There’s both money and prestige invested in the simple idea that different brain areas are responsible for certain functions. But that doesn’t make it true.
Sir Peter Mansfield - even better than a rocket scientist.
University of Nottingham
fMRI brain scans are coming frighteningly close to opening a window into our thoughts.
Our language abilities are enabled by a co-ordinated network of brain regions that have evolved to give humans a sophisticated ability to communicate.
[bastian.]/Flickr
David Abbott, Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health
When you read this text, certain regions in your brain begin working more than others. Advanced imaging allows scientists to map the brain networks responsible for understanding language.
Neuroscientists analysed the brains of 210 healthy young adults. The result was a modern atlas of the human brain, 97 areas of which have never been described before.
Consciousness remains one of the most puzzling phenomena in science.
Melissa Portes/Flickr
Consciousness is one of the most puzzling phenomena in science. How does the electric and chemical activity in your brain produce your subjective experiences; the colour red or the taste of chocolate?
Your brain scan told me your mind would wander.
Boy image via www.shutterstuck.com
Particular parts of an individual’s brain tend to work together on certain tasks. Researchers can look at these patterns of “functional connectivity” to predict traits – like the ability to pay attention.
Typically, researchers pool a bunch of brain scans to figure out the average way brains handle certain tasks. Instead, could they pick out individual brain profiles from a stack of 126 people’s scans?
Some argue that morality is everywhere, or maybe nowhere, in our brain.
Martin Deutsch/Flickr
There’s no single region in the brain responsible for all moral decision making. But neuroscience research has shown specific brain regions are involved when we’re faced with moral dilemmas.
It’s often argued that technological innovation in medicine is key to improving healthcare, and there is no doubt that brain-scan technology such as fMRI is at the forefront of our understanding of the…
People are notoriously bad at filtering choices - being faced with too many leads us to choose poorly.
Image sourced from www.shutterstock.com
Helen Westerman, The Conversation and Emil Jeyaratnam, The Conversation
We are faced with a myriad of choice in our lives - but an emerging body of work suggests the more choice we’re faced with, the more likely we’ll make a poor decision. The conundrum is called the “curse…
People are becoming more likely to believe that high-tech visualising techniques might allow us to see psychopathy in the actual physiology of the brain.
JE Theriot/Flickr (resized)
In the latest instalment of our series Biology and Blame Micol Seigel poses some important questions about the assumptions behind the legal use of fMRI. Of the current uses of psychiatry in legal settings…
Like humans, ‘man’s best friend’ can sense our emotions through voice alone.
Flickr/TheGiantVermin
Dogs really are our best friends. A study published today in Current Biology shows not only do dogs and humans read emotions in each other’s “voices”, but both are more attuned to “happy” sounds. And the…
While a flinch, or a grimace may provide us with clues, ultimately we only know that someone’s in pain if they tell us.
the italian voice/Flickr
We now know that there’s much more to pain than simply what is happening in the painful body part, and attention has turned to the role of the brain. But not even this mysterious organ can tell us everything…