Recent cough research, highlighted in a feature at ScienceNews, suggests that the neural circuitry of coughing also involves temperature perception and higher brain areas.

Research undertaken at UCLA, used MRI scans to compare the brains of 50 meditators to 50 non-meditators. What they discovered was that long-term meditators display large amounts of gyrification in the brain (the amount of folding in the cortex) which is what gives the brain its unique, ridged appearance. The folded a brain is, the quicker it can process information.

Anxious people have a heightened sense of smell when it comes to sniffing out a threat, according to a new study by Elizabeth Krusemark and Wen Li from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US.

Nerve cells from the brain’s emotion hub talk directly to a region that doles out attention, a new study shows. The connection, described in the April 11 Journal of Neuroscience, may help explain how people automatically focus on emotional events.

Nerve cells from the brain’s emotion hub talk directly to a region that doles out attention, a study of monkeys shows. The connection, described in the April 11 Journal of Neuroscience, may help explain how people automatically focus on emotional events.

University of Illinois scientists have mapped the physical architecture of intelligence in the brain in one of the largest and most comprehensive analyses so far of the brain structures vital to general intelligence and to specific aspects of intellectual functioning, such as verbal comprehension and working memory.Theirs is one of the largest and most comprehensive analyses so far of the brain structures vital to general intelligence and to specific aspects of intellectual functioning, such as verbal comprehension and working memory.