Neuroscience
From tomorrow's Washington Post, an article about the relevance of the architecture of crossed motor and sensory pathways (cool!):
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Anthony H. Risser | neuroscience | neuropsychology | brain
- How We See Half The World Through The Prism Of Language
Whereas I might say a jumper is blue or red, female acquaintances of mine refer to all sorts of gradations in between, such as navy blue, shocking pink, and many others that I can’t even recall. But does the richness of their colour vocabulary mean...
- Hemispheric Bias Shifts With Tiredness
Normally we have a slight bias to the left-hand side of space. So if we’re asked to mark the centre of a line, for example, we tend to overestimate the length of the left-hand portion. Now Tom Manly (pictured) at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences...
- Hemispheric Specialisation Depends On Brain State
The idea that the two hemispheres of the brain are specialised for different tasks was popularised in the 1940s by experiments with split-brain patients, in whom the nerve fibres connecting their cerebral hemispheres had been severed. But when healthy...
- Auditory Asymmetries In The Newborn
A press release from UCLA highlights the work of some of their researchers, which is published in the 10 September 2004 issue of Science: Left and Right Ears Not Created Equal as Newborns Process Sound, UCLA/University of Arizona Scientists Discover ...
- One Or Many Consciousnesses?
Turns out there may be many areas in the brain that handle consciousness, rather than just one. The July 23 2005 issue of New Scientist, which reports on a study conducted by Anna Berti at the University of Turin in Italy. Berti and colleagues studied...
Neuroscience
Neuroanatomy in the News!
From tomorrow's Washington Post, an article about the relevance of the architecture of crossed motor and sensory pathways (cool!):
What Crosses Our Minds When Danger's Afoot[ ... Read the full article ... ]
By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 13, 2005; Page A08
One of the more mysterious and less-explored observations about human anatomy is also one of the oldest, going all the way back to the Father of Medicine.
"If the wound be situated on the left side [of the head], the convulsion attacks the right side of the body," Hippocrates noted in the 4th century B.C. The Greek physician recognized that trauma on one side of the head could cause a seizure limited to or, more likely, starting in the limbs on the opposite side of the body.
About A.D. 150, a physician named Aretaeus the Cappadocian extended this observation in a truly remarkable way.
He noticed that if the right side of the head was severely damaged, the left side of the body would be paralyzed. However, if the damage was in the right side of the spinal cord instead, the paralysis would be on the same side. He then came up with an explanation.
"The cause of this is the interchange in the origins of the nerves, for they do not pass along on the same side . . . until their terminations," he wrote, according to an account in the 1994 book "Origins of Neuroscience" by medical historian Stanley Finger. Each nerve "passes over to the other side from that of its origin, [separating from] each other in the form of the letter X."
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Anthony H. Risser | neuroscience | neuropsychology | brain
- How We See Half The World Through The Prism Of Language
Whereas I might say a jumper is blue or red, female acquaintances of mine refer to all sorts of gradations in between, such as navy blue, shocking pink, and many others that I can’t even recall. But does the richness of their colour vocabulary mean...
- Hemispheric Bias Shifts With Tiredness
Normally we have a slight bias to the left-hand side of space. So if we’re asked to mark the centre of a line, for example, we tend to overestimate the length of the left-hand portion. Now Tom Manly (pictured) at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences...
- Hemispheric Specialisation Depends On Brain State
The idea that the two hemispheres of the brain are specialised for different tasks was popularised in the 1940s by experiments with split-brain patients, in whom the nerve fibres connecting their cerebral hemispheres had been severed. But when healthy...
- Auditory Asymmetries In The Newborn
A press release from UCLA highlights the work of some of their researchers, which is published in the 10 September 2004 issue of Science: Left and Right Ears Not Created Equal as Newborns Process Sound, UCLA/University of Arizona Scientists Discover ...
- One Or Many Consciousnesses?
Turns out there may be many areas in the brain that handle consciousness, rather than just one. The July 23 2005 issue of New Scientist, which reports on a study conducted by Anna Berti at the University of Turin in Italy. Berti and colleagues studied...