mind

Out of sight, out of mind? Not necessarily

Visual information can be processed unconsciously when the area of the brain that records what the eye sees is temporarily shut down, according to research at Rice University in Houston. The research, published the week of Oct. 31 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences' (PNAS) online Early Edition, suggests the brain has more than one pathway along which visual information...

Finding the mind's eye

Dartmouth professor of psychological and brain sciences Peter Tse has published new results in his on-going investigation of the brain and how it transforms visual stimuli into conscious experience. His paper, "Visibility, visual awareness, and visual masking of simple unattended targets are confined to areas in the occipital cortex beyond human V1/V2," is available in the Nov. 8 issue of...

In the mind's eye: How the brain makes a whole out of parts

When a human looks at a number, letter or other shape, neurons in various areas of the brain's visual center respond to different components of that shape, almost instantaneously fitting them together like a puzzle to create an image that the individual then "sees" and understands, researchers at The Johns Hopkins University report. A team from the university's Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain In...

Where we change our mind

Whether finding your way through an unfamiliar neighborhood to a friend's house or deciding on a political candidate, your brain is adept at adapting. It can make decisions based on incomplete information and update those decisions based on new information. The nature of such sophisticated decision making in the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for high-level processing, has been "poo...

'Mindless autopilot' drives people to underestimate food decisions

People estimate that, on average, they make about 15 food- and beverage-related decisions each day. But the truth is, they make more than 15 times that -- more than 200 such decisions. Commenting on his new Cornell study, Brian Wansink, the John S. Dyson Professor of Marketing and of Applied Economics at Cornell, observed, "So many food decisions are made on mindless autopilot." The proble...

Mirrors in the mind: New studies elucidate how the brain reflects onto itself the actions of others

In three new independent studies, researchers have deepened our understanding of the remarkable ability of some specialized areas of the brain to activate both in response to one's own actions and in response to sensory cues (such as sight) of the same actions perpetrated by another individual. This ability is thought to be based in the activity of so-called mirror neurons, which have been hypoth...

With fruit fly sex, researchers find mind-body connection

Male fruit flies are smaller and darker than female flies. The hair-like bristles on their forelegs are shorter, thicker. Their sexual equipment, of course, is different, too. "Doublesex" is the gene largely responsible for these body differences. Doublesex, new research shows, is responsible for behavior differences as well. The finding, made by Brown University biologists, debunks the...

Reminding doctors which antibiotics to prescribe cuts C. difficile infection rates

A study published today in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy1 provides the best available evidence that cases of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI)---one of the most common and increasing types of hospital-acquired infection---can be reduced in hospital wards if doctors prescribe narrow-spectrum antibiotics rather than broad-spectrum agents. Researchers at the Royal Free Hospit...