Category: Biology Philosophy
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Rewards. Creativity.
Creativity is one of humanity’s most distinctive abilities and enduring mysteries. Innovative ideas and solutions have enabled our species to survive existential threats and thrive. Yet, creativity cannot be necessary for survival because many species that do not possess it have managed to flourish far longer than humans. So what drove the evolutionary development of…
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Both hemispheres. Superpowers. Human powers.
Infants and young children have brains with a superpower, of sorts, say neuroscientists. Whereas adults process most discrete neural tasks in specific areas in one or the other of their brain’s two hemispheres, youngsters use both the right and left hemispheres to do the same task. The finding suggests a possible reason why children appear…
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Getting ready to see…
A KAIST research team’s computational simulations demonstrated that the waves of spontaneous neural activity in the retinas of still-closed eyes in mammals develop long-range horizontal connections in the visual cortex during early developmental stages. You see, to prepare the animal to see when its eyes open, neural circuits in the brain’s visual system must begin…
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Optical illusions…
Why people perceive motion in some static images has mystified not only those who view these optical illusions but neuroscientists who have tried to explain the phenomenon. Now Yale neuroscientists have found some answers in the eyes of flies, they reported in Aug. 24, 2020 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It…
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Fitness. Change. Stupid mirrors…
There’s a paradox within the theory of evolution: The life forms that exist today are here because they were able to change when past environments disappeared. Yet, organisms evolve to fit into specific environmental niches. How do these mechanisms co-exist? A research tried to answer that question. There are two general possible solutions. First, the…
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