#brainresearch — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #brainresearch, aggregated by home.social.
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New research shows how psychedelics reorganise the patterns in your brain
#Science #Psychology #Nature
#Psilocybin #Psychedelics #Brain #MentalHealth #BrainImaging #MRI #EEG #Consciousness #AIResearch #BrainResearch #Neuroscience #HealthResearch #MedicalScience
https://the-14.com/new-research-shows-how-psychedelics-reorganise-the-patterns-in-your-brain/ -
DATE: August 19, 2026 at 08:38PM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHOLOGY FEEDTITLE: Researchers reveal deeper workings of brain’s information hub
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260819041224.htm
The brain has a remarkably flexible system for handling uncertainty and changing situations. Researchers found that the frontoparietal cortex constantly shifts how it communicates with other brain regions depending on what information is needed to make a decision. Rather than simply becoming more active when things get difficult, this network appears to reorganize itself in real time.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260819041224.htm
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #BrainResearch #FrontoparietalCortex #Neuroscience #DecisionMaking #Uncertainty #BrainNetworks #CognitiveFlexibility #NeuralCommunication #BrainConnectivity #NeuroscienceNews
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DATE: August 19, 2026 at 08:38PM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHIATIRY FEEDTITLE: Researchers reveal deeper workings of brain’s information hub
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260819041224.htm
The brain has a remarkably flexible system for handling uncertainty and changing situations. Researchers found that the frontoparietal cortex constantly shifts how it communicates with other brain regions depending on what information is needed to make a decision. Rather than simply becoming more active when things get difficult, this network appears to reorganize itself in real time.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260819041224.htm
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #BrainResearch #FrontoparietalCortex #DecisionMaking #Neuroscience #BrainNetworks #UncertaintyProcessing #CognitiveFlexibility #NeuralConnectivity #BrainImaging #NeuroscienceNews
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DATE: August 19, 2026 at 08:38PM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Researchers reveal deeper workings of brain’s information hub
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260819041224.htm
The brain has a remarkably flexible system for handling uncertainty and changing situations. Researchers found that the frontoparietal cortex constantly shifts how it communicates with other brain regions depending on what information is needed to make a decision. Rather than simply becoming more active when things get difficult, this network appears to reorganize itself in real time.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260819041224.htm
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #BrainResearch #FrontoparietalCortex #Neuroscience #DecisionMaking #UncertaintyProcessing #BrainConnectivity #NeuralNetworks #CognitiveScience #RealTimeReorganization #InformationHub
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DATE: August 19, 2026 at 11:00AM
SOURCE: STAT NEWS NEUROSCIENCETITLE: STAT+: Brain organoids, kept alive more than five years, matured like human brains
A little more than two years ago, a junior scientist walked into Paola Arlotta’s Harvard office with a set of mesmerizing images and asked if she wanted to see what the old brain organoids look like.
Arlotta, a developmental neurobiologist, turned in surprise. “You analyzed them?” she exclaimed.
Irene Faravelli’s face fell. She had, but now she wondered if that had been a grave mistake. Arlotta assured her everything was fine. In fact it was great. “I was actually pleased that somebody had the courage to do this,” Arlotta recalled to STAT in a recent interview.
Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…
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STAT News reports "from the frontiers of health and medicine".
Learn more at https://www.statnews.com/topic/neuroscience .
See also their complete Mastodon account at @STAT .
This robot is NOT affiliated with STAT news and merely rebroadcasts from their site. Responses posted here are not monitored.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #BrainOrganoids #FiveYearOrganoids #HarvardNeuroscience #BrainResearch #OrganoidMaturation #Neurodevelopment #StemCellResearch #NeuroscienceNews #STATPlus #InVitroBrainModel
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DATE: August 18, 2026 at 12:40PM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Mysterious waves sweeping across your brain may help turn sensory chaos into what you see
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260816044827.htm
Traveling electrical waves sweeping across the brain may help determine what we notice, predict what comes next, and construct our internal picture of the world. Researchers now argue that these waves aren't just background activity—they could be a core computational engine behind perception and memory.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260816044827.htm
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #BrainWaves #PerceptionScience #Neuroscience #CognitiveScience #SensoryProcessing #MemoryFormation #NeuralOscillations #BrainResearch #PredictiveCoding #NeuroscienceFindings
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DATE: August 17, 2026 at 08:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Taxi and ambulance drivers show significantly lower Alzheimer’s risk in national mortality study
Taxi and ambulance drivers are less likely than workers in almost any other job to die of Alzheimer’s disease. That was the surprising result of a 2024 study examining the death certificates of nearly 9 million people in the U.S.
