neurobiology
Tag archives for neurobiology
What a Rat Feels
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on November 5, 2012 We have been told what it’s like to be a bat or a bird; now Prof. Ehud Ahissar and Dr. Avi Saig are getting people to experience what it’s like to be a rat. Specifically, they want the participants in their studies to learn what it’s like to locate things in the dark by twitching…
While You Were Sleeping
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on August 26, 2012 “Imagine that you wake up in the morning feeling nothing special, yet you find yourself inexplicably behaving just a bit differently during the day. For example, you take a sniff every time you hear a tone,” says Prof. Noam Sobel. Of course, the people this actually happened to knew they had volunteered for a sleep…
A Dynamic Trio of Findings
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on June 13, 2012 Blurring, chopping and blocking. Three online items this week all deal with some pretty dynamic phenomena. The blurring is in our perceptions. It turns out that if you even think you have lost money in an experiment, your ability to distinguish between musical notes will be hampered. What’s the connection? Dr. Rony Paz has been…
The Physics of: Ants and Bats
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on November 29, 2011 This week’s new Weizmann science stories are on ants and bats. Two different models for investigating human behavior? Yes, but not exactly in the ways you might imagine, and so much more than that. Dr. Ofer Feinerman, the “ant scientist,” is a new member of the Physics Faculty. In his graduate research under Prof. Elisha…
Every Smell Has Its Place
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on September 26, 2011 The olfactory membranes in your nose are densely packed with smell receptors. These receptors come in some 400 different subtypes; complex odors like that of rose petals can waft around 175 distinct kinds of odor molecules in the direction of your nose. In other words, the number of discrete odors we can perceive runs to…
Bat Maps
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on August 16, 2011 Dr. Nachum Ulanovsky of the Weizmann Institute and Prof. Ran Nathan and Asaf Tsoar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have captured live fruit bats and glued tiny GPS transmitters to their backs, then driven the bats overnight to a site some 80 kilometers away and rappelled into the bats’ caves to retrieve the transmitters…
What the Eye Sees and the Brain Says
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on August 10, 2011 What does a tiny patch of salamander retina see when it watches a movie? Weizmann Institute scientists, together with Dr. Ronen Segev at Ben-Gurion University, performed this experiment – literally showing film sequences to snippets of live retina tissue and recording the interactions between their 100 or so active neurons. Seeing, as we know, is…
Weizmann Science News: Autism, Rain Clouds and a Universal Cancer Therapy
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on July 24, 2011 Today’s science news from the Weizmann Institute covers research in neurobiology, environmental science and cancer immunology. • In the first, scientists identified a likely biological marker for autism that shows up even in very young children. Diagnoses of autism are generally not possible so early, as the signs typically appear gradually throughout the first 3-4…
Casting Memory in Doubt
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on July 1, 2011 Do you ever doubt your own memory? New research at the Institute suggests that some of the things we think we remember could be wrong. It seems that our brains are surprisingly willing to exchange a true memory for a false one, just on the basis of friends’ claims. The scientists not only demonstrated just…
Is PTSD a Survival Mechanism in Overdrive?
Posted by Weizmann Science Writer on May 11, 2011 Disturbing experiences don’t actually heighten our perceptions. In fact, according to new Weizmann research, in adverse conditions we’re more likely to experience slightly different sights or sounds as being the same. The scientists think that this lumping together of similar sensory stimuli may be behind post-traumatic stress syndrome. The experiments showed that volunteers learning to…