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Showing posts with the label neuroscience

Scientists Discover How Deeply the Brain Processes Speech

Language was once thought to be a single side of the brain phenomenon. New technology helps to seek how the brain maps sounds and language to come up with meaning. Researchers at UC San Francisco found that people use both sides of their brain to categorize and understand language.  This wasn’t the only discovery. Instead of responding to phonemes the brain actually responds to more elemental pieces of information called Features. The difference is profound as the individual sound isn’t as important as the categorization of these sounds at an elemental level. The brain is processing deeper than scientists originally predict.  The way in which a person uses lips, tongue or vocal cords determines the overall meaning and understanding. If this is true then language has a biological component and is based in deeply held abilities of what makes us fundamentally human when compared to other species.  The research is important because it can help people with reading and speech

Adaptive Leadership and Cognitive Differentiation

The world is complex and so are the environments that leaders navigate. New environments require leaders to be adaptive and adjust their behaviors to overcome multiple demands. At present, the literature is weak on understanding the theoretical implications of complex leadership styles. The researchers Thatcher, et. al (2013), discuss a model of association between the leader’s self-concepts (the mind) and the neuro-scientific basis of this complexity (the brain). They found that complexity of thought, effectiveness, and brain differentiation work together.   Because of the increasing ambiguity of world factors, a number of scientists have begun to discuss the adaptive complexity that leaders display in order to make effective decisions ( Denison, et. al., 1995). The nature of that complexity of thought is mixed integrally with adaptive decision-making. In this case, adaptation “ refers to the process by which an individual achieves some degree of fit between his or her behavi

Is Consciousness a Factor of Electrical Activity?

Nature Researchers have found that consciousness is likely a function of electrical brain activity. A team of neurophysiologists at Milan University in Italy discovered through magnetic imaging that consciousness is a level of electrical brain activity that creates cohesive patterns of rippling activity. It is a process of neural firings where individual neurons act individually but within a collective sequence that creates what we call experience.  The activity has been described as an echo whereby an electroencephalography can measure and create a score between 0 and 1 based upon this pattern. The research has some implications that include the ability to determine if a person is aware but not responsive to the outside world or if they are unconscious.  The researchers developed a baseline between .33 for unconscious and .44 for a low conscious score. The results help medical practitioners understand at what level people are aware of their surroundings and the activit

Researchers Create False Memories in Mice

The memory implantation of science fiction, the movie Inception, and the concept of memory travel has not yet become an actual affair but may be well on its way. Scientists have implanted false memory into mice to create memories that never actually happened. Dr. Susumu Tonagawa a neuroscientist, and his team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recently published this amazing study in the journal Science .   Neurons are a combination of electrical current that activates memory to determine the best courses of actions to current events.   By manipulating individual neurons, it is possible to place within the mice’s mind the fear of an activity that never occurred. The memories are stored in what is called engrams that are put together to create a behavioral action to certain stimuli in the present.  The channelrhodopsin protein was encoded in the brain cells when they were activated during a room exploration process by the mice. Later, when exposed to blue light

Scientists Invent the Thinking Microprocessor

Scientists from the University of Zurich, ETH Zurich and partners in Germany and the U.S. have developed a microchip that processes much like the human brain. Unlike clunky predecessors that react only to environmental stimuli these new chips use neurons that will use analytic abilities, decision-making capabilities, as well as short-term memories to react to their environment in real time.  The key to this discovering is that it can take sensations from the environment like humans and process them to make quick paced decisions. As the machine picks up on environmental cues it is capable of processing the multiple sensations to make meaning out of these cues and in term devise a type of strategy and change or adjust its course of action. It works fundamentally the say way the human brain works.  The science of neuroinformatics typically seeks to recreate artificial bundles of nerves on supercomputers in an attempt to determine how information is processed in much the same