Month: August 2014
Please RT: Immediate Postdoctoral Fellowship Vacancy in Behavioural Neurophysiology at Trinity College Dublin
Wellcome Trust-Funded Project focused on freely-moving recordings in vivo. Exciting, scientifically compelling and mature project, with plenty of room for development. Experience of electrophysiology/neurophysiology is essential; experience in freely-moving recordings is desirable. The ideal candidate will possess high levels of intellectual curiosity, drive and motivation. Fully equipped lab with ample technical and analytic back-up. The… Read More
Remind me again why aerobic exercise is good for my brain (and mood, and thinking)…
There are lots of reasons why regular aerobic exercise is good for the brain – the effects of exercise on brain volume, cognition and mood are profound and enduring. Here are a few key papers. In an early review paper, Colcombe and Kramer (2003) conducted a meta-analysis of 18 interventional studies, conducted over a 25-year period. Their… Read More
The irregular firing properties of thalamic head direction cells mediate turn-specific modulation of the directional tuning curve
Take-home message: Anterior thalamic head direction cells are interesting in all sorts of ways. Here, we show that head direction cells remain active during sleep (how interesting is that?!), replicate the finding that these cells fire at different rates depending on whether the head makes clockwise or counterclockwise movements, and that the origin of this difference might… Read More
SfN removes exclusive license requirement for eNeuro
Originally posted on Erin C. McKiernan:
Using the open letter to the AAAS as a template, this last Saturday (August 16), I drafted a letter to the Society for Neuroscience about their new open access journal, eNeuro. As with the AAAS letter, the letter to SfN is open for anyone to read, comment on, or…
Savagery Explained: 5 Reasons Humans Become Inhuman
Originally posted on The Winner Effect:
As Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria butcher thousands of “infidels” and carry off their women and children into slavery, many in the West are inclined to see this as an unique outcrop of Islamic fundamentalism. Yet after over-running a Bosnian town on 11th July 1995, Bosnian Serb…
How split memories help us perform tasks much better the second or third time around
The Morality Of Brain Science
Originally posted on The Dish:
by Dish Staff Carey Goldberg interviews Daniel Dennett about how our understanding of neuroscience affects how we view free will. Dennett suggests reframing the debate: This is a question that’s already millennia old: How can there be free will if everything basically works on cause and effect? So now we…