These findings stopped me in my tracks because those two jobs rely on the same thing as my own work: maps.
I have spent more than two decades staring at maps. Not paper maps on a wall, but digital ones with multiple layers: flood boundaries draped over census blocks, car crash hot spots plotted against road geometry, and satellite readings of rainfall stitched across river basins. Much of my work as a civil and environmental engineer is done through GIS – that is, geographic information systems. Engineers like me hold several spatial relationships in their minds at once, reasoning about where things sit relative to one another across scales ranging from a city block to a whole watershed.
I always assumed that spatial reasoning across map layers was purely professional. But that study on taxi and ambulance drivers made me wonder whether all that mental work might be doing something good to the brain.
Taxi driver brains
Of the 9 million death certificates from January 2020 to December 2022 that researchers examined, taxi and ambulance drivers had the lowest risk of dying from Alzheimer’s disease out of 443 occupations. After adjusting for age, sex, race, ethnicity and education, roughly 1 in 100 taxi and ambulance drivers died of Alzheimer’s, compared with 1 in 60 people overall.
This pattern did not extend to other driving jobs. The researchers concluded that the key to reducing the risk of Alzheimer’s was not driving itself but continuous real-time navigation: the constant work of locating yourself in space, tracking a destination and updating a mental map as conditions change. Drivers whose jobs relied on fixed or predetermined routes, like bus drivers and aircraft pilots, didn’t seem to experience a similar advantage.
Researchers believe the association between navigation-heavy work and lower Alzheimer’s risk centers on the hippocampus, a part of the brain that governs memory and spatial navigation. It’s one of the first brain regions that Alzheimer’s damages: Problems with spatial navigation and orientation are among the earliest signs of the disease, sometimes surfacing before obvious memory loss.
In one landmark 2000 study, neuroscientists compared the brains of licensed London taxi drivers with those of people who did not drive cabs. Their findings provided the first evidence via structural imaging that regions of the adult brain can measurably change under sustained navigational demand. To earn a license, London cabbies must memorize more than 25,000 streets within a 6-mile radius of Charing Cross, a challenge known as “The Knowledge” that takes three to four years.
The researchers found that London taxi drivers had measurably more gray matter in the posterior hippocampus, a brain area tied to storing large-scale spatial maps. That volume tracked with experience: The longer someone had driven, the larger that part of the brain. The change was built through practice, not inherited. While people who are good at navigation might gravitate to this kind of job, the job itself does have an impact on the brain.
Together, these two studies make a coherent case: Work that intensively exercises the hippocampus may reshape it, and that reshaping may protect against one of the most feared diseases of aging.
Where map specialists fit in
Cartographers, urban planners and geospatial analysts spend their working days in sustained spatial reasoning. A geographic information system specialist might use a computer to overlap population data on flood exposure maps to find who is at risk, or read satellite imagery to map land cover after a wildfire. Researchers juggle several layers of data, coordinate systems and scales at once.
Does spatial reasoning through a screen engage the hippocampus the way moving through a real city does?
While a taxi driver navigates from inside the scene at street level, GIS researchers picture space from above as a map – what cognitive scientists call allocentric reasoning. But these two perspectives overlap in the brain: The hippocampus also builds maps from outside viewpoints, not just from a navigator’s own position.
Research on cognitive maps points toward the same conclusion as the study on taxi drivers. In 2023, researchers ran a machine learning model on more than 22,500 people in a national dataset and were able to predict which ZIP codes had higher rates of Alzheimer’s with 84% accuracy based on how complex the environment was. Those living in spatially complex surroundings – the kind that force active map building, such as dense street networks with numerous intersections, diverse points of interest and landmarks, and multiple path options – were less likely to develop Alzheimer’s.
