Neuroscience
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An interview with palaeontologist Hady George, a PhD student in Professor Emily Rayfield’s group at the University of Bristol, who has worked on the endocasts of stem-mammals (George et al., 2024) and dinosaurs including T. rex (Caspar et al., 2024). In this article series I will summarise some of what we know, how we know…
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A prevailing hypothesis in neuroscience is that individual neurons are selective for a function (Hirokawa et al., 2019), specialised for a particular task. However, more and more papers are published invoking differential functions and behavioural effects for the same neuron types. The categorical selectivity may not be the rule, but an exception, according to a…
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Most of the general public are familiar with brainwaves. However, a very small minority are aware of the uncertainty that prevails in the electrophysiology field. Ever since the first recorded signal by Hans Berger (Berger, 1929), alpha waves, most prominent in the visual cortex, we have been bewildered as to what they are. Mathematically minded…
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Opinion, You see your dog whine when you leave. Does he feel sadness, or is he just reacting? And how could you possibly know? If you would attempt to answer that question empirically, you would struggle greatly. Because emotions are a concept defined by humans to describe experiences we believe are universal. However, experiences may…
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Swedish News, A Swedish study, published in PLOS ONE, investigated coffee consumption habits of ~30,000 middle-aged individuals and observed whether there was a correlation with sleep and sleepiness. They found that individuals with higher coffee consumption reported sleep quality similar to low coffee consumers, with differences being minimal and potentially negligible. Factors such as BMI…
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Interview, Part of The Hypothesis Dump’s Swedish Neuroscience series. “Just imagine that improving sleep could potentially help reduce the risk of disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease or support brain health more broadly. That is a fascinating possibility and one that deserves much more research attention.“, Prof Christian Benedict. A year ago I became a father,…
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Religious traditions tend to rest on a dualistic basis with some variations. They posit an agent that is independent of the body but temporarily resides within it. This accounts for the human soul and a God that does not always have a body. While the gods are usually also bestowed with higher powers (however defined).…
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News, Could our urge to fight actually feel rewarding? A study published in Nature Communications suggests yes, and serotonin may hold the key to stopping it. Most of us know that dopamine is involved in reward because of addiction research, and we know that serotonin can regulate emotions, as evidenced by the effects of antidepressants…
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Opinion, Western psychiatry insists to a great extent on a reductionist, micro-categorical framework that can still lead to viewing mental and physical health as distinct entities. Although psychiatry is gradually shifting from this view, I argue for a systemic reconfiguration toward a unified, systemic view of human health, hypothesizing that chronic stress sensitivity, neurodivergence, affective…
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News, A recent study out of Dortmund, Germany has found that transcranial stimulation of a brain region in the prefrontal cortex can change the brain’s view of a perceived danger as safe. In this study, researchers recorded brain activity in healthy individuals with an MRI machine, while they underwent a conditioning task. In the task,…