A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience
Human brain cells created from skin.
Scientists in Britain are claiming to have made a major breakthrough after creating brain tissue from human skin.The researchers have for the first time generated crucial types of human brain cells in the laboratory by reprogramming skin cells, which they say could speed up the hunt for new treatments for conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy and stroke.
Mental control may separate the horror of a scary movie from the terror of a truly dangerous situation.
Dracula, Frankenstein, witches, ghosts and goblins are all around us at this time of year — and Hollywood keeps them at our beck and call for the rest of the year as well. Scary movies allow us to experience the tonic of a good fright whenever we want one, but why do people seek out that experience?
Continue reading… “The Anatomy of Fright – Why We Love to Scare Ourselves”
When an object moves fast, we follow it with our eyes: our brain correspondingly calculates the speed of the object and adapts our eye movement to it. This in itself is an enormous achievement, yet our brain can do even more than that. In the real world, a car will typically accelerate or brake faster than, say, a pedestrian. But the control of eye movement in fact responds more sensitively to changes in the speed of fast moving objects than slow moving objects.
Continue reading… “How Our Eyes Adapt To Movement”
Eight-year-old children have a radically different learning strategy from twelve-year-olds and adults. Eight-year-olds learn primarily from positive feedback (‘Well done!’), whereas negative feedback (‘Got it wrong this time’) scarcely causes any alarm bells to ring. Twelve-year-olds are better able to process negative feedback, and use it to learn from their mistakes. Adults do the same, but more efficiently.
Continue reading… “Children Learn Differently After 12 Years Of Age”
