Word: vilayanur
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...tenuous 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...
...Vilayanur Ramachandran and Edward Hubbard of the University of California at San Diego. Their studies take advantage of a perceptual quirk: when an image in the periphery of our visual field is surrounded by similarly shaped and colored images, the brain has trouble registering its presence--even though the eye picks it up. They reported at a meeting of the Vision Sciences Society in Sarasota, Fla., last week that even when synesthetes can't "see" a peripheral image--say a 5 that's "crowded" by 3s--they see the color associated with the digit in question. That suggests that synesthesia...
Indeed, the brain abhors a vacuum, observes neuroscientist Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran of the University of California at San Diego; it craves information, and when it can't come by the data honestly, it does the best it can with what it has. One of his patients, for instance, a physical-therapy professor from San Antonio, Texas, suffered a brain hemorrhage that left a huge blank spot in her otherwise normal field of vision-or, rather, it would be blank if her brain allowed it. First, she saw a drawing of a cat, presumably supplied by her visual memory. "Then," says...
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