Word: neocortex
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...were accorded. "Biologically, fight-or-flight behavior has two distinct stages," the researchers wrote. "The short-term response [is] a surge in adrenaline production. This response is limited to a few minutes, because adrenaline degrades rapidly. Only after returning to homeostasis do the higher-order brain functions of the neocortex begin to override instinctual responses...
...individual's sex. Males have more bulk in the region of the brain connected with aggression and competition and less in the region that tempers those tendencies - which better equips them for the socially competitive world into which they're born. Females have more heft in the neocortex, a higher-order region that wires them for complex tasks like nurturing and reading social cues. Again, it's not clear whether brain size drove traits or vice versa, but they do appear linked...
...epilepsy-induced déjà vu usually don't experience the same disturbing eeriness that's so common in others. And that difference supports McHugh and Tonegawa's theory as well. "We suspect that the strange feeling comes from a conflict between two parts of the brain," Tonegawa says. "The neocortex is aware of the fact that you've never been in a situation before. The hippocampus is telling you that, yes, you have...
Modern scientists have done a far better job of things, dividing the brain into multiple, discrete regions with satisfyingly technical names--hypothalamus, caudate nucleus, neocortex--and mapping particular functions to particular sites. Here lives abstract thought; here lives creativity; here is emotion; here is speech. But what about here and here and here and here--all the countless places and ways the brain continues to baffle us? Here still be dragons...
...detects how quickly the brain reacts to stimuli. But unlike fMRI scans, MEG can't identify which parts of the brain are reacting. And that's important, since researchers say it's the interplay between the deeper, older, primitive brain, where our emotions reside, and the more logical neocortex, which informs our decision making. And because the dance between the old- and new-brain areas occurs in the subconscious, that's information focus groups or polls can never determine...