Tag: nerves

50 years ago, phantom pain was blamed on misfiring nerves 

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Physiology of the phantom limb — Science News, May 11, 1974 

Nearly everybody who has had a leg or arm amputated sometimes experiences the sensation or feeling that they still have their missing limbs. Some of them experience pain in their “phantom limbs.” … One assumes that [cut nerves] frequently fire off impulses to the central nervous system and … create the sensation of a limb still being present…. [Scientists] have now confirmed that these events occur, at least

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Ancient viruses helped speedy nerves evolve

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Ancient viruses have really gotten on our nerves, but in the best of ways.

One particular retrovirus — embedded in the DNA of jawed vertebrates — helps turn on production of a protein needed to insulate nerve fibers, researchers report February 15 in Cell. Such insulation, called myelin, may have helped make speedy thoughts and complex brains possible.

The retrovirus trick was so handy, in fact, that it showed up many times in the evolution of vertebrates with jaws,

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These brainless jellyfish use their eyes and bundles of nerves to learn

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For Caribbean box jellyfish, learning is literally a no-brainer.

In a new experiment, these animals learned to spot and avoid obstacles despite having no central brain, researchers report September 22 in Current Biology. This is the first evidence that jellyfish can make mental connections between events — such as seeing something and running into it — and change their behavior accordingly.

“Maybe learning does not need a very complex nervous system, but rather, learning is an integral part of

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