Tagged Questions

1
vote
0answers
17 views

Hippocampal regulation of hypothalamus

What is the difference between CA1-CA4 hippocampal subfields and dentate gyrus (DG) in negative regulation of hypothalamus? I`ve found only evidence that GR expression is more in CA1-2 and DG, while ...
3
votes
1answer
94 views

Why do humans alone have the capability to have religious/spiritual experiences?

What is it in our brain that makes having such experiences possible? I assume other species don't have these. Sure there are instances in the natural world where you can see individuals of the species ...
8
votes
2answers
201 views

Do memories have mass?

If it were possible to live forever, would our brains grow infinitely with the number of memories that we store? Or would we remove old memories as we create new ones?
5
votes
1answer
170 views

How do neurons form new connections in brain plasticity?

I've been reading about brain plasticity and how the brain can "rewire" itself. One of the things that is not clear to me - how neurons can establish new connections. Does this rewiring mean that ...
5
votes
1answer
60 views

on/off behavior of neural networks

What causes a group of disembodied neurons in a dish to fire after a silence? If there are no neurons providing a stimulus for more firing (as in a dish of disembodied rat neurons), then why don't ...
3
votes
0answers
70 views

Why do the brains of cocaine-users shrink faster than the brains of non-cocaine users?

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/04/cocaine-may-age-the-brain.html?rss=1 Cocaine-dependent individuals showed a significantly greater-than-normal age-related decline in gray matter in ...
6
votes
2answers
347 views

Density of neurons/cells in the mouse brain

Could someone point out some relevant papers or resources (an online DB maybe?) describing the density of neurons (or, more in general, of cells) in different areas of the mouse brain?
14
votes
2answers
624 views

How and where, in the human brain, are memories stored?

Background I am a computer programmer who is fascinated by artificial intelligence and artificial neural networks, and I am becoming more curious about how biological neural networks work. Context ...
9
votes
1answer
123 views

Do taller people have larger somatosensory cortices than short people?

Do taller people have larger somatosensory cortices than short people? What about larger motor cortices? And if so, could this imply that they have less space devoted to other functions, like ...
14
votes
1answer
207 views

Why does regular exercise increase brain volume?

It has been shown in several studies that regular aerobic exercise increases brain volume in aging humans. The changes were observed in hippocampus and were correlated with dramatic reduction of ...
7
votes
1answer
80 views

Are cerebellar basket and stellate neurons actually different cell types?

The title more or less says it all, but to contextualise a bit: Cerebellar molecular layer interneurons have been classified, probably since Cajal, into the basket cells, which synapse onto the soma ...