Tag Archives: language

How the Brain Tunes in to the Music of Speech

Ken Probst/UCSF

Human voices convey meaning and emphasis by changing pitch. Now, scientists at University of California, San Francisco believe they have found the brain area that makes this possible.

Scientists increasingly believe home sapiens achieved language not only by evolving a sophisticated larynx, or voice box, but also by developing the neurological capacity to use it in a variety of ways.

Read/listen to my full story at KJZZ’s Arizona Science Desk:
Scientists Identify The Brain’s Pitch Area, Essential For Language

Brain Combats Rare Dementia by Recruiting New Neurons

Image by Aneta Kielar / University of Arizona

A team of researchers at University of Arizona and the University of Toronto have published a study of a rare dementia called primary progressive aphasia, or PPA.

The research linked improved patient outcomes to the brain’s capacity to “recruit” other areas of the brain to make up for deficits.

Read/listen to my full story at KJZZ’s Arizona Science Desk:
UA Study Examines How Brain Rewires Itself To Cope With Rare Dementia

The Future: At the Corner of Close and Soon

Aerocar 600 fantasy flying car
Not quite what we had in mind.
(Photo by Joe Mabel)

Somehow the future we get is never quite the one we were promised. Then again, sometimes the very ideas wrapped in the pages of sci-fi and Popular Science are right under our noses, in disguise. After all, we have hand-held sensor-communicators and miraculous supermaterials – they just take the rather mundane form of carbon-fiber-wrapped smartphones.

Maybe our blindness arises from our physical and electronic architecture. Has exchanging Googie buildings for Google caused us to overlook the flying-car equivalents that fill our everyday lives, or soon will? Read on.

Our 10 Favorite Replacements for ‘Where’s My Flying Car?’