A follow-up study tied geospatial complexity in one’s environment to greater volume in the brain’s spatial navigation regions. The researchers hypothesized that routinely building cognitive maps exercises the very circuitry that Alzheimer’s attacks first. Repeatedly engaging the cognitive systems involved in spatial navigation could help delay symptoms of disease.
However, these two studies focus on where people live, not the work people do. Whether spatial reasoning through a screen exercises the same circuitry as real-life city navigation remains untested.
Protecting your brain
The implications of whether sustained spatial reasoning protects the brain reach beyond mapmakers and cab drivers. Studies have repeatedly found a link between mentally complex occupations and delayed cognitive decline and lower dementia risk, even after accounting for education.
Research on cognitive reserve – the brain’s capacity to continue functioning despite disease – can help explain why two people with a similar disease burden can show markedly different levels of cognitive impairment. If demanding spatial thinking protects the brain, then how societies design schooling, professional training and retirement all become questions of brain health.
Spatial reasoning can be trained, and training opportunities are already widespread. GIS and remote sensing instruction are available through geography, engineering, public health and environmental science programs worldwide.
If sustained engagement with spatial reasoning can help the brain strengthen the circuitry that Alzheimer’s attacks first, its value reaches well beyond the technical skills it builds.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #AlzheimersDisease #SpatialNavigation #CognitiveReserve #HippocampusHealth #GPSAndBrainHealth #GeospatialThinking #TaxiDrivers # GIS #MentalMaps #BrainResearch
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"The brain is a factory that never stops": A scientist explains why it's impossible to fully understand
Dr. Yelena Baranova, head of the Functional Diagnostics of Nervous System Diseases Department at the Federal Center for Brain and Neurotechnology, likens the brain to a huge factory that works non-stop.
She says: "The brain is like a constantly changing production factory, and it can never be fully studied and understood."
#BrainScience #Neuroscience #HumanBrain #ScienceNews #BrainResearch
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🚀🤖 Sure, let’s have computer scientists, who barely know #biology, whip up a brain like it’s a weekend coding project! Apparently, with just a sprinkle of genome magic and some strategic “guideposts” and “coordinates” (sounds just like Google Maps, right?), a brain is expected to pop out in no time. 🙄🧠
https://stankerstjens.github.io/could-a-computer-scientist-build-a-brain/ #computerScience #artificialIntelligence #brainResearch #genomeEngineering #HackerNews #ngated -
Could a computer scientist build a brain?
https://stankerstjens.github.io/could-a-computer-scientist-build-a-brain/
Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49310362
#HackerNews #computerScience #artificialIntelligence #brainResearch #technology #innovation
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DATE: August 13, 2026 at 01:40AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Human brain cells are far more powerful than scientists thought
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260812015216.htm
A single human brain cell may be far more powerful than scientists once realized. Researchers found that cortical neurons can perform remarkably complex computations, giving them capabilities more like tiny biological computers than simple on-off switches. This could help explain why the human brain supports abilities such as language, imagination, and mathematics.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260812015216.htm
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #BrainPower #Neuroscience #CorticalNeurons #BrainComputers #HumanBrain #NeuralComputations #LanguageImaginationMath #BiologicalComputers #CognitiveScience #BrainResearch
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🧠⚡ A Shift in #Thinking: The Indissoluble #Entanglement of #Neurobiology & #Self
📎https://philosophies.de/index.php/2021/12/05/wie-wirklich-ist-bewusstsein/
📺 https://youtu.be/0LG4gU_jfik
#GerhardRoth #Consciousness #Neuroscience #Neurophilosophy #BrainResearch #Cognition #PhilosophyOfMind #Self #FirstPersonPerspective #HardProblem #Epistemology #Self-Consciousness #Subjectivity #ExplanatoryGap #Body-MindProblem #NeuralCorrelates #Brain-MindProblem #Zoomposium
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DATE: August 12, 2026 at 10:36AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHOLOGY FEEDTITLE: Ozempic may have revealed the brain’s hidden “craving center”
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260811011138.htm
