Neurology

Wearing electrode-studded headbands to track their brain waves, two subjects watched the campaign commercial on a monitor in front of them. Presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, clutching a microphone as she spoke to an approving crowd, promised that people in need would never be "invisible" to her. When the volunteers heard "invisible," the equipment registered a jolt of electricity in their frontal lobes. "It got their attention," said Brad D. Feldman, an analyst for EmSense Corp.

Assisted by tiny electrodes implanted in his brain, a man who had been in a coma-like state for six years regained the ability to drink from a cup, comb his hair and speak in short sentences, researchers said Wednesday. Within hours of receiving what researchers described as a pacemaker for the brain, the man opened his eyes and tracked the movement of people in his hospital room.

Reflecting in the spring of 2005 on his lab's recent successes, which he regarded as a culmination of decades of work, UC Irvine neuroscientist Gary Lynch said: "This will be a moment when all the tribes of neuroscience come to the same campfire." He was wrong. There was no reaction. Nothing. Initially, he couldn't even get a short paper on a crucial visualization experiment published.

WASHINGTON -- As a record producer turned neuroscientist -- on a first-name basis with Stevie Wonder and Carlos Santana -- Daniel Levitin holds the title of Most Righteous College Professor. (At least until recent astrophysics PhD Brian May of Queen gets a teaching gig.) We caught up with the author of "This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession," whose rocking out is now confined to a sax-and-guitar gig with McGill University's Diminished Faculties.

Exploring the neurobiology of politics, scientists have found that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work. In a simple experiment reported todayin the journal Nature Neuroscience, scientists at New York University and UCLA show that political orientation is related to differences in how the brain processes information.

Imagine a trip to the park. You encounter a blindfolded man with electrodes stuck to his head. Nearby is another man, holding what looks like a control box for a remote control car. As the man fiddles with the control box joysticks, the blindfolded man sways through the park like a zombie, walking wherever he is steered. This is what you would have seen had you stumbled across Dr. Richard Fitzpatrick at the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens in Australia recently.

Sophisticated brain-imaging techniques suggest that a young woman in a vegetative state five months after a traffic accident had some mental functioning, even though she was unable to physically respond to her environment, British researchers report today. The woman's brain showed mental activity virtually identical to that of healthy people when she was addressed in complex sentences and when told to imagine activities such as playing tennis, the physicians reported in the journal Science.

IN ALL HER YEARS of tending sheep in the western reaches of the Navajo range, Lois Neztsosie had never seen anything so odd. New lakes had appeared as if by magic in the arid scrublands. Instead of hunting for puddles in the sandstone, she could lead her 100 animals to drink their fill. She would quench her own thirst as well, parting the film on the water's surface with her hands and leaning down to swallow. Despite the abundant water, an unexpected blessing, her flock failed to thrive.

Drinking small to moderate amounts of alcohol, which may protect people against heart disease, doesn't slow the normal brain shrinkage that comes with aging and may accelerate the process, researchers said Tuesday. They found that the more people drank, the smaller the size of their brains, according to a study in the Archives of Neurology. Even people who drank lightly -- one to seven drinks a week -- had slightly smaller brains than nondrinkers, the study found. The association was especially pronounced in women.

Whether drawn as a cartoon or disguised as Catwoman, the striking features of Halle Berry are readily recognized by movie fans. That recognition is achieved by a surprisingly small group of brain cells, an international team of researchers reports today in the journal Nature. Most researchers had thought that specific memories were spread out over large groups of brain cells, or neurons.