A classification task involving marking images of items as “new,” “old,” or “similar” to a prior set of images helps explain how and why older people have difficulty forming new memories and distinguishing similar objects from one another, Michael Yassa and his team at Johns Hopkins’ Krieger School of Arts and Sciences found.

Using MRI, Yassa observed how the brains of college students are more likely… read more

DNA discoverer Dr. Francis Crick and Dr. Christof Koch, a professor of computation and neural systems at the California Institute of Technology, are exploring the neural correlates of consciousness” (N.C.C.’s) — the neuronal states and processes associated with conscious awareness.

Koch and his graduate students are gaining experimental evidence for what Crick had termed the “awareness neurons” that enable us to see.

While many scientists assume that consciousness… read more