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The "near-death experience" reported by cardiac arrest survivors worldwide may be grounded in science, according to research at the University of Michigan Health System. Whether and how the dying brain is capable of generating conscious activity has been vigorously debated. But in this week's PNAS Early Edition, a U-M study shows shortly after clinical death, in which the heart stops beating and blood stops flowing to the brain, rats display brain activity patterns characteristic of conscious perception. "This study, performed in animals, is the first dealing with what happens to the neurophysiological state of the dying brain," says lead study...

What can cellular neuroscientists learn about the human brain from studying a marine snail? Much more than one might suspect. "On a cell biological level, the mechanisms of learning and memory are identical, as far as we can tell," said David Glanzman, a UCLA professor of physiological science and neurobiology, whose research has strengthened the view that the human brain and that of a snail named Aplysia are surprisingly similar. "Human brains have many more neurons than the Aplysia's, but it doesn't look like there is any difference on a molecular or synaptic level. "When this animal learns," Glanzman said,...

The remaining half of Busra's brain has compensated for the missing speech centre Girl with half a brain becomes fluent in two languagesBy Hannah Cleaver and David Derbyshire (Filed: 23/05/2002) A girl of seven who had half her brain removed, including its speech centre, has astonished doctors by becoming fluent in two languages.Her doctor said her recovery highlighted the flexibility of the brain, even after the most traumatic surgery. Busra was diagnosed with Rasmussen syndrome, a rare, progressive disorder that affects just one side of the brain, at the age of three. Surgeons at Utrecht University Hospital in Holland...