How does consciousness arise? Researchers suspect that the answer to this question lies in the connections between neurons. Unfortunately, however, little is known about the wiring of the brain. This... | Continue reading
The adult brain has learned to calculate an image of its environment from sensory information. If the input signals change, however, even the adult brain is able to adapt −... | Continue reading
One of the outstanding mysteries of the cerebral cortex is how individual neurons develop the proper synaptic connections to form large-scale, distributed networks. Now, an international team of scientists have... | Continue reading
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, have now quantified and mapped the functional units of the olfactory center in the brains of vinegar flies... | Continue reading
Spatial memory is something we use and need in our everyday lives. Time for morning coffee? We head straight to the kitchen and know where to find the coffee machine... | Continue reading
The unique ability of cuttlefish, squid,and octopuses to hide by imitating the colors and texture of their environment has fascinated natural scientists since the time of Aristotle. Uniquely among all... | Continue reading
Genome editing technologies have revolutionized biomedical science, providing a fast and easy way to modify genes. However, the technique allowing scientists to carry out the most precise edits doesn’t work in... | Continue reading
When it comes to recovering from insult, the adult human brain has very little ability to compensate for nerve-cell loss. Biomedical researchers and clinicians are therefore exploring the possibility of... | Continue reading
The structure of the human brain is complex, reminiscent of a circuit diagram with countless connections. But what role does this architecture play in the functioning of the brain? To... | Continue reading
Motion sickness is an ancient phenomenon, which also occurs in modern virtual reality environments. However, it is still relatively unknown what causes this physical reaction. Suzanne Nooij and her colleagues... | Continue reading
Speech is generally believed to start with our very first cry at the moment we enter the world. In fact, however, it begins much earlier. We can already understand individual... | Continue reading
Every day you hear at least some utterances you’ve never heard before. That you can understand them is partly due to the fact that they are structured according to grammatical... | Continue reading
The perception and reactions to odors and tastes can change in pregnancy, sometimes dramatically. This is also true for flies. The mechanisms, however, that trigger these changes are not understood... | Continue reading
Reading is such a new ability in human evolutionary history that the existence of a “reading area” could not be specified in our genes. A kind of recycling process has to... | Continue reading
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, East German citizens were offered the chance to read the files kept on them by the Stasi, the much-feared Communist-era secret police service.... | Continue reading
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI CBS) have found that touch is perceived differently, depending on the music being played. The sexier we... | Continue reading
Our brain is a mysterious machine. Billions of nerve cells are connected such that they store information as efficiently as books are stored in a well-organized library. To this date,... | Continue reading
Route planning is a key element for spatial navigation. Neurons in the hippocampus and surrounding structures, such as place cells or grid cells, become active depending on the animal’s instantaneous... | Continue reading
One in 25 people have synesthesia, perceiving the world in unusual ways. An experience with one sense automatically leads to perception in another sense: for example, seeing colors when listening... | Continue reading
For the first time, researchers have discovered that birds can sleep in flight. Together with an international team of colleagues, Niels Rattenborg from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in... | Continue reading