Ozempic-like drugs appear to weaken more than hunger—they may also reduce cravings for alcohol and other addictive substances. Scientists are increasingly tracing this effect to the lateral septum, a brain region that helps connect memories and surroundings with rewarding experiences. Packed with GLP-1 receptors, it may act as a crucial control point between thinking about a reward and feeling compelled to pursue it. The discovery could open new approaches to treating addiction as well as obesity.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260811011138.htm
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #Ozempic #cravingcenter #GLP1 #addictiontreatment #weightloss #brainresearch #lateralseptum #rewardsystem #neuroscience #oberstandingcravings
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DATE: August 8, 2026 at 11:21PM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Stress can scramble your brain’s internal GPS, MRI study finds
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260807035151.htm
Stress may literally scramble the brain’s internal GPS. Researchers found that cortisol, a hormone released during stress, made people significantly worse at navigating a virtual environment and disrupted the precise activity of grid cells, specialized brain cells that help us understand where we are in space. When landmarks were missing, this navigation system nearly stopped functioning, while another brain region appeared to step in and compensate.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260807035151.htm
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #StressAndBrain #GPSInTheBrain #CortisolEffects #GridCells #SpatialNavigation #Neuroscience #BrainResearch #VirtualNavigation #StressImpact #CognitiveHealth
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DATE: August 5, 2026 at 08:09AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Scientists discover the brain cells that keep you motivated
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260804034622.htm
A group of brain cells called orexin neurons appears to help us keep working when reaching a reward becomes increasingly difficult. Blocking their activity weakened motivation in rats, pointing to a possible new target for understanding why people sometimes struggle to sustain goal-directed behavior.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260804034622.htm
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #OrexinNeurons #MotivationScience #BrainResearch #Neuroscience #GoalDirectedBehavior #RewardPathways #MentalHealthResearch #NeuralMotivation #ScientificDiscovery #NeuroscienceNews
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DATE: July 31, 2026 at 08:20AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHOLOGY FEEDTITLE: Scientists discover why poor sleep may harm some brains more
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/07/260729051529.htm
A gene involved in the brain’s overnight cleaning system may change how strongly poor sleep affects Alzheimer’s-related brain changes. The findings point toward more personalized prevention strategies based on both genetics and sleep habits.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/07/260729051529.htm
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #PoorSleep #BrainHealth #AlzheimersPrevention #SleepGenetics #GlymphaticSystem #Neuroscience #SleepAndMemory #PersonalizedMedicine #BrainResearch #SleepQuality
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DATE: July 31, 2026 at 01:20PM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: 101 Fun Facts About the Brain and Behavior, According to Science
Source: PsyPost
You are sniffing right now. On top of each ordinary breath, you take roughly 240 extra small inhalations an hour, sampling the air without any idea you're doing it. We know because people born without a sense of smell don't—and put a normal smeller in an odorless room, and the habit fades within the hour. That's one of 101 findings below, all from peer-reviewed research. And it's not even the strangest one.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #BrainFacts #BrainAndBehavior #ScienceFacts #Neuroscience #PsyPost #BehavioralScience #CognitiveScience #FunFacts #ScienceNews #BrainResearch
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DATE: July 25, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Scientists just settled a decades-old debate about the brain’s mirror neurons
A new study published in Science Advances provides evidence that special brain cells called mirror neurons track the continuous, physical movements of actions, rather than just the final goal. The findings suggest that the brain uses a dynamic, shared network of neurons to understand what others are doing by matching their movements to our own internal blueprints.
The premotor cortex is a region near the front of the brain that helps plan and coordinate physical movements. Within this region, certain brain cells fire both when an animal performs an action and when it watches someone else perform the same action. These special cells are known as mirror neurons.
Since their discovery, experts have debated exactly what kind of information these cells represent. Some scientists propose that mirror neurons focus on the abstract goal of an action, such as grasping an object to eat it or move it. This perspective suggests that the brain is interested in the final outcome rather than the physical effort required to get there.
