Word: brained
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...mystery may have been solved, by a team of neuroscientists at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. Researcher Thomas McHugh and several colleagues have uncovered a specific memory circuit in the brains of mice that is probably the cause of this weird sensation, which turns out to be a sort of memory-based analogue of an optical illusion. Although neuroscientists have realized for some time that memory is made up of many different components--long and short term, episodic (that is to say, memories of events) and fact based, and that it takes place in different parts...
McHugh and his team were trying to untangle the neurological circuitry of the hippocampus, a region of the brain where new memories are formed. Neuroscientists know memories are actually groups of brain cells linked by especially strong chemical connections; recalling a memory involves finding and activating a specific group. It's important for the brain to know some memories are similar to each other--the pleasure of eating raspberries is much like that of eating strawberries, for example. But it's also important to be able to distinguish memories that are similar but not identical--eating another kind...
...think the governor understands that we can’t afford to not do this,” Roy said. “Other states have already embarked on this and Massachusetts has the brain power and people power, and it’s just a matter of putting resources into what we have...
...puts it," says David Gross, a Nobel prizewinner in physics and director of the first Kavli Institute, at the University of California at Santa Barbara, "is that he's fascinated by the very biggest, the very smallest and the thing you need to understand both of them--the human brain...
DEFINITION id-i-o-path-ic sei-zure n. an unexplained electrical charge inside the brain that sets off seizure activity (idiopathic means "of unknown cause...