SMA tagged posts

Rotated wireframe of brain’s physical inference and action centers

The ‘Physics Engine’ of the brain predicts how world behaves; among ‘most important aspects of cognition for survival’. Whether or not they aced the subject in high school, human beings are physics masters when it comes to understanding and predicting how objects in the world will behave. A Johns Hopkins University cognitive scientist has found the source of that intuition, the brain’s “physics engine.”

This engine, which comes alive when people watch physical events unfold, is not in the brain’s vision center, but in a set of regions devoted to planning actions, suggesting the brain performs constant, real-time physics calculations so people are ready to catch, dodge, hoist or take any necessary action, on the fly...

Brain function associated with higher cardiorespiratory fitness plays a role in increased cognitive performance in older adults, according to a new study. Specifically, the scientists found that dual-task processing in a core executive function brain region is associated with higher cardiorespiratory fitness and dual-task performance.

With fMRI scans in the Beckman Institute’s Biomedical Imaging Center, the researchers found that certain regions of the brain were activated more when performing two simultaneous tasks compared to a single task.

“The reason we looked at dual-task specifically is because it’s a measure of executive function, which is required for multiple cognitive processes, such as working memory, task management, coordination, and 3inhibition,” said Wong...