By Lumos Labs Science Associate, Paul Li, MS Neuroscience.
Movies like Being John Malkovich are based on the idea that one might be able to experience what another human’s mind is visualizing. Most would think that such movies are pure fantasy and science fiction, but researchers at U.C. Berkeley are one step closer to making this […]
By Lumos Labs Science Associate Paul Li, MS Neuroscience.
Last Friday afternoon, UCSF held their annual Bay Area Neuroscience Gathering (BANG) where local grad students and neuroscientists showcased their research posters to the Bay Area neuroscience community. Universities included UCSF, UC Davis, UC Berkeley, San Francisco State and Stanford. Lumos Labs presented an investigation into […]
By contributing author Aimee Fountain, who splits her time between Lumos Labs and teaching at American River College.
So this man walks into a bar…
You’ll get unique – and potentially beneficial – activity in your brain if you think something is funny…and maybe even if you don’t, as long as you laugh. While extensive research has […]
There seems to be some confusion about what we mean by ‘processing speed’. Even among scientists and others in the field there are a variety of understandings of the concept, spanning from the speed of neuron-to-neuron communication to how quickly one can access stored memories. In this article, neuroscientist Lizzie Buchen explains brain processing speed […]
I spent the past several days at the huge (~32,000 attendees this year) Society for Neuroscience Conference (SFN) in San Diego. This annual meeting of neuroscientists is an opportunity to learn about the latest brain-related research going on throughout the world, and for each scientist to show off their own findings.
The sheer volume of people […]
By contributing author Paul Li, a neuroscience graduate student at Columbia.
Researchers from Stanford might have found a biological marker for Alzheimer’s disease via a simple blood test. This is exciting news given that it might predict the onset of the disease several years before the symptoms begin. The procedure involves examining 18 key proteins in […]
By contributing author Paul Li, a neuroscience graduate student at Columbia.
When I was a kid, I was constantly scolded by my mother for spending countless hours on my 1989 Nintendo Entertainment System. She thought reading or playing outside would be more beneficial for me than Duck Hunt or Super Mario Brothers. My mother could have […]
Nowadays it seems almost intuitively evident that the brain is in the head and it controls our behavior. However, it was not always this clear. A popular notion was that the heart ultimately controlled thoughts and behavior - until a brutally direct “experimental” observation was made…
Guest author Elizabeth Buchen is a neuroscientist and science writer, and a member of the Lumos Labs science advisory board. Below she describes new research showing 1.) that monkeys can inform decisions by learning probability distributions; and 2.) individual neurons encode this information by adjusting firing rate. Visit Madam Fathom to read more about the […]
It is well established that mice living in an environment that is rich in sensory stimuli, social contact, and cognitive stimulation are better able to learn and remember than mice in a relatively impoverished environment. Enriched mice also show physical signs of a healthier brain, including more synaptic connectivity, more new neurons, and less neuron […]