Scientists have worked out why your eyes move when you’re dreaming. Scientists have known for decades that the rapid eye movements (REMs) that occur during sleep signal that we’re dreaming, but what do the individual eye motions really represent? It’s long been hypothesised that each movement of the eye reflects new visual information in our dreams, and now for the first time researchers have demonstrated that this is actually the case. According to a new study by researchers at Tel Aviv University in Israel, each flick of the eye that occurs during REM sleep accompanies the introduction of a new image in our dream, with the movement essentially acting like a reset function between individual dream "snapshots".

Source: http://www.sciencealer ...

While a baby's experiences and memories are vital to his/her development, most of us can't remember what we did before our third birthday. Why is that?

It may be that as babies we just don't have the necessary mental equipment to store and organize memories properly, a hypothesis strengthened by the famous case of Henry Molaison. Molaison was unable to remember any new events that happened to him after a faulty brain operation. Though he still had temporary short-term memory and could learn new skills, he couldn't retain information for long.

We know that neurons continue to be added to our brains in our early years, and it's possible that when this building process has finished, memories can start to form.

Another hypothesis is that our sense ...

In July 2011, a 52-year-old woman presented at a psychiatric clinic in the Netherlands reported that for her entire life she’d seen multiple peoples’ faces change into dragon-like faces. She was suffering from what is known as prosopometamorphopsia; a psychiatric disorder in which faces appear distorted. What made matters worse, researchers couldn’t work out what was causing this to occur. Various brain scans including MRI, electroencephalogram, and neurological examinations, as well as blood tests were all normal. One area of the brain that might be the cause is the fusiform gyrus, which is the part of our face recognition circuitry. The fusiform gyrus is located in the ventral occipitotemporal cortex, and damage to it can make people ha ...

I recommend you watch the whole video, but if you're anxious and eager to see what I'm referring to, skip to the fourth minute.

An informative recapitulation of the brain's complex physiological mysteries.

Users of magic mushrooms often report altered states of consciousness and a synesthesia-like melding of the senses. Now, scientists may have figured out why: Psilocybin changes the brain’s wiring, creating a hyperconnected brain that contains links between regions that don’t normally communicate with each other.


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After a broken neck left him quadriplegic, Ian Burkhart was told he would never be able to use his hands. Now he can grasp a bottle and pick up a credit card by using a computer plugged directly into his brain. Special software is able to decode his thoughts and convert them into electrical signals in his hand, bypassing the damaged nerves in his spine. Now Ian has regained an amazing degree of control over his hand, each movement stimulated by his own thoughts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I_q_dFtPhU ...