Symposium: ‘Will brain imaging be lie detector test of the future?’
For almost a century, one of the staples of crime stories has been the wires, cuffs, and jiggling recording needle of the polygraph machine. In its time, the “lie detector” was hailed as a way to...
View ArticleStudy shows importance of sleep for optimal memory functioning
Harvard researchers have tracked fatigue’s footsteps on the human brain, showing that sleeplessness impairs the ability to learn new information and that abnormal brain function, not reduced alertness,...
View ArticleUnfeeling moral choices traced to damaged frontal lobes
Consider the following scenario: Someone you know has AIDS and plans to infect others, some of whom will die. Your only options are to let it happen or to kill the person. Do you pull the trigger? Most...
View ArticleSmile and the world smiles with you, but why?
“We are connected in ways we don’t consciously know, but which are absolutely essential for communication,” said psychologist and author Daniel Goleman at a March 14 talk on social intelligence...
View ArticleAdvances in genetics can help kids learn
Education was becoming a no-brainer, some people at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education (HGSE) complained. Kurt Fischer and his colleagues looked at the revolution in brain scanning, genetics, and...
View ArticleDaniel Gilbert’s ‘Stumbling on Happiness’ lands top book prize
Daniel Gilbert’s pursuit of the scientific basis of happiness has won him the Royal Society Prize for Science Books, it was announced on Tuesday (May 15). “Stumbling on Happiness,” which draws on...
View Article‘I want to know what it is to be a human being’
One day earlier this month, Sean Dorrance Kelly was at work in his sunny Emerson Hall office. On one side of his desk were books — a ceiling-high, room-wide stack of tomes ranging from Greek editions...
View ArticleMendelson, substance abuse research pioneer, 77
Jack H. Mendelson, director of McLean Hospital’s Clinical Research Program on Substance Abuse, co-director of its Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research Center (ADARC), and professor of psychiatry...
View ArticleDecisions, decisions … and how we make them
How much of our decision making is controlled by rational thought, and how much is determined by more primitive brain structures? How do we rationalize decisions based on the latter? What motivates our...
View ArticleScientists image vivid ‘brainbows’
By activating multiple fluorescent proteins in neurons, neuroscientists at Harvard University are imaging the brain and nervous system as never before, rendering these cells in a riotous spray of...
View ArticleSlow reading in dyslexia is tied to disorganized brain tracts
Dyslexia marked by poor reading fluency — slow and choppy reading — may be caused by disorganized, meandering tracts of nerve fibers in the brain, according to researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston...
View ArticleDrug helps certain brain tumor patients live longer
People who receive high doses of the chemotherapy drug methotrexate to treat a certain type of brain tumor appear to live longer than people receiving other treatments, according to research published...
View ArticleResearch in brief
Major differences in protocols used to determine brain death A survey of some of the top hospitals in the country has found that the protocols followed to determine brain death differ significantly...
View ArticlePauletta Washington honored
There was no debating the glamour of the Harvard Foundation’s black-tie, red-carpet premiere of “The Great Debaters,” starring and directed by Denzel Washington, at the Harvard Film Archive at the...
View ArticleHow brain cells make good connections
Harvard neuroscientist Venkatesh N. Murthy has a sunny second-floor office on Divinity Avenue, where he is a professor in Harvard’s Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology. In one corner is a set...
View ArticleFlavell receives Weintraub Award
Neuroscience Ph.D. candidate Steven Flavell has been selected, along with a dozen other graduate students from North America, to receive the 2008 Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award sponsored by...
View ArticleLink between deep sleep and visual learning
A relationship has been observed between deep sleep and the ability of the brain to learn specific tasks. Researchers at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) have now shown that the...
View ArticleScientists learn what’s ‘up’ with retinal cells
Harvard University researchers have discovered a new type of retinal cell that plays an exclusive and unusual role in mice: detecting upward motion. The cells reflect their function in the physical...
View ArticleScience in brief
RESEARCHERS IDENTIFY PROMISING CANCER DRUG TARGET IN PROSTATE TUMORS Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute report they have blocked the development of prostate tumors in cancer-prone mice by...
View ArticleSusan Carey awarded Rumelhart Prize
Susan Carey, a Harvard psychologist whose work has explored fundamental issues surrounding the nature of the human mind, has been awarded the 2009 David E. Rumelhart Prize, given annually since 2001...
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