Vassilis Raos, professor of physiology at the University of Crete Medical School and co-author of the study, noted that past research offered an inconsistent view of how these cells match actions. “At the same time, the ‘goal’ these neurons are claimed to encode has been loosely defined, and there is limited direct evidence about precisely what they represent,” Raos said. “We therefore revisited an important possibility that had not been adequately tested: that mirror-neuron activity reflects detailed kinematics, meaning how a movement unfolds through space and time, during both action execution and observation.”
Raos explained that this idea gained traction after his team’s previous work showed mirror neurons respond to actions that do not involve objects. “This possibility became especially plausible after our previous study showed that a large majority of mirror neurons also respond to the observation of intransitive, or non-object-directed, actions, not only to transitive, object-directed actions,” he said.
Other scientists propose that these cells encode the specific static grip used, like a tight pinch or a wide, whole-hand grab. Another possibility is that mirror neurons track action kinematics. Kinematics refers to the continuous physical details of a movement as it travels through space and time. This includes the speed, the direction of the arm, and the changing shape of the hand as it reaches for an object.
Previous studies often examined the activity of individual mirror neurons in isolation. The authors of the new study took a different approach by looking at populations of neurons. They wanted to see if the overall pattern of brain activity changes dynamically as an action unfolds, rather than just signaling a single, static concept like a final goal.
“Based on a proposal we put forward in a previous study, we expected that the apparent mismatch between execution and observation at the level of individual mirror neurons would be compatible with a systematic correspondence at the population level,” Raos said. “We also predicted that mirror-neuron activity would be modulated by movement kinematics, and our findings confirmed both predictions.”
To get a complete picture of the brain region, the researchers also decided to look at non-mirror neurons. By including cells that only fire during physical movement, they could determine if the ability to track movement details is unique to mirror neurons or a broader feature of the entire motor region.
To test these ideas, the researchers recorded electrical activity from 433 neurons in the premotor cortex of two macaque monkeys. The monkeys performed a reaching and grasping task designed to test different hand shapes. In the execution portion of the experiment, the monkeys reached for and grasped four different three-dimensional objects.
These objects included a sphere, a cylinder, a ring, and a small cube. Each object required the monkey to use a specific grip. The sphere prompted a whole-hand grab, while the small cube required an advanced precision grip using just the tips of the index finger and thumb. The monkeys were trained to grasp these objects consistently and smoothly.
In the observation portion of the experiment, the monkeys simply sat still. They watched a human experimenter perform the exact same reaching and grasping actions with the same set of objects. The researchers used a camera system to ensure the monkeys were looking at the action.
Out of the total recorded cells, 285 fired during both the execution task and the observation task. The researchers classified these as mirror neurons. Another 148 cells fired only when the monkey actually performed the action. The scientists classified these as non-mirror neurons.
For the main statistical analyses, the team focused on narrowed datasets of 240 mirror neurons and 129 non-mirror neurons that had enough recorded trials for accurate mathematical testing. In separate sessions, the researchers used a three-dimensional motion capture system to record the physical movements of the monkeys and the human experimenter. They tracked specific points on the index finger, thumb, and wrist. This equipment allowed them to measure the precise speed, position, and changing distance between the fingers over the course of the action.
The scientists found that information about the type of grip was spread broadly across the population of mirror neurons. Instead of a single neuron maintaining a constant signal throughout the action, different neurons became active at different stages of the movement. This shifting activity indicates that the brain uses a dynamically changing ensemble of cells to represent an action as it happens.
The researchers then compared the patterns of brain activity when the monkeys performed the action to when they merely observed it. At the level of individual brain cells, the firing patterns rarely matched perfectly between doing and watching. However, when the researchers analyzed the activity of the whole population of cells together, a partially shared neural structure emerged.
This shared structure means the patterns of brain activity during observation overlapped significantly with the patterns during execution. The overlapping activity was most prominent during the middle of the hand movement and at the end of the grasping motion. The neural population tends to align most strongly when the action reaches its most complex physical stages.
