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Have a question about the brain? Ask a neuroscientist a question.
Could an alien, made of electricity, take over a human brain?
Can a human being survive with extra electricity in their body?
In this Ask a Neuroscientist, Astra Bryant tackles a series of questions from a speculative fiction author looking for advice on an extraterrestrial electrical lifeform.
Read MoreThe carrot of desire and whip of fear are powerful drivers of our actions, but what happens when they are in conflict? How does the brain balance these great motivators in a scenario like the one you propose, where you are offered a million dollars to walk through a terrifying snake enclosure?
Read MoreAre you left handed? Right handed? Somewhere in between?
What is commonly thought of as "left" and "right" handedness, is probably more accurately described as a spectrum. Where we lie on that spectrum (from strongly right handed, to strongly left handed) can depend on the task we are performing. For example: you might be strongly left handed when it comes to writing, but you find it more natural to open a jar with your right hand. Or when you open the lid of a hinged box, you do so with either left or right hand.
We don't really have a good handle on what it is about the brain that makes us handed (or footed). But we do know that other animals also show similar preferences. So it's possible that handedness is some kind of fundamental feature of the way brains generate movement, and interface with muscles.
Read MoreDo some people experience a rush of dopamine when they pray or preach the gospel?
Becca Krock's fascinating answer evokes a wide range of subjects, from St. Teresa, "who certainly seems to have enjoyed praying", to the handful of studies that have measured brain activity during prayer, to the writings of William James, "the father of modern psychology".
In the end, she writes, it may be reasonable to conclude that "prayer is an intricate composite of many more run-of-the-mill psychological processes (attention, memory, emotion, speech). And each one...is accompanied by the neural correlates you’d expect to see during that process, regardless of whether it’s occurring in a religious or secular context."
Image source: continuedon.wordpress.com
Read MoreHow many types of neurons are there?
Joran Sorokin discusses one popular property used for distinguishing between neurons: neurotransmission, or how individual cells communicate with one another. How do neuroscientists use this property to break neurons into subtypes? And where does this leave glia??
Read on to learn more.
Read MoreWhat is the brain's energy budget? Ada Yee discusses three possible ways of assessing how the brain distributes its resources: first, by direct measurement of oxygen flow and glucose uptake; second, by examining what processes the brain sacrifices when energy gets low; and third, by calculation from known simple properties of neurons.
Photo Credit: N. Seery, Wellcome Images
Read MoreDoes a bigger brain make you smarter?
In this version of Ask a Neuroscientist, Kendra Lechtenberg discusses humanity's love affair with the idea that our exceptional cognitive abilities must mean we have the largest brains of any animal.
Read MoreIn this issue of Ask a Neuroscientist, Dr. Talia Lerner fields a question about the exact relationship between dopamine and addiction. Writing in response to a question from Peter Senavallis, Talia says: "the dopamine hypothesis of drug addiction ... has been a driving force in addiction research ever since people noticed that addictive drugs all seem to act in one way or another on dopamine regulation." However, she notes (and describes) recent research that "calls into question the idea that dopamine neuron stimulation would be sufficient to induce and sustain all the classic hallmarks of addiction, both behavioral and molecular. "
Read MoreThis issue of Ask a Neuroscientist looks at what information neuronal firing rate encodes. Dr. Forrest Coleman (Steven Smith lab), explains how differences in the firing rate of neurons reflects not only features of the external sensory world, but also features of our dynamic inner world.
Read MoreJulia Turan answers a question about the language deficits experienced by patients with Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia. Read on to learn whether Wernicke's aphasiacs have difficulty writing, and to see amazing videos of stroke patients with Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia.
Read MoreHome of NeuWrite West and the Stanford Neuroblog.
Do you have burning questions about how the brain works? You’ve come to the right place! Submit all your questions to NeuWrite West and we will have a neuroscientist research and answer your question.
Note: The NeuWrite West team consists of research scientists. Therefore, we can not provide answers to questions of a medical nature; we are not medical doctors.
Questions will have a turn-around time of approximately one month.
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