Sci is at SciAm Blogs today, talking about another aspect of dopamine. I usually talk about dopamine in the context of reward and addiction, but dopamine also plays a role in attention and learning, especially in something called prediction errors, learning how much your expectations match reality. But it turns out that, instead of being […]
If you’re reading this sentence, chances are you’re reading it silently (if you’re reading it out loud, hey, that’s cool too). Your lips aren’t moving, you’re not making any sound that other people can hear. But are you making “sound” in your head? Many people who read silently do so by imagining a voice speaking […]
…and not just their eyes, their wings! Sci is at SciAm Blogs today, talking about a recent study which showed how dragonflies make the lightning fast adjustment to their wings that allow them to catch prey. That, and a lot of other interesting facts about dragonflies, can be found over at the Scicurious Brain! Head […]
What the difference between someone aging happily, and someone with late-onset depression? Does it have to do with regret? Missed opportunities? The authors of this paper think so, and devised a test to look at it. But did they really get at regret? What does it mean for aging? Head over to Scientific American Blogs […]
Yesterday, I talked about the first of the two Nature papers that have come out looking at the role of dopamine firing in depressive-like behaviors and stress. Today, I talk about the other. Similar stimulus…opposite effects. Why? Well it turns out that not all stress is created equal, and the dopamine neurons can tell the […]
Nature recently published two papers on dopamine and depression in the same issue, both of them using optogenetics to look at the role of the dopamine system in depression, and both of them found…very different things. I like them both (and Ed covered them both really well), and I’ll be covering them both over the […]
Sci is at SciAm Blogs today, talking about a study which looks at the contagiousness of itch. When you see someone scratch, do you get itchy? And what’s happening? And can you make it through the ENTIRE post…without getting itchy? Head over and check it out!
Some of us like to think that we think better under pressure. Maybe under the pressure of a deadline, but when it comes to severe stress and times of crisis, well, cognitive performance tends to crumble. We know that part of the cause of this is because of increases in dopamine released into the prefrontal […]
Sci is at SciAm Blogs today, talking about a study about stress. It turns out, just basic acute stress can be fine, but SEVERE stress? Well that just makes it all worse. Head over and check it out!
Or rather, not nematode “lovin’” but definitely nematode mating! Last week I talked about the new oxytocin analogue in C. elegans: nematocin, and its role in learning and memory. Today we have a paper from the very same issue of Science, looking at nematocin and its role in mating behavior. Because molecules this conserved in […]