Word: neuroscientist
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...doing - or whatever Jim Cramer tells us to do. "The brain cannot afford to re-evaluate on a millisecond by millisecond basis. So it will use other people's opinion as a proxy for its own," says Emory University neuroeconomist Gregory Berns, author of the new book Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently...
When Banaji, along with cognitive neuroscientist Liz Phelps of New York University, conducted brain scans of subjects using functional magnetic resonance imaging, they uncovered the reasons for the results. White subjects respond with greater activation of the amygdala--a region that processes alarm--when shown images of black faces than when shown images of white faces. "One of the amygdala's critical functions is fear-conditioning," says Phelps. "You attend to things that are scary because that's essential for survival." Later studies have shown similar results when black subjects look at white faces...
...Most scientists believe that the pruning is guided both by genetics and by a use-it-or-lose-it principle. Nobel prizewinning neuroscientist Gerald Edelman has described that process as "neural Darwinism" - survival of the fittest (or most used) synapses. How you spend your time may be critical. Research shows, for instance, that practicing piano quickly thickens neurons in the brain regions that control the fingers. Studies of London cab drivers, who must memorize all the city's streets, show that they have an unusually large hippocampus, a structure involved in memory. Giedd's research suggests that the cerebellum...
...Scientists and the general public had attributed the bad decisions teens make to hormonal changes," says Elizabeth Sowell, a UCLA neuroscientist who has done seminal MRI work on the developing brain. "But once we started mapping where and when the brain changes were happening, we could say, Aha, the part of the brain that makes teenagers more responsible is not finished maturing...
...unclear whether hands-free laws alone will make the roads safer. Numerous studies have concluded that any type of cell phone use - hands-free or not - can distract a driver enough to increase the likelihood of an accident. According to research conducted by Carnegie Mellon University neuroscientist Marcel Just, simply listening intently to a cell phone conversation is enough to impair driving. And a 2004 study from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that drivers using hand-free cell phones had to redial calls 40% of the time, compared with 18% for drivers using handheld sets, suggesting that hands...