Protein has unique effects in neural connections related to information processing

Health Problems

Our cognitive abilities come down to how well the connections, or synapses, between our brain cells transmit signals. A new study by researchers at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory digs deep into the molecular mechanisms that enable synaptic transmission to show the distinct role of a protein that when mutated has been linked to causing intellectual disability. The […]

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As brain extracts meaning from vision, study tracks progression of processing

Health Problems

Here’s the neuroscience of a neglected banana (and a lot of other things in daily life): whenever you look at its color—green in the store, then yellow, and eventually brown on your countertop—your mind categorizes it as unripe, ripe, and then spoiled. A new study that tracked how the brain turns simple sensory inputs, such as “green,” into meaningful categories, […]

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