Even in the primary visual cortex, a brain region named for its specialized role in processing basic features of what the eyes see, not every neuron ends up answering the call to process properties of ...

Neuroscientists want to understand how individual neurons encode information that allows us to distinguish objects, like telling a leaf apart from a rock. But they have struggled to build ...

The 1950s were a relatively rudimentary era for experimental neurophysiology. Recording the electrical activity of neurons wasn’t uncommon, but the methods often demanded considerable patience and ...

Nuttida Rungratsameetaweemana is challenging a story neuroscience has told for decades. According to the conventional account ...

Cells called astrocytes are about as abundant in the brain as neurons, but scientists have spent much less time figuring out how they contribute to brain functions. A novel study by MIT researchers at ...

The brain does not need its sophisticated cortex to interpret the visual world. A new study published in PLOS Biology demonstrates that a much older structure, the superior colliculus, contains the ...

The development of the human brain is one of the most complex biological processes. During the first years of life, enormous ...

In a massive scientific effort, hundreds of researchers have helped to map the connections between hundreds of thousands of neurons in the mouse brain and then overlayed their firing patterns in ...

Perhaps our most defining characteristic as a species, the six-layered human cortex, hosts billions of neural connections that bestow Homo sapiens with higher-order thinking. But how does this ...

I llusions are everywhere. For example, the moon appears larger when it rests on the horizon than when it is hanging in the sky. Other visual tricks occur when a person perceives an object in an image ...