Thinking Sensing and Behaving

Photograph of a man cleaning and taking care of a child at the same time
The Mechanisms Behind Why We Struggle With Multitasking
The brain works best with one job at a time, but daily life calls for multitasking, causing a “bottle neck” in the brain.
  • BrainFacts/SfN
Image of the Week: Dragonfly Eyes
Dragonflies hover smoothly in part thanks to information collected by their eyes. Knowing these insects' retinal circuitry helps scientists understand how neurons process spatial data.
  • BrainFacts/SfN
Sea Slug Teeth
The giant sea slug Apylsia has a simple nervous system that makes them a useful model for neuroscience research. They also have rows of tiny sharp teeth, which cover a tongue-like structure.
  • BrainFacts/SfN
An Ocean of Sensations
The brain receives information about the outside world via the senses. But how much of this information do we actually notice?
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When are children’s brains viewed as “adult brains”?
There is no magical age at which brain development suddenly stops. The brain is constantly changing, even in adulthood and old age.
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Mapping the Air
Research into the razor-sharp hearing of barn owls reveals how we create mental maps of space and may lead to hearing loss solutions.
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How much can a person learn in a lifetime?
The amount of information the brain can store in its many trillions of synapses is not infinite, but it is large enough that the amount we can learn is not limited by the brain’s storage capacity.
  • BrainFacts/SfN
Is every dementia the same as Alzheimer's disease?
Dementia is a description of any progressive disorder that takes away a person’s cognitive and functional abilities.
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Image of the Week: Sense of Smell in a Locust Brain
How does the brain track smells? Scientists use the olfactory system in insects to study how the brain responds to and processes different odors.
Image of the Week: Primate Photocreceptor Cones
Neurons in the eye turn light into electrical signals. How and where signals travel between these cells is thought to affect vision.
What does it mean to have synesthesia?
Synesthesia is a condition in which stimulation of one sense automatically evokes a perception in an unstimulated sense.
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Why do some people toss and turn during sleep if your body is "paralyzed" to keep you from reenacting dreams?
Tossing and turning generally occurs during very brief arousals from sleep during the night.
  • BrainFacts/SfN
How does the brain handle multitasking?
When two tasks demand competing attention, there is generally a switching that occurs between the neural processes involved, rather than concurrent processing as may be expected with true multitasking.
  • BrainFacts/SfN

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