October 26

How germs in the gut control our brain

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Bacteria are controlling our minds? Not quite, but recent evidence suggests that bacteria residing in the gut (gut flora) may play a much more prominent role in brain function than anyone ever thought. At first glance, this seems strange, as these are microorganisms are doing their thing pretty far away from the brain, and the […]

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October 25

Who will you be this Halloween?

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For children and adults alike, the most exciting thing about Halloween is putting on a costume and being someone—or something—else for a day.  What we wear can profoundly change our attitudes and behaviors, so in some ways, we actually can become someone completely different on Halloween, and it’s SO MUCH FUN! But imagine becoming someone […]

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October 20

Molecular routes of memory enhancement

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Most students are no strangers to cognitive enhancers such as caffeine or Adderall. However, these and other cognitive enhancers tend to have non-specific effects on the nervous system (e.g., jitteriness), or are specifically formulated for a disease or disorder1. Drugs or treatments that specifically target some aspect of a cognitive behavior are lacking, and require […]

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October 17

Who Do You Think You Are?

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    The young woman lies in a hospital bed, her head wrapped in bandages, a handsome man asleep at her bedside.  She opens her eyes and we can immediately see her eyes move wildly around the room, taking in the surroundings with a panicked look on her face.  The man jerks awake and tries to […]

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October 10

neurophilosodiction

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Neuroscientists and philosophers swim together in a pool of loaded words and phrases: “consciousness”, “free will”, “attention”, “decision making”, and so forth. Because defining these concepts is important to both fields, semantic debate tends to muddy the water. For instance, do we have free will?  Don’t worry…I’m not here to convince you that my view […]

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October 03

Brains in a Dish

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As a reader of the NeuWrite San Diego blog, you know the brain is exceedingly complex and incredibly interesting. What you may not have thought about is how it gets to be that way. One of the biggest mysteries of the brain is how it forms all the right connections to produce a functioning human […]

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September 26

The Appeal of a Limitless Mind

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With its slick visuals, wry narration, and unflinching action, the movie Limitless is undeniably fun—just throw in the hunky Bradley Cooper, and you’ve got instant box office gold.  Somehow, the only thing Hollywood forgot to include is more accurate neuroscience…

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September 13

Reading is Weird

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How do humans learn how to read? Reading is a much more recent development compared to spoken language, with the development of written language typically placed around 3200 BCE in Egypt (1). Some have termed this development a cultural invention because we were able to gain a new ability to understand meaning from written characters, […]

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September 05

Writing Like Crazy — a graphite infographic about the graphias

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The other day, I stumbled upon the infographic, “What Does Your Handwriting Say About You?”  According to the authors, “how you write can indicate more than 5,000 personality traits.”  I found this claim surprising, especially because I never knew more than 10 personality traits existed! Despite the infographic’s accurate description of me as “shy or […]

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August 29

Ye Olde Neuroimaging

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Technology has rocketed neuroscience forward since the middle of the 20th century. From probing single cells to recording from the entire brain at once, longstanding questions from the past can be answered with the turn of a few knobs and the push of a few buttons. None of the tools in neuroscience are more familiar, […]

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