neuroscience – Quanta Magazine https://www.quantamagazine.org Illuminating science Fri, 21 Feb 2025 21:18:44 -0500 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.2 How ‘Event Scripts’ Structure Our Personal Memories https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-event-scripts-structure-our-personal-memories-20250221/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-event-scripts-structure-our-personal-memories-20250221/#respond Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:18:14 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=146781 The post How ‘Event Scripts’ Structure Our Personal Memories first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> After shuffling the cards in a standard 52-card deck, Alex Mullen, a three-time world memory champion, can memorize their order in under 20 seconds. As he flips though the cards, he takes a mental walk through a house. At each point in his journey — the mailbox, front door, staircase and so on — he attaches a card. To recall the cards, he relives the trip. This technique, called “method of loci”…

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-event-scripts-structure-our-personal-memories-20250221/feed/ 0 Concept Cells Help Your Brain Abstract Information and Build Memories https://www.quantamagazine.org/concept-cells-help-your-brain-abstract-information-and-build-memories-20250121/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/concept-cells-help-your-brain-abstract-information-and-build-memories-20250121/#respond Tue, 21 Jan 2025 15:30:34 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=145603 The post Concept Cells Help Your Brain Abstract Information and Build Memories first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Imagine you’re on a first date, sipping a martini at a bar. You eat an olive and patiently listen to your date tell you about his job at a bank. Your brain is processing this scene, in part, by breaking it down into concepts. Bar. Date. Martini. Olive. Bank. Deep in your brain, neurons known as concept cells are firing. You might have concept cells that fire for martinis but not for olives.

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/concept-cells-help-your-brain-abstract-information-and-build-memories-20250121/feed/ 0 The Year in Biology https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-year-in-biology-20241218/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-year-in-biology-20241218/#respond Wed, 18 Dec 2024 15:15:41 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=145146 The post The Year in Biology first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Many types of discoveries can surprise and delight, but few findings are more exciting than the overturned assumption — when scientists, sometimes accidentally, stumble upon a way to flip received wisdom on its head. For example, biologists have assumed for decades that the immune system regulates itself, without the intervention of our brains. But this year they discovered that a neural circuit…

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-year-in-biology-20241218/feed/ 0 What Can Birdsong Teach Us About Human Language? https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-can-birdsong-teach-us-about-human-language-20241121/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-can-birdsong-teach-us-about-human-language-20241121/#respond Thu, 21 Nov 2024 16:15:56 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=144303 The post What Can Birdsong Teach Us About Human Language? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> It’s fair to say that enjoyment of a podcast would be severely limited without the human capacity to create and understand speech. That capacity has often been cited as a defining characteristic of our species, and one that sets us apart in the long history of life on Earth. Yet we know that other species communicate in complex ways. Studies of the neurological foundations of language suggest that…

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-can-birdsong-teach-us-about-human-language-20241121/feed/ 0 How the Human Brain Contends With the Strangeness of Zero https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-human-brain-contends-with-the-strangeness-of-zero-20241018/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-human-brain-contends-with-the-strangeness-of-zero-20241018/#respond Fri, 18 Oct 2024 13:47:09 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=142492 The post How the Human Brain Contends With the Strangeness of Zero first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Around 2,500 years ago, Babylonian traders in Mesopotamia impressed two slanted wedges into clay tablets. The shapes represented a placeholder digit, squeezed between others, to distinguish numbers such as 50, 505 and 5,005. An elementary version of the concept of zero was born. Hundreds of years later, in seventh-century India, zero took on a new identity. No longer a placeholder…

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