Cognitive neuroscience

The gustatory system or sense of taste is the sensory system that is partially responsible for the perception of taste. Taste is the perception stimulated when a substance in the mouth reacts chemically with taste receptor cells located on taste buds in the oral cavity, mostly on the tongue. Taste, along with the sense of smell and trigeminal nerve stimulation (registering texture, pain, and temperature), determines flavors of food and other substances. Humans have taste receptors on taste buds and other areas, including the upper surface of the tongue and the epiglottis. The gustatory cortex is responsible for the perception of taste.

Psychophysics quantitatively investigates the relationship between physical stimuli and the sensations and perceptions they produce. Psychophysics has been described as "the scientific study of the relation between stimulus and sensation" or, more completely, as "the analysis of perceptual processes by studying the effect on a subject's experience or behaviour of systematically varying the properties of a stimulus along one or more physical dimensions".

Empathy is generally described as the ability to take on another person's perspective, to understand, feel, and possibly share and respond to their experience. There are more (sometimes conflicting) definitions of empathy that include but are not limited to social, cognitive, and emotional processes primarily concerned with understanding others. Often times, empathy is considered to be a broad term, and broken down into more specific concepts and types that include cognitive empathy, emotional (or affective) empathy, somatic empathy, and spiritual empathy.

Consciousness, at its simplest, is awareness of a state or object either internal to oneself or in one's external environment. However, its nature has led to millennia of analyses, explanations, and debate among philosophers, scientists, and theologians. Opinions differ about what exactly needs to be studied or even considered consciousness. In some explanations, it is synonymous with the mind, and at other times, an aspect of it. In the past, it was one's "inner life", the world of introspection, of private thought, imagination, and volition. Today, it often includes any kind of cognition, experience, feeling, or perception. It may be awareness, awareness of awareness, metacognition, or self-awareness, either continuously changing or not. The disparate range of research, notions, and speculations raises a curiosity about whether the right questions are being asked.

Barry Michael Kerzin(born November 1, 1947) is an American physician and Buddhist monk. He has lived in Dharamshala since 1988, and serves as a personal physician to the 14th Dalai Lama, along with treating people in the local community. Following his ordination as a monk by Dalai Lama in January 2003, he has travelled, teaching and offering workshops in which he blends Buddhist teaching and his medical training. He has served as a research participant in neuroscience research into the effects of meditation on the brain.

Marcus E. Raichle (born March 15, 1937) is an American neurologist at the Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis, Missouri. He is a professor in the Department of Radiology with joint appointments in Neurology, Neurobiology and Biomedical Engineering. His research over the past 40 years has focused on the nature of functional brain imaging signals arising from PET and fMRI and the application of these techniques to the study of the human brain in health and disease. He received the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience “for the discovery of specialized brain networks for memory and cognition", together with Brenda Milner and John O’Keefe in 2014.

The neurobiological effects of physical exercise involve possible interrelated effects on brain structure, brain function, and cognition. Research in humans has demonstrated that consistent aerobic exercise (e.g., 30 minutes every day) may induce improvements in certain cognitive functions, neuroplasticity and behavioral plasticity; some of these long-term effects may include increased neuron growth, increased neurological activity (e.g., c-Fos and BDNF signaling), improved stress coping, enhanced cognitive control of behavior, improved declarative, spatial, and working memory, and structural and functional improvements in brain structures and pathways associated with cognitive control and memory. The effects of exercise on cognition may affect academic performance in children and college students, improve adult productivity, preserve cognitive function in old age, prevent or treat certain neurological disorders, and improve overall quality of life.

The microwave auditory effect, also known as the microwave hearing effect or the Frey effect, consists of the human perception of sounds induced by pulsed or modulated radio frequencies. The perceived sounds are generated directly inside the human head without the need of any receiving electronic device. The effect was first reported by persons working in the vicinity of radar transponders during World War II. In 1961, the American neuroscientist Allan H. Frey studied this phenomenon and was the first to publish information on the nature of the microwave auditory effect. The cause is thought to be thermoelastic expansion of portions of the auditory apparatus, although competing theories explain the results of holographic interferometry tests differently.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI) measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled. When an area of the brain is in use, blood flow to that region also increases.

Computational neuroscience (also known as theoretical neuroscience or mathematical neuroscience) is a branch of neuroscience which employs mathematics, computer science, theoretical analysis and abstractions of the brain to understand the principles that govern the development, structure, physiology and cognitive abilities of the nervous system.