction of achieving an important, meaningful, or long-term goal?
What brain chemical(s) is attributed to the deep satisfaction of achieving an important, meaningful or long-term goal?
My understanding is that the shallow satisfaction of achieving an unimportant or ...
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Can a novel stimulus be processed concurrent with a P3a ERP
P3b is associated with the detection of novel stimuli unrelated to a task. It was initially confounded with P3a, which is associated with task related stimuli. They were originally thought to be the ...
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Can all neurons fire at the same time?
I'm trying to find a paper that states otherwise -- that we can't have all neurons fire simultaneously, but all I can find is Quora questions (like this) which mentions that if all neurons will fire ...
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Can brain improve "non-active" functions?
I'm from computer science background and this question struck me when learning about neural networks as they are initially filled with random values.
Can brain improve "non-active" functions ...
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Besides the enteric nervous system are there other clusters of nerves that might also be called "brains"?
I have read that the enteric nervous system might be called a separate brain. I read further that there might be 3 or even 6 human nervous systems. Could any of these be considered a brain in the same ...
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When are connections between neurons strengthened - when LTP occurs or on every 'message' sent?
I'm doing some research into how the brain works for a research project.
Often, websites describe that the connection between two neurons strengthens when one of the neurons sends a 'message' to the ...
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Is the hippocampus subcortical?
There is a little debate going on in my lab about whether or not the hippocampus is a subcortical structure. There are points made on both sides, and primary and secondary sources do not seem to form ...
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why structural studies of the cerebellum (atrophy, segmentation, etc.) always reports LEFT and RIGHT even when laterality is absent from the study?
I have noticed that structural studies of the cerebellum, regardless of the focus of the study (neurodegenerative, autism, alcoholism, drummers) usually report left-sided and right-sided results. Even ...
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Does understimulation of the brain have negative consequences?
Ive been looking for the correct scientific term for understimulation of the brain i.e. lack of a varied experience of activities and its effect on people.
I havent been able to find any studies ...
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Why do we feel inclined to doodle on paper when talking over the phone but not when talking in person?
Introduction:
Revisiting an earlier theme about "mind complementary activities", as I would call them, it dawned on me that the classical example of how doodling on paper complements talking ...
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Doubt about diffused mode
Is the diffuse mode (the default mode network) basically mind wandering mode(daydreaming mode) recruits neurons within the prefrontal cortex in addition to the cingulate, joining them to the ...
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Update of feedback connections in brain
A recent paper by Lillicrap revisits the connection between deep learning models and brain and its biological plausibility. In their work, they show that it is possible to learn with fixed feedback ...
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How long does it take (on average/etimated) a neuron to fire?
I'm not from a neuroscience field but I'm curious about this. I would like to know how long does it take for the membrane potential of a neuron to go from its resting value to its threshold value ( ...
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What does it mean if a neuron is "expressing" something?
Sorry for the simple question, not a neuroscientist just trying to understand a paper for school. In a study with mice, there was 2-photon calcium imaging done, and part of it read:
We used single- ...
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in this attentional blink experiment why is the second letter visible when the lag is low but not when the lag is high
this image is from the book Consciousness and the Brain by Stanislas Dehaene
the book describes the image as follows :
The attentional blink illustrates the temporal limitations of
conscious ...
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How do we know that neurons are the only cells involved in cognitive computation?
I am an undergraduate studying pure mathematics taking a class on computational neuroscience. My default lens for looking at the brain is in terms of universal computation (in the Turing machine sense)...
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In pyramidal neurons, are there any differences (morphological or otherwise) between the basal synapses and proximal synapses on the apical tuft?
In pyramidal neurons, are there any differences (morphological or otherwise) between the basal synapses and proximal synapses on the apical tuft ? As far as I know, they both have dendritic spines, ...
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How many stories can the human brain discern? [closed]
Perhaps the question will seem strange and not clearly formulated, for which I apologize in advance. Are there estimates of how many stories the human mind can discern? For example, let each story be ...
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Switching up senses
What if you change the connections of the brain to where the eye is connected to the part of the brain that creates taste. Will it start to adapt and begin to see with that part of the brain? Or will ...
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What causes the perception of time
I've recently watched veritasium video about time perception. And what i got out of that is that the more are brain is being used up the slower time goes and the less we use the faster it goes. Is ...
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Why does a human mind repeat the same mistakes? [closed]
Why does a person go on repeating the same mistakes again and again even if he does not want to? He knows that he is going to regret it later since he has already repeated this several times in the ...
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Is language an abstract concept that is voiced out though a national tongue?
When discussing with my son about a possible future (from the progress of technology point of view), he mentioned that it would be great to have a brain implant that would finally allow everyone to ...
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How is sexual arousal different in men and women?
I was watching ASAPScience video on the Male vs Female Orgasms.
At 1:45 they say that PET scans of brain show that arousal of men and women are different.
How exactly are these different, as in what ...
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Is Tinnitus caused by damage to the dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN) or Auditory Cortex, which can be repaired?
It is well known that loud noises can lead to hearing problems such as temporary hearing loss or tinnitus (ringing in the ears) and even permanent hearing loss. But this is the first time scientists ...
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Is there a formal name for the effect of searching an item while holding it?
I've heard some experiences of some friends in which they explained that they started searching an object to then realize that they were holding it. For example, today, a friend of mine told me that ...
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How do "ideas" or "concepts" appear in the brain?
I'm new to neuroscience and psychology and recently learned about Hubel & Wiesel cat experiment where "some neurons fired rapidly when presented with lines at one angle, while others ...
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Can a brain outgrow its skull, or have other notable phsyiological effects from increased size or mass?
You may be aware of a famous story which found that Taxi Drivers as well as Super Mario 64 (3D adventure game) players showed a an increase in grey matter located in their hippocampus.
https://www....
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Has there ever been a split brain pianist?
Has there ever been a split brain pianist?
I was thinking about this yesterday and it occurred to me that a split brain pianist might have an advantage over a non-split brain pianist; they could ...
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