Q&A with Marta Kutas Marta Kutas has been smitten from the beginning with ERPs – event-related potentials, measures of electrical activity in the brain. She calls them “temporally exquisite instruments for investigating what the brain does – loosely, the mind.” Kutas, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, is this year’s recipient […]
“The memorable peaks in life come scattered among the many hard and often dreary days of work.” -Michael Gazzaniga In an interview with National Geographic on the occasion of his new book, Michael Gazzaniga, a founder of CNS, talks about his work on the “split brain,” his early years at Caltech, the nature of consciousness, […]
On Twitter yesterday, social psychologist Amy Cuddy asked psychologists what theme they believe to be generally true about human nature. Among the great responses was this by social cognitive neuroscientist Jay Van Bavel: “We are social animals.” Indeed, in a new study, researchers have found that even when we are zoning out, we are preparing […]
The paintings of Paul Cézanne, whose birthday we celebrated this week, transport us to a different time and different place. His use of color and brushstroke force us to look at people and places in new ways. But any person’s evaluation of a single piece of art, of course, is subjective. While some may gravitate […]
Guest Post by Michelle Voss, University of Iowa We all know that exercise is good for us And this past holiday season, the market was awash with activity monitors like the FitBit and Nike Fuel Band to help you reach your fitness goals from the neck down. But what about from the neck up? Although […]
Seeing the new photos of the Pillars of Creation from the Hubble Telescope took my breath away. Beautiful and awe-inspiring. But what was happening in my brain when I looked at them? How and why we react to beauty is something we rarely think about, but neuroscientists are making progress in better understanding these processes. […]
Our round-up of some of the top CNS blog posts of the year, featuring a range of cognitive neuroscience, from new research on memory, learning, and language, to the importance of neuroscientists using Twitter. 1. If the CIA Tweets, Cognitive Neuroscientists Can Too: Harnessing Twitter’s Power for Your Research Micah Allen (@neuroconscience) talks about why […]
Imagination is not just something for creative endeavors — it is a real-world tool that can not only shape the way we act in the future, but also affect how we feel right now. Think about the dread you feel the day before a tooth extraction, imagining the pain to come. New research finds that you […]
Guest Post by Nick Wan, Utah State University Imagine driving in a simulator while undergoing an fMRI. No, you won’t be lying down — this is not your typical large, chamber-like scanner. An instrument called functional near-infrared spectroscopy, or fNIRS, is using a smaller, more portable design to record brain activity in more real-world settings. “It’s really that […]
Guest Post by Priya Kalra, Harvard University Although scientists now understand dyslexia better than ever before, it is still a condition shrouded in myth and misunderstanding. I first came to see our flawed perceptions of dyslexia while tutoring a 4th grader. Despite normal intelligence and effort, he could not read. I saw how the frustration this caused […]
