Archive for July, 2007

Jon-Kar Zubieta and colleagues have pinpointed a brain region central to the machinery of the placebo effect—the often controversial phenomenon in which a person’s belief in the efficacy of a treatment such as a painkilling drug influences its effect.

The researchers said their findings with human subjects offer the potential of measuring the placebo effect and even modulating it for therapeutic purposes. They also said their findings could enable measurements of… Continue reading

The classic model of how brain cells communicate was put forth in 1943 by Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts, at the time the first digital computers were being envisaged, and the McCulloch-Pitts model suggested that brain cells communicate in a binary fashion, represented by a “1” for firing and a “0” for not firing, much as a modern computer functions.

While it is common to say that a mammalian brain functions… Continue reading