Q&A with Earl Miller Working memory is key to our everyday survival — how we communicate, remember what we need to do, learn new things, and generally operate. It is also an aspect of cognition that is disrupted or dysfunctional in almost every neuropsychiatric disorder. Therefore, understanding how working memory works is of vital importance. […]
Sizing Up Living Brain Tissue
What if we could reliably measure children’s brain circuits to predict reading ability just as we measure their height and weight to predict physical development? That is a question Brian Wandell has been exploring for the past 30 years – how to use neuroimaging techniques like MRI to quantify the properties and activity of living […]
Unraveling the Motor Movements That Connect All Primates
Q&A with Jon Kaas Grasping, reaching, climbing – these are just some of the basic instinctive behaviors that we see even in babies. While these movements are not uniquely human, how they unfold neurologically is unique to primates. All primates have these motor behaviors, or “motor primitives,” and they all occur in similar ways across […]