The population of mirror neurons also strongly tracked the continuous kinematics of the grasps. The neural activity systematically matched the speed, wrist position, and finger placement as the hand moved toward the object. By looking at mathematical models of the brain activity, the researchers could successfully predict the physical movement of the hand.
This prediction worked in reverse as well. The researchers could use the physical motion tracking data to accurately predict the patterns of neural activity. This two-way relationship was present for both the monkeys’ own movements and the observed movements of the human experimenter.
“Our findings show that mirror neurons really do ‘mirror,’ but this correspondence becomes clearest when we examine patterns of activity across populations of neurons, rather than expecting individual neurons to respond identically during action execution and observation,” Raos told PsyPost. “These populations carry detailed information about how an action unfolds over time.”
He noted that tracking movement does not mean the brain ignores the final goal. “Importantly, sensitivity to movement kinematics does not contradict the idea that mirror neurons encode action goals,” Raos explained. “Research on movement kinematics suggests that intentions and goals are expressed in the movement itself, so the brain may infer what another person is trying to achieve by reading how their movement is performed.”
By reading these ongoing physical details, the brain can decipher deeper intentions. “Our findings suggest that mirror neurons have the properties needed to support this process, bridging the gap between how an action is performed and why it is performed,” Raos said.
The scientists discovered that non-mirror neurons also showed a strong relationship with the physical kinematics of the grasps. Much like the mirror neurons, this group of cells tracked the ongoing physical details of the monkeys’ movements. This finding provides evidence that continuously tracking movement structure is a broad feature shared across different types of cells in the premotor cortex.
The overlap in brain activity between watching and doing was not completely symmetrical. Statistical models trained on the brain activity during observation could successfully predict the monkeys’ physical movements during execution. Models trained on the execution data did not generalize as well to predict the observed human movements. This asymmetry suggests that doing an action involves extra, specific neural processes beyond those shared with simply watching an action.
“Our findings should not be interpreted as showing that mirror neurons are merely analyzers of movement kinematics, or that their role is limited to detecting movement parameters,” Raos cautioned. “Our study identifies information that is systematically present in their activity, but it does not establish their full functional or causal role in understanding others.”
Instead, Raos suggests that this physical tracking is part of a larger system. “Kinematic information may contribute to a broader motor process that links observed actions to an individual’s own motor repertoire, helping bridge the gap between the movements we see and the motor acts and goals they express,” he said.
Several limitations should be noted regarding this research. The recordings were taken from a specific brain area in macaque monkeys performing highly controlled and repetitive actions. “Because our experiment focused on controlled grasping actions, further research will be needed to understand how this process operates during richer and more natural social behavior,” Raos noted.
The scientists recorded the neurons in separate sessions and mathematically combined them later to estimate the overall population activity. Because of this, they did not capture how all the individual brain cells interacted with each other at the exact same moment.
The experimental design also did not completely separate the visual shape of the object from the physical grip used to grab it. The monkeys always used the specific assigned grip for each specific object. This setup makes it difficult to completely rule out the possibility that the brain cells were partially responding to the visual identity of the objects rather than just the kinematics of the hand.
“In this study, we focused primarily on what information is encoded in premotor neuronal activity,” Raos said. “Our next goal is to investigate when and how these representations emerge, particularly how their temporal dynamics depend on the context in which an action occurs.”
To address the object versus grip limitation, the team plans to adjust future experiments. “We would also like to disentangle the contributions of the observed action and the object involved by manipulating them independently, allowing us to determine how each shapes observation-driven activity,” Raos said.
The study, “Dynamic population coding of kinematic structure across executed and observed actions in primate premotor cortex,” was authored by Konstantinos Chatzimichail, Christos Paschalidis, Eleftheria Tzamali, Vassilis Papadourakis, and Vassilis Raos.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #MirrorNeurons #PremotorCortex #Neuroscience #ActionKinematics #BrainResearch #Social cognition #NeuralPopulation #MovementScience #ObservationalExecution #DynamicCoding
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🧠 #Matter vs. #Mind: In what worlds does our #brain live? 🌐
Today, #neuroscientists face a fascinating and, at the same time, profound #dilemma.
