Latest Parietal lobe Stories
A study, led by Royal Holloway University researcher Carolyn McGettigan, has identified the brain regions and interactions involved in impersonations and accents. Using an fMRI scanner, the team asked participants, all non-professional impressionists, to repeatedly recite the opening lines of a familiar nursery rhyme either with their normal voice, by impersonating individuals, or by impersonating regional and foreign accents of English. They found that when a voice is deliberately...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Often attributed to age-related decay in vision and physical prowess, incidents of clumsiness in seniors could actually be caused by changes in the brain, researchers from Washington University in St. Louis claim in a new study. Incidents in which older men and women have difficulty reaching for and/or grasping things, such as inability to dial a phone of knocking over a glass while attempting to grab a different object, could be...
A region of the brain known to play a key role in visual and spatial processing has a parallel function: sorting visual information into categories, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Chicago. Primates are known to have a remarkable ability to place visual stimuli into familiar and meaningful categories, such as fruit or vegetables. They can also direct their spatial attention to different locations in a scene and make spatially-targeted movements, such as...
Study shows religious participation and spirituality processed in different cerebral regions Scientists have speculated that the human brain features a “God spot,” one distinct area of the brain responsible for spirituality. Now, University of Missouri researchers have completed research that indicates spirituality is a complex phenomenon, and multiple areas of the brain are responsible for the many aspects of spiritual experiences. Based on a previously published study that indicated...
If you are looking for a particular object — say a yellow pencil — on a cluttered desk, how does your brain work to visually locate it? For the first time, a team led by Carnegie Mellon University neuroscientists has identified how different neural regions communicate to determine what to visually pay attention to and what to ignore. This finding is a major discovery for visual cognition and will guide future research into visual and attention deficit disorders. The study, published...
Brain circuits for visual categorization revealed by new experiments Hundreds of times during a baseball game, the home plate umpire must instantaneously categorize a fast-moving pitch as a ball or a strike. In new research from the University of Chicago, scientists have pinpointed an area in the brain where these kinds of visual categories are encoded. While monkeys played a computer game in which they had to quickly determine the category of a moving visual stimulus, neural recordings...
New study reveals that 'categorical' information is processed by the right hemisphereConsider the simple situation in which you are walking around the kitchen and decide to pick up your own cup of tea, which is identical to others lying on the table. Your brain chooses the correct cup of tea by using different types of information that you have stored about the position of the cup in relation to the kitchen table. The information can be represented in qualitative terms (left, right, above,...
A ballet dancer grasps her partner's hand to connect for a pas de deux. Later that night, in the dark, she reaches for her calf to massage a sore spot. Her brain is using different "maps" to plan for each of these movements, according to a new study at UC Santa Barbara.In preparing for each of these reaching movements, the same part of the dancer's brain is activated, but it uses a different map to specify the action, according to the research. Planning to hold hands is based on her...
Scientists have discovered the part of the brain that tracks the position of our limbs as we move through space.When a mosquito lands on your hand, you can rapidly and effortlessly make a movement of the other hand to brush it away, even in darkness. But performing this seemingly simple action involves a surprisingly complex coordination of different types of sensory information in order for your brain to construct a constantly updated 'map' of the body in space.Now, scientists from UCL...
   * Children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) have a number of cognitive deficits.   * Mathematical ability seems particularly damaged in children with FASD.   * A new study supports the importance of the left parietal area for mathematical abilities in children with FASD.Children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) have a number of cognitive deficits, but mathematical ability seems particularly damaged. Little is known about the brain...
