News
Now new results from a Cancer Research UK-funded team led by Professor Alison Lloyd at University College London have found an important link between nerve repair and how tumours may spread within the nervous system, and they've just published their findings in the journal Cell....
Scientists in Germany have uncovered a previously overlooked aspect of the disease process that underlies the development of multiple sclerosis (MS).
In a breakthrough that might also help to explain why amputees suffer phantom limb pain, scientists have hit the nail on the head in explaining why we clasp our two hands together after we injure one of them.
Questions

Why do I talk out loud when I dream?
My own view would be that the nervous system suppresses the motor system when we actually go to sleep. This is why we don't end up acting out more of our dreams, because of this region in the brain stem that stops the motor pathways going through. That will include some of the more complicated movements that make vocalisations happen, but you’re still, in your dream, going to be talking and things, aren’t you? So, that’s why you would talk out loud sometimes - I guess there’d be a breakthrough of that suppression activity.

Do we really only use 10% of our brains or is that a myth?
We put this to Professor Jack Gallant and Professor Paul Fletcher...
Jack - I think that’s definitely a myth. We use a lot of our brains a lot of the time, and it switches back and forth all the time. Which sub-systems of the brain are being used depends on the task and what you're trying to do, but the brain is there for a reason and you're using a lot of it most of the time.
Paul - I was just thinking, the person who started that rumour was probably using 10% of their brain at the time, I think.
Chris - Very good! The point is, if you look at someone who’s had a stroke and they may have only lost a small amount of their brain, they nonetheless don't look normal or they may not behave entirely normally, indicating that you need all of your brain. It’s just slightly less active at certain times.
Paul - Yes. I mean, one could add that people who’ve had a hemispherectomy – a whole half of their brain removed at an early age - actually go on to achieve great things intellectually. So, if it happens early enough and the brain is sufficiently plastic, then actually you can do without a lot of the volume of the brain, but I think you would use what was there 100%.

How does an MRI scan "see" a hallucination?
We put this to Professor Paul Fletcher and Professor Jack Gallant...
Paul - I don't know if that’s a great metaphysical question. I mean, the brain scanner is looking at how the brain behaves when it is seeing something that isn’t there, so it’s not so much interested or able to see the content of that although as we’ve just heard from Jack actually, the possibility of seeing what the brain thinks is there is possibly something for the future.
Chris - Any comment on that Jack?
Jack - Yeah. I think there’s growing evidence that when you have a visual hallucination, what’s actually happening is the visual areas of your brain are being activated, essentially top down from inside out and the visual experiences you have in the visual hallucination are –since the brain subsystems were being operated in those cases are visual, then you both experience visual events and you could decode visual events because you're decoding from the same parts of the brain that are encoding visual information normally.
Chris - And hence, what you've got is this system where you think it’s real because it’s the same bit of the brain that would say, “Yup, I'm experiencing something” but it’s just being internally generated.
Jack - Right.

Are MRI scans safe?
We put this to Professor Jack Gallant...
Jack - As far as anyone knows, there is no long term danger from MRI. Magnetic Resonance Imaging involves putting someone in a very large stationary magnetic field. As far as anyone knows, it has no influence on any systems of the body or any biological systems.

Can you get hallucinations of smell and touch?
We put this question to Professor Paul Fletcher...
Paul - You certainly can - you can get hallucinations in any sensory modality. You can get hallucinations of taste, smell, touch, as well as visual and auditory. In fact, in certain cases of mental illness, hallucinations of smell can be exceedingly unpleasant and people can have the belief that they're actually rotting from the inside.
Chris - That’s not very pleasant.
Paul - It sounds horrible.
Kitchen Science

Here is a lovely little experiment you can do if you can get hold of a small rare earth supermagnet. Using just a couple of tubes you can produce surprising forces.
One of the most bizarre and beautiful pieces of physics is superconductivity
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Interviews
Historically, scientists thought that the most severe form of malaria, known as falciparum malaria, first spread into humans from chimps. But now, scientists have found that, in fact, it was gorillas that gave us malaria rather than chimps.
A satellite designed to measure the Earth’s gravitational field with unprecedented accuracy may sound like something out of a James Bond film, but it is in fact a reality. The European GOCE spacecraft or "Gravity field and steady state Ocean Circulation Explorer" has been doing just that ...
Using computers to read the mind might seem more suited to the pages of a sci-fi thriller, but scientists are edging closer to this reality using brain imaging technology such as functional magnetic reasonance imaging - fMRI. Professor Jack Gallant and his team from the University of California at ...
As well as helping us to understand what’s going on in the brain when it’s at work, brain scanning techniques can also be used to look at what might be happening to cause some unusual experiences. Professor Paul Fletcher from the University of Cambridge uses fMRI to investigate hallucinations and de...
QotW
Should you eat apple cores? Are they dangerous, or is throwing them away nothing but a waste of good apple?
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