Linguistics For Normal People!

Is That A Fish In Your Ear? by Matthew Young
Linguistics in a nutshell.

Vision Simulator
How do things look to people with colour-blindness or cataracts?

Eye Contact Promotes Imitation

Scientists from the University of Nottingham's School of Psychology conducted a study by using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI, imaging that measures blood flow to functioning areas of the brain) to scan the brains of volunteers while they viewed videos of an actress making casual eye contact while opening or closing her hand, and the participants were told her mimic her behaviour.
Essentially this study shows that eye contact promotes imitation by exercising the medial prefrontal cortex of the brain. This area of the brain is responsible for planning cognitive behaviours, expressing personality, decision making, and responding to social situations.

Human spine

Image generated with MRI technology.

MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) is a medical imaging technology that uses high-powered magnets (up to 30,000x stronger than Earth's magnetic field) to generate images of the body. It is especially useful in developing images of the soft tissues of the body, more so than CT scanning or X-rays. Unlike X-rays or CT scans, MRI uses no radiation.

A typical MRI scan can last anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. The patient lies still within a long tube, where radiowaves pass through the patient's body. This realigns the nuclei of their cells. As the nuclei move back into their normal position, they send out radiowaves of their own, which the computer then interprets as a picture.

The Neuroscience Behind Boozy Blackouts

Image: The neon green (left) is showing steroids produced by the neurons, which inhibit the formation of memory, in response to the alcohol. On the right: the same region, minus the booze.

Researchers have found the neurons affected by drinking are in the hippocampus and other areas of higher cognitive functioning and the “molecular mechanism that appears to underlie blackouts”.

The idea is kinda of domino effect: you drink, the alcohol triggers your neurons to produce a steroid that “inhibits long-term potentiation (LTP), a process that strengthens the connections between neurons and is crucial to learning and memory”. And when just the right amount of this steroid is released, it interferes with synaptic plasticity or memory formation, so you aren’t passed out, your still processing info, your just not able to remember it & have no idea what happened last night or who that is…and there’s your 20’s. Kidding. But the same thing applies with stress in the hippocampus, which may be why our memory of stressful or traumatic situations may be fuzzy/impaired as well. But back to drinking, the brain cells aren’t dead -a little good news there, hmm? The receptors are just “blocking the neural signals that create memories”. The more we know about what happens when memory is inhibited in various ways, the closer we get to “ strategies to improve memory”.  You can drink to that.

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Vocabulary Lesson: Neuroscience

neu∙ro∙sci∙ence

-noun

the field of study encompassing the various scientific disciplines dealing with the structure, development, function, chemistry, pharmacology, and pathology of the nervous system

Neuron