Word: cortexes
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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...
...brains and that other people have brains like ours, a denial of other people's sentience becomes ludicrous. "Hath not a Jew eyes?" asked Shylock. Today the question is more pointed: Hath not a Jew--or an Arab, or an African, or a baby, or a dog--a cerebral cortex and a thalamus? The undeniable fact that we are all made of the same neural flesh makes it impossible to deny our common capacity to suffer...
...have thought of asking a decade ago. But that was before University of Parma neuroscientist Giacomo Rizzolatti and his colleagues began publishing the eyebrow-raising results of experiments they had been conducting with macaques. The Italian scientists were monitoring the monkeys' brain activity--observing how neurons in the premotor cortex buzzed with activity as the animals grasped a piece of food--when something strange kept happening. The monkeys would be sitting still, doing nothing in particular, and one of the researchers would pick up some raisins or sunflower seeds in order to place them on a tray. At that point...
...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...