Tag: Neuroscience

The absence of scientific evidence doesn’t dissuade those who believe childhood vaccines are linked to autism, or those who believe their headaches, dizziness and other symptoms are caused by cellphones and smart meters. And the presence of large amounts of scientific evidence doesn’t convince those who reject the idea that human activities are disrupting the climate.

A Taiwanese researcher has spent a decade mapping out the neurons in a fruit fly’s brain, the first step towards assembling a complete computer model of a complex brain.

A slideshow from the book “Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain From Antiquity to the 21st Century”, a collection of pictures of the brain made by scientists studying the brain.

A new imaging method developed at Stanford reveals the complex array of synapses in the cortex.

The Dalai Lama donates $50,000 to a research lab that is investigating whether meditation can promote compassion and kindness.

Research conducted by Andrew Newberg, University of Pennsylvania, in Near-Death Experiences (NDE), explores why some people have “spiritual, out of body experiences” when having a NDE and why it is not necessarily a glimpse into a transcendent event.

Neuroscientists are digitizing the sections of the brain of a famous amnesiac, hoping that preserving his brain will allow future scientists to further study how memories are formed.

Logic alone is not enough to make good decisions. Neuroscience shows that emotions, intuition, and creative insight all have a role, as long as they are examined critically.

Sam Harris, Jonas Kaplan, and colleagues publish the first study to compare religious faith to ordinary belief at the level of the brain.

Humans naturally create stories and narratives, says British author and neurologist Oliver Sacks. As a “non-militant atheist”, Sacks believes that the human mind is s story-generating machine, but that this story generating propensity needn’t be focused on Theistic themes and that much can be gained by using this faculty in the context of nature.

Harvard Professor Steven Pinker uses the tools of evolutionary psychology to find the origins of humans’ tendency to believe in religions.

Brain scans back up the theory that more recent evolutionary changes to the human brain allowed the development of religion.