“Glia,” the Greek word for glue, was the name the pathologist Rudolph Virchow gave, back in 1856, to the gelatinous substance that forms the bulk of the brain. And it stuck. These days, scientists use it to denote the matter that accounts for 90 percent of the brain’s cells and more than half its volume — but, like the late comic Rodney Dangerfield, “can’t get no respect.”
Neurons, the “talented tenth” of the human brain that hog the lion’s share of brain scientists’ attention, are indeed a work of evolutionary art. They’ve got a knack that glia lack: Their aptitude for high-speed, long-distance communication makes them the nervous system’s premier information processors. “When the brain is injured, the neighborhood astrocytes go into a completely altered state.” We now know they’re doing much more. Certainly, it’s no stretch to imagine that knowing what glial cells do, and how they do it, could help explain brain disorders and how to cure them. Science news, science articles, all day, every day. Brain Basics. InnerSuper. 2012 March 12 - The Scale of the Universe Interactive. Discover the cosmos!
Posted on Thursday June 18, 2009 by Staff Writers By Sarah Russel Unless you’re enrolled at one of the best online colleges or are an elite member of the science and engineering inner circle, you’re probably left out of most of the exciting research explored by the world’s greatest scientists.
But thanks to the Internet and the generosity of many universities and online colleges, you’ve now got access to the cutting edge theories and projects that are changing the world in this list below. If you’re looking for even more amazing lectures, check out our updated list for 2012 with more talks from great minds. General Let the world’s top scientists explain exactly how they do their job when you listen to these lectures. Science and Engineering From materials science to the study of thermodynamics, learn more about the science of engineering here. WTC Lecture – collapse of WTC Buildings: Steven E. Biology and Medicine Chemistry Physics and Astronomy Earth and Environment Technology Science and Business.
Science 2.0 - ® The world's best scientists, the Internet's smartest readers. Science news and science jobs from New Scientist. Seeing Relativity: Mind-bending tour of the solar system. Science News, Science Research, Science Articles. NASA Science. How to Trick Your Brain for Happiness. This month, we feature videos of a Greater Good presentation by Rick Hanson, the best-selling author and trailblazing psychologist.
In this excerpt from his talk, Dr. Hanson explains how we can take advantage of the brain’s natural “plasticity”—it’s ability to change shape over time. gobyg There’s this great line by Ani Tenzin Palmo, an English woman who spent 12 years in a cave in Tibet: “We do not know what a thought is, yet we’re thinking them all the time.” It’s true. In recent years, though, we have started to better understand the neural bases of states like happiness, gratitude, resilience, love, compassion, and so forth.
Ultimately, what this can mean is that with proper practice, we can increasingly trick our neural machinery to cultivate positive states of mind. But in order to understand how, you need to understand three important facts about the brain. Schizophrenia. What is schizophrenia?
Schizophrenia is a chronic, severe, and disabling brain disorder that has affected people throughout history. About 1 percent of Americans have this illness.1 People with the disorder may hear voices other people don't hear. They may believe other people are reading their minds, controlling their thoughts, or plotting to harm them. This can terrify people with the illness and make them withdrawn or extremely agitated. The search for the fundamental.