By Morgan Sweeney
If you had told me five years ago that I would graduate college with a science degree, I would have said you were crazy. Sixteen-year-old Morgan thought science was dry textbooks and boring labs, too much work for things that would never affect her life. Until January 29th, 2017, when a serious knee injury forever transformed my relationship to science.
The same brain-chemical system that mediates feelings of pleasure from sex, recreational drugs, and food is also critical to experiencing musical pleasure, according to a study by McGill University researchers published today in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.
When two people smell the same thing, they can have remarkably different reactions, depending on their cultural background. Researchers at the Neuro have found that even when two cultures share the same language and many traditions, their reactions to the same smells can be different.
By Cynthia Lee
Everyone marches to the beat of their own drum: From walking to talking to producing music, different people’s movements occur at different speeds.
By Chris Chipello
Research also demonstrates brain's plasticity and ability to adapt to new language environments
The Faculty of Science extends congratulations to alumnus John O'Keefe who was named co-winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for his contribution to the discovery of cells that constitute the brain’s ‘inner GPS,’ which makes it possible to orient ourselves in space. Dr. O’Keefe worked under the supervision of Professor Ron Melzack (Department of Psychology) and received his PhD from McGill in 1967. Read more:
Two McGill researchers were recently awarded large partnership grants by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). These grants are designed to foster research partnerships among the academic, private, public and not-for-profit sectors.
Whether it is for research into clean energy sources, the future of wireless communication or a better understanding of the processes involved in language learning, over 160 established McGill researchers and more than 80 graduate students will benefit from support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) over the next five years.
Nearly one in five people suffers from the insidious and often devastating problem of chronic pain. That the problem persists, and is growing, is striking given the many breakthroughs in understanding the basic biology of pain over the past two decades. Research published online in Nature Medicine points to potential solutions.
