Scientists find microplastics in blood for first time
Scientists have discovered microplastics in human blood for the first time, warning that the ubiquitous particles could also be making their way into organs.
Scientists have discovered microplastics in human blood for the first time, warning that the ubiquitous particles could also be making their way into organs.
Environment
Mar 25, 2022
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Scientists from Trinity College Dublin believe our brains could use quantum computation. Their discovery comes after they adapted an idea developed to prove the existence of quantum gravity to explore the human brain and ...
General Physics
Oct 19, 2022
24
2011
An astrophysicist at the University of Bologna and a neurosurgeon at the University of Verona compared the network of neuronal cells in the human brain with the cosmic network of galaxies... and surprising similarities emerged
General Physics
Nov 16, 2020
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8384
A team of researchers from the University of Aveiro and the University of Porto, both in Portugal, and the University of Birmingham in the U.K. has found that for humans, the brain and testis have the highest number of common ...
An international scientific team including more than 40 authors from seven different countries, led by a researcher at the University of Malaga Juan Pascual Anaya, has managed to sequence the first genome of the myxini, also ...
Evolution
Jan 12, 2024
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273
The human brain has 100 billion neurons, making 100 trillion connections. Understanding the precise circuits of brain cells that orchestrate all of our day-to-day behaviors—such as moving our limbs, responding to fear and ...
Evolution
Nov 26, 2021
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The largest animals do not have proportionally bigger brains—with humans bucking this trend—a study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution has revealed.
Plants & Animals
Jul 8, 2024
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609
Scientists say they have proven what many people fortunate enough to grow up with theirs have known all along: Grandmothers have strong nurturing instincts and are hard-wired to care deeply about their grandchildren.
Other
Nov 17, 2021
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Want to learn to code? Put down the math book. Practice those communication skills instead.
Education
Mar 2, 2020
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4063
A new paper by Dr. Miki Ben-Dor and Prof. Ran Barkai from the Jacob M. Alkow Department of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University proposes an original unifying explanation for the physiological, behavioral and cultural evolution ...
Evolution
Mar 1, 2021
11
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The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate, and most invertebrate, animals. Some primitive animals such as jellyfish and starfish have a decentralized nervous system without a brain, while sponges lack any nervous system at all. In vertebrates, the brain is located in the head, protected by the skull and close to the primary sensory apparatus of vision, hearing, balance, taste, and smell.
Brains can be extremely complex. The cerebral cortex of the human brain contains roughly 15-33 billion neurons depending on gender and age, linked with up to 10,000 synaptic connections each. Each cubic millimeter of cerebral cortex contains roughly one billion synapses. These neurons communicate with one another by means of long protoplasmic fibers called axons, which carry trains of signal pulses called action potentials to distant parts of the brain or body and target them to specific recipient cells.
The most important biological function of the brain is to generate behaviors that promote the welfare of an animal. Brains control behavior either by activating muscles, or by causing secretion of chemicals such as hormones. Even single-celled organisms may be capable of extracting information from the environment and acting in response to it. Sponges, which lack a central nervous system, are capable of coordinated body contractions and even locomotion. In vertebrates, the spinal cord by itself contains neural circuitry capable of generating reflex responses as well as simple motor patterns such as swimming or walking. However, sophisticated control of behavior on the basis of complex sensory input requires the information-integrating capabilities of a centralized brain.
Despite rapid scientific progress, much about how brains work remains a mystery. The operations of individual neurons and synapses are now understood in considerable detail, but the way they cooperate in ensembles of thousands or millions has been very difficult to decipher. Methods of observation such as EEG recording and functional brain imaging tell us that brain operations are highly organized, but these methods do not have the resolution to reveal the activity of individual neurons.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA