STAT reporter Meghana Keshavan speaks with Prof. Guoping Feng about his new research that shows glial cells “very actively participate in direct neuronal function — particularly in the brain areas that control appetite, energy and metabolism.” The findings could help spur the development of weight loss medications.
Adam Piore spotlights Prof. Earl Miller’s research into the mechanisms behind working memory in an article for Discover. “Earl is kind of a rock star,” says Prof. Brad Postle of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “When he says something, a lot more people notice it.”
MIT researchers have identified a region of the brain responsible for forming habits, reports Anil Ananthaswamy for New Scientist. The researchers found that when performing an action, the prefrontal cortex, communicates with the striatum. “Over time, input from the prefrontal circuits fades, to be replaced by loops linking the striatum to the sensorimotor cortex,” Ananthaswamy explains.
Researchers from MIT and IBM are joining forces to develop systems that enable machines to recognize images and sounds as people do, reports Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe. James DiCarlo, head of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, notes that as researchers build systems that can interpret events, “we learn ways our own brains might be doing that.”
Writing for The New York Times, Steve Lohr features Prof. Tomaso Poggio’s work “building computational models of the visual cortex of the brain, seeking to digitally emulate its structure, even how it works and learns from experience.” Lohr notes that efforts like Poggio’s could lead to breakthroughs in computer vision and machine learning.
MIT neuroscientists have identified two regions of the brain involved in creating panoramic memories, writes Tara Pattilachan for The Huffington Post. “Our understanding of our environment is largely shaped by our memory for what’s currently out of sight,” says postdoc Caroline Robertson of the importance of understanding how our brains develop panoramic memories.
Prof. Earl Miller speaks with Phyllis Korkki of The New York Times about why aging makes learning new skills more difficult. “Your mind’s bandwidth is smaller. You learn at a slower rate because less information is getting in,” explains Prof. Miller. To make learning easier, Miller says it's “important to keep yourself cognitively engaged.”
Writing for The New York Times, Katie Hafner highlights how MIT researchers have identified a region of the brain that they believe could be responsible for producing feelings of loneliness. Hafner explains that “the region, known as the dorsal raphe nucleus, or D.R.N., is best known for its link to depression.”
Inside Higher Ed reporter Colleen Flaherty writes that researchers from MIT and around the world are publicly defending the late Prof. Suzanne Corkin’s work with patient H.M. in response to a highly critical publication. When “so many scholars rise to defend the reputation of a deceased colleague,” says Arthur Caplan, head of NYU’s Division of Bioethics, “that speaks volumes both about her and the problems that exist in the book.”
A study co-authored by Prof. Josh McDermott dispels the theory that musical preference is rooted in biology, writes Jacqueline Howard for CNN. "We need to accept and document the differences in how other cultures hear the world. The opportunities to do so are rapidly diminishing with the diffusion of Western music around the world,” says McDermott.
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Akst writes that MIT researchers have found that our musical tastes are culturally instilled. The researchers played consonant and dissonant chords from members of a remote Amazonian tribe and found that “they had no preference for one sound over the other—unlike the large majority of North Americans and Europeans, who prefer consonance.”
Taste in music is based on culture and not biology according to a new study by Prof. Josh McDermott, writes Emily Reynolds for Wired UK. The Tsimane' tribe the researchers surveyed plays music one line at a time, not simultaneously like Western countries, and they had no preference for dissonant and consonant sounds.
A new study co-authored by Prof. Josh McDermott finds that musical preference may stem from cultural origins, writes Vivian Wang for The Boston Globe. “It raises the possibility that things vary a lot more from culture to culture than people might have wanted to accept,” says McDermott.
A paper co-authored by Prof. Josh McDermott examines the musical preferences of a society with minimal exposure to Western culture, writes Chelsea Leu for Wired. “Maybe an innate bias for consonance exists, but that doesn’t mean every culture develops it,” Leu writes regarding the society’s lack of preference for consonant or dissonant sounds.
By studying how people from different cultures respond to consonant and dissonant chords, MIT researchers have found that musical tastes may be rooted in cultural origins, not biology, writes Sarah Kaplan for The Washington Post. The results “underscore the degree of variation that exists across cultures in terms of how people hear and evaluate music," explains Prof. Josh McDermott.