Category: Blog

Affective Neuroscience, Blog, Brain research, EEG research, Emotional Brain, Emotional development, Infants research

Exploring the brain correlates of emotions in babies

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One of the most interesting topics in the field of emotional development research relates to infants´ capacity to express and experience different emotional states. A general question refers to when emotions first emerge in humans life.  Approach and withdrawal are two important concepts in the definition of human´s emotions. Both constructs have not typically been viewed as features of infant emotional behavior until late in the first year. However, when looking directly into infants´ brain, researchers have found a different story suggesting that infants experience positive and negative emotions from birth but in a very basic way and not as adults do.

Infants´ emotions are not equivalent to adults emotions

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Bilingualism, Blog, Brain research, Cognitive Neuroscience, Numerical Cognition

Bilingual brain: a preferred language for math?

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The phenomenon of bilingualism is an important research topic in cognitive neuroscience. If you are bilingual you probably have felt the need to count or perform simple arithmetic – such as additions and multiplications-  using one particular language, even when communicating more frequently with your other language. You may wonder if your brain works differently compared to monolinguals or why you find more difficult to perform mental calculations when you are not using your preferred language for math. But for the brain, what it means to be bilingual?

Bilingual advantage yes or no?

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Blog, Uncategorized

How consciousness is represented in the brain?

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Humans have the ability to learn and interact with the world being aware of their own experience.  This knowledge about one´s awareness is called “metacognition” and it is one of the major characteristics that differentiate humans from other species. But, what are the brain mechanisms underlying consciousness?  How does the brain create different consciousness states?  Modern Neuroscience has investigated these questions for centuries, but yet we have no idea how consciousness arises in the brain. Although brain technology has hugely progressed in the last decades, for researchers is very difficult to study conscious experiences because they are entirely subjective and cannot be accessed by others. Thus, measuring consciousness in experimental conditions it is almost impracticable without getting contaminated by subjective biases.

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