Thank you, Deborah. So far, I've found a few potential studies that interest me. But I'm still looking for more ideas... Here are the ones I like the best so far:
1) Biologists Gain New Insights Into Brain Circuit Wiring
ScienceDaily (Feb. 14, 2011) � Neurobiologists at UC San Diego have discovered new ways by which nerves are guided to grow in highly directed ways to wire the brain during embryonic development.
Their finding, detailed in a paper in the February 15 issue of the journal Developmental Cell, provides a critical piece of understanding to the longstanding puzzle of how the human brain wires itself into the complex networks that underlie our behavior.....
2) Neuroscientists Find Memory Storage, Reactivation Process More Complex Than Previously Thought
ScienceDaily (Jan. 31, 2011) � The process we use to store memories is more complex than previously thought, New York University neuroscientists have found. Their research, which appears in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, underscores the challenges in addressing memory-related ailments, such as post-traumatic stress disorder.....
3) New Technique to See Neurons of the Deep Brain for Months at a Time
ScienceDaily (Jan. 17, 2011) � Travel just one millimeter inside the brain and you'll be stepping into the dark. Standard light microscopes don't allow researchers to look into the interior of the living brain, where memories are formed and diseases such as dementia and cancer can take their toll.
But Stanford scientists have devised a new method that not only lets them peer deep inside the brain to examine its neurons but also allows them to continue monitoring for months.
The technique promises to improve understanding of both the normal biology and diseased states of this hidden tissue....
4) Same Face May Look Male or Female, Depending on Where It Appears in a Person's Field of View
ScienceDaily (Nov. 28, 2010) � Neuroscientists at MIT and Harvard have made the surprising discovery that the brain sees some faces as male when they appear in one area of a person's field of view, but female when they appear in a different location.
The findings challenge a longstanding tenet of neuroscience -- that how the brain sees an object should not depend on where the object is located relative to the observer, says Arash Afraz, a postdoctoral associate at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research and lead author of a new paper on the work....
