Neuroscientists Working to Test Brain Training Claims

April 5, 2016

CNS 2016 Blog (Press Release) April 5, 2016, New York – The draw is huge: Play video games and get smarter. For the past decade, various groups have claimed that their cognitive training programs do everything from staving off neurodegenerative disease to enhancing education and improving daily functioning. Absent from […]

How A Brain Can Rewire After Surgery

April 5, 2016

CNS 2016 Blog When neurosurgeons remove a tumor from the brain, there is often a risk to the patient of cognitive deficits resulting from injury to the surrounding brain tissue. But even in cases where the surgery leads to deficits, many patients are able to recover. New work on a patient […]

Understanding How We Trigger and Rehearse Memories

April 3, 2016

CNS 2016 Blog Today I met Daphna Shohamy. Will I remember who she is if I run into her later for dinner? If I see her, I probably won’t relive her morning talk but memories of CNS likely (hopefully!) will come to mind to help me remember who she is. […]

Music on the Mind: Rocking Out for CNS 2016

March 31, 2016

Cognitive neuroscientists are often masters in multiple fields, such as psychology, neurology, and anatomy. But some go even further by living a double life: scientists by day, rockers by night. “Unlike submitting papers or grant applications, music is immediately satisfying.” -Earl Miller Three bands made up of CNS members – […]

Inducing Amnesia of Daily Events by Trying to Forget Unwanted Memories

March 29, 2016

When we try to forget something unpleasant, whether a bad argument or a traumatic event, we may be unintentionally inducing amnesia of unrelated memories. According to a new study, this temporary state of amnesia mimics organic amnesia, disrupting the processes in the hippocampus that lead to long-term memory creation. The […]

The Innovative Teen Brain

March 19, 2016

Q&A with Adriana Galvan We’ve all seen the headlines: “Your teenager’s brain is crazy,” “Teen brain wired to take risks,” “Why teenagers take dumb risks.” Less often covered is the flip side: how the changing adolescent brain provides an unparalleled opportunity for learning and innovation. That’s the shift in discussion […]

Sizing Up Living Brain Tissue

March 17, 2016

What if we could reliably measure children’s brain circuits to predict reading ability just as we measure their height and weight to predict physical development? That is a question Brian Wandell has been exploring for the past 30 years – how to use neuroimaging techniques like MRI to quantify the […]

Stimulating Our Autobiographical Memories

February 29, 2016

We all wish at times that we had better memories of events in our lives – whether a childhood vacation, what we ate a few weeks ago, or maybe even where we were for the Oscars a few years ago. What if the answer were in a simple pulse of […]

None of Us is Immune: Leveraging Neural Circuitry to Reduce Implicit Bias

February 17, 2016

Last month at dinner with friends, I heard about a training program some employers are using to reduce implicit bias in hiring – involving, among other things, acknowledging before interviews any potential sources of bias the interviewer may have through past experiences with particular individuals or groups of people. The […]

For the Birds: Our Surprising Shared Singing Circuitry

February 12, 2016

When you think about which animals most closely resemble people, naturally thoughts turns to primates, our closest ancestors. But while nonhuman primates shared much neural wiring with people, when it comes to singing, it may surprise you to learn that we take our notes from songbirds. A new study suggests […]

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