Category: Brain

It’s not rare that a baby experiences a stroke around the time it is born. Birth is hard on the brain, as is the change in blood circulation from the mother to the neonate. At least 1 in 4,000 babies are affected shortly before, during, or after birth. But a stroke in a baby — even a big one — does not have the same lasting impact as a stroke in an adult. A study led by Georgetown University Medical Center investigators found that a decade or two after a…

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A new study led by the University of Birmingham shows that the brain of turtles has evolved slowly, but constantly over the last 210 million years, eventually reaching a variety in form and complexity, which rivals that of other animal groups. The study also discovered that the first turtles with a fully formed shell were very likely to be living on land and not in water or in an environment where they burrowed underground. Turtles are one of the oldest vertebrate groups still alive today. Their origins date back nearly…

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Creativity is often defined as the ability to come up with new and useful ideas. Like intelligence, it can be considered a trait that everyone – not just creative “geniuses” like Picasso and Steve Jobs – possesses in some capacity. It’s not just your ability to draw a picture or design a product. We all need to think creatively in our daily lives, whether it’s figuring out how to make dinner using leftovers or fashioning a Halloween costume out of clothes in your closet. Creative tasks range from what researchers…

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Imagine an apple floating in front of you. Now see if you can rotate it around in your mind. Look at it from the top, bottom – does it have any blemishes? How clearly can you see it? Some people see the apple perfectly, like watching a movie, while others have a very poor wavering image. Although it might be hard to believe, a small proportion of otherwise healthy people report having no visual experience at all. In other words, their minds are completely blind – no matter how hard…

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Calcium is something of a double-edged sword. Too much of the essential element is as dangerous as too little, either case adversely affecting health in animals from humans to mice to fruit flies. Sensing calcium at all can be crucial. Though it doesn’t fit into the five established tastes the tongue’s receptors can identify — sweet, sour, salty, bitter and savory (umami) — humans can taste it, and describe it as slightly bitter and sour. New research conducted by scientists at UC Santa Barbara and colleagues in Korea has established…

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