Word: cortexes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...split in their preferences for the two brands. But when Montague repeated the test and told them what they were drinking, three out of four people said they preferred Coke, and their brains showed why: not only were the reward systems active, but memory regions in the medial prefrontal cortex and hippocampus also lit up. "This showed that the brand alone has value in the brain system above and beyond the desire for the content of the can," says Montague. In other words, all those happy, energetic and glamorous people drinking Coke in commercials did exactly what they were supposed...
CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BRAIN CAN BE TRACKED NOT JUST IN SPACE but also in time. Neuroscientists have long known that consciousness depends on certain frequencies of oscillation in the electroencephalograph (EEG). These brain waves consist of loops of activation between the cortex (the wrinkled surface of the brain) and the thalamus (the cluster of hubs at the center that serve as input-output relay stations). Large, slow, regular waves signal a coma, anesthesia or a dreamless sleep; smaller, faster, spikier ones correspond to being awake and alert. These waves are not like the useless hum from a noisy appliance...
...study by psychologist Alex Todorov shows that we form opinions about a person with a 100-millisecond glance at the face alone. What's more, you can't even blame your higher brain for such bias. The impulse seems to arise in the primitive amygdala. If your prefrontal cortex is your summa cum laude lobe, the amygdala is Barney Rubble. Says Todorov: "This is a case of a high-level judgment being made by a low-level brain structure...
...HAR1, turns out to be part of a gene that is active in fetal brain tissue only between the seventh and 19th weeks of gestation. Although the gene's precise function is unknown, that happens to be the period when a protein called reelin helps the human cerebral cortex develop its characteristic six-layer structure. What makes the team's research especially intriguing is that all but two of the HARs lie in those enigmatic functional noncoding regions of the genome, supporting the idea that much of the difference between species happens there...
...that she can use to vivify her message. In the film she takes particular pride in some molds that can turn Jello into a model of the human brain. She uses these, she says, to demonstrate how dark thoughts and bad words can worm their way into the human cortex. Before the summer session begins, she blesses her camp's fairly sophisticated audio-visual system to make certain the devil doesn't get into it and make it go blooey at some inopportune moment. One of the high points of the week's merriment is the introduction of a life...