Share your thoughts with us in the comments! 👇
https://philosophies.de/index.php/2022/03/22/kann-das-gehirn-das-gehirn-verstehen/
You can find this exciting interview at:
👉 https://youtu.be/C2FVIbAyaH4
#Brain #BrainResearch #Consciousness #Philosophy #WolfSinger #Zoomposium #Qualia #Neuroscience #FreeWill #Cognition #MindAndBrain #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Epistemology
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Atzo, Santiago Solé Domenech (Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, AEB) izan genuen Achucarron, Alzheimer gaixotasunean amiloide-beta garbiketan mikrogliak duen eginkizunari buruzko mintegi batean. Eskerrik asko zure ikerketa gurekin partekatzeagatik! 👏
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New Study Reveals How Second Pregnancies Alter Brain Structure and Function
📰 Original title: Second pregnancy changes the brain in surprising new ways
🤖 IA: It's clickbait ⚠️
👥 Users: It's clickbait ⚠️View full AI summary https://en.killbait.com/new-study-reveals-how-second-pregnancies-alter-brain-structure-and-function.html?utm_source=mastodon_world&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=killbait.mastodon_world
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AI-generated videos to maximally drive a target brain region
Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48856904
#HackerNews #AIvideos #brainresearch #neuroscience #innovation #technology
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🧠 #BCI & #BiologicalComputers: Why Conventional #Chips in the #Brain Are Doomed to Fail ⚡🤖
📎 https://philosophies.de/index.php/2021/12/05/wie-wirklich-ist-bewusstsein/
📺 https://youtu.be/0LG4gU_jfik
#BrainComputerInterface #BCI #BiologicalComputers #GerhardRoth #BrainResearch #Neuroscience #Neurophilosophy #Consciousness #TechPhilosophy #FutureOfHumanity #ArtificialIntelligence #ItFromBit #DeepTech #Philosophy #PhilosophyOfMind #Epistemology #MindBodyProblem #BioTech #Neuroethics #Futurology
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Joan den ostiralean, Manuel Valero García (Hospital del Mar Research Institute, Bartzelona) izan genuen Achucarron, memoriaren finkapenean inhibizio- eta glia-mekanismoei buruzko mintegi batean. Eskerrik asko zure ikerketa gurekin partekatzeagatik! 👏
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Mediterranean Diet Boosts Psychological Well-Being Over Age 50
Summary: A new longitudinal study tracked 3,296 older adults aged 50 to 90. The findings revealed that close adherence to a Mediterranean diet directly predicts a higher …
#dining #cooking #diet #food #MediterraneanDiet #aging #brainresearch #isglobal #Mediterranean #Mentalhealth #neurobiology #neuroscience #psychology #wellbeing
https://www.diningandcooking.com/2715914/mediterranean-diet-boosts-psychological-well-being-over-age-50/ -
Mediterranean Diet Boosts Psychological Well-Being Over Age 50
Summary: A new longitudinal study tracked 3,296 older adults aged 50 to 90. The findings revealed that close adherence to a Mediterranea…
#dining #cooking #diet #food #mediterranean #MediterraneanDiet #MediterraneanFood #aging #brainresearch #isglobal #Mediterranean #Mentalhealth #neurobiology #neuroscience #psychology #wellbeing
https://www.diningandcooking.com/2715914/mediterranean-diet-boosts-psychological-well-being-over-age-50/ -
Mediterranean Diet Boosts Psychological Well-Being Over Age 50 https://www.diningandcooking.com/2715914/mediterranean-diet-boosts-psychological-well-being-over-age-50/ #aging #BrainResearch #diet #isglobal #Mediterranean #MediterraneanDiet #MentalHealth #neurobiology #neuroscience #psychology #wellbeing
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Multilingual Experience Linked to Delayed Aging in Populations and Individuals
https://fens2026.abstractserver.com/program/#/details/presentations/5474
Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48805652
#HackerNews #multilingualism #aging #cognitivehealth #brainresearch #populationstudies
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Neuroscientists share how to ‘revive’ memories that you thought you had forgotten forever
https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.upworthy.com/how-to-remember-things-ex1/