Word: ramachandran
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Ramachandran Vasan, lead author of the Framingham study, however, notes, "A zero-calorie drink could produce a metabolic response if it is sweet. It can condition you to develop a preference for sweet things, which can lead to weight gain or metabolic syndrome. So something that is sweet could produce a metabolic effect even if it doesn't have a whole lot of calories...
...lines of evidence to suggest that neural networks with mirror properties may be responsible for the empathetic response that forms the root of social behavior. They may also help explain how human language emerged from the more primitive communication systems of monkeys and apes. Almost seven years ago, Vilayanur Ramachandran, head of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California at San Diego, went so far as to declare that "mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology: they will provide a unifying framework and help explain a host of mental abilities...
...CHANGES IN the input reaching the brain can alter its structure is the silence that falls over the somatosensory cortex after its owner has lost a limb. Soon after a car crash took Victor Quintero's left arm from just above the elbow, he told neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran of the University of California at San Diego that he could still feel the missing arm. Ramachandran decided to investigate. He had Victor sit still with his eyes closed and lightly brushed the teenager's left cheek with a cotton swab...
Where do you feel that? Ramachandran asked. On his left cheek, Victor answered--and the back of his missing hand. Ramachandran stroked another spot on the cheek. Where do you feel that? On his absent thumb, Victor replied. Ramachandran touched the skin between Victor's nose and mouth. His missing index finger was being brushed, Victor said. A spot just below Victor's left nostril caused the boy to feel a tingling on his left pinkie. And when Victor felt an itch in his phantom hand, scratching his lower face relieved the itch. In people who have lost a limb...
Similarly, because the regions of cortex that handle sensations from the feet abut those that process sensations from the surface of the genitals, some people who have lost a leg report feeling phantom sensations during sex. Ramachandran's was the first report of a living being knowingly experiencing the results of his brain rewiring...