Neuroscience
From a University of Iowa press release:
- Would You Kill One Person To Save The Lives Of Others?
Are morals based on facts and knowledge, or are they grounded in emotions? In other words, if you programmed a computer with the right information, would it make the same moral judgements as a person? 'No', is the answer suggested by new research...
- The Neural Correlates Of Compulsive Hoarding
The previous two posts described the emergence of compulsive collecting behavior (of Toy Bullets and Televisions) following damage to the orbitofrontal cortex. Although these unusual case reports do appear in the neurological literature, compulsive hoarding...
- Compulsive Collecting Of Televisions
In our second case study of "forced collectionism" caused by an acquired injury to the orbitofrontal cortex, a 49 year old man started collecting an unwieldy number of televisions and other household appliances (Volle et al., 2002): A 40-year-old-man...
- The Merger Of Neurology And Psychiatry
Thomas R. Insel, Shining a Light on Depression. Science 10 August 2007: Vol. 317. no. 5839, pp. 757 - 758. Just as research during the Decade of the Brain (1990-2000) forged the bridge between the mind and the brain, research in the current decade is...
- Neuropsychology Abstract Of The Day: Parietal Function
Haramati S, Soroker N, Dudai Y, & Levy DA. The posterior parietal cortex in recognition memory: A neuropsychological study. Neuropsychologia. 2007 Nov 29 [Epub ahead of print] Department of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, P.O. Box 26, Rehovot...
Neuroscience
Hoarding Behavior in Brain Damage
From a University of Iowa press release:
Brain Region Identified That Controls Collecting Behavior[ ... Read the full release ... ]
[snip]
By studying patients who developed abnormal hoarding behavior following brain injury, neurology researchers in the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A Carver College of Medicine have identified an area in the prefrontal cortex that appears to control collecting behavior. The findings suggest that damage to the right mesial prefrontal cortex causes abnormal hoarding behavior by releasing the primitive hoarding urge from its normal restraints. The study was published online in the Nov. 17 Advance Access issue of the journal Brain.
[snip]
The UI team studied 86 people with focal brain lesions - very specific areas of brain damage – to see if damage to particular brain regions could account for abnormal collecting behavior. Other than the lesions, the patients' brains functioned normally and these patients performed normally on tests of intelligence, reasoning and memory.
[snip]
To determine if certain areas of damage were common to patients who had abnormal collecting behavior, the UI researchers used high-resolution, three-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging to map the lesions in each patient's brain and overlapped all the lesions onto a common reference brain.
"A pretty clear finding jumped out at us: damage to a part of the frontal lobes of the cortex, particularly on the right side, was shared by the individuals with abnormal behavior," Anderson said. "Our study shows that when this particular part of the prefrontal cortex is injured, the very primitive collecting urge loses its guidance.
"This finding sheds some light on a ubiquitous, nearly universal human behavior that we really don't know much about, and we can use this as springboard to think about normal collecting behavior."
- Would You Kill One Person To Save The Lives Of Others?
Are morals based on facts and knowledge, or are they grounded in emotions? In other words, if you programmed a computer with the right information, would it make the same moral judgements as a person? 'No', is the answer suggested by new research...
- The Neural Correlates Of Compulsive Hoarding
The previous two posts described the emergence of compulsive collecting behavior (of Toy Bullets and Televisions) following damage to the orbitofrontal cortex. Although these unusual case reports do appear in the neurological literature, compulsive hoarding...
- Compulsive Collecting Of Televisions
In our second case study of "forced collectionism" caused by an acquired injury to the orbitofrontal cortex, a 49 year old man started collecting an unwieldy number of televisions and other household appliances (Volle et al., 2002): A 40-year-old-man...
- The Merger Of Neurology And Psychiatry
Thomas R. Insel, Shining a Light on Depression. Science 10 August 2007: Vol. 317. no. 5839, pp. 757 - 758. Just as research during the Decade of the Brain (1990-2000) forged the bridge between the mind and the brain, research in the current decade is...
- Neuropsychology Abstract Of The Day: Parietal Function
Haramati S, Soroker N, Dudai Y, & Levy DA. The posterior parietal cortex in recognition memory: A neuropsychological study. Neuropsychologia. 2007 Nov 29 [Epub ahead of print] Department of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, P.O. Box 26, Rehovot...