UC Santa Cruz research innovations and academic programs advance brain and mental health.

Scientists have long tried to understand the human brain by comparing it to other primates. Researchers are still trying to understand what makes our brain different from our closest relatives. Our ...

A new way of mapping activity and connections between different regions of the brain has revealed fresh insights into how higher order functions like language, thought and attention, are organized. A ...

Recent technological and scientific advances have opened new possibilities for neuroscience research, which is in turn ...

What unique processes conspire to create a healthy, functional human brain? How can we be so genetically similar to, say, chimpanzees, and yet be light-years more sophisticated cognitively and ...

There must be something about the human brain that’s different from the brains of other animals — something that enables humans to plan, imagine the future, solve crossword puzzles, tell sarcastic ...

Using an ultra-high-resolution imaging technology called 7 Tesla functional MRI (fMRI) on human participants, researchers have mapped how different parts of the brain work together. Specifically, they ...

New research reveals the unique human ability to conceptualize numbers may be rooted deep within the brain. New research reveals the unique human ability to conceptualize numbers may be rooted deep ...

Your mental image of your brain probably looks something like what's pictured here. The cerebrum, shown here, is where all the really important stuff is supposed to happen in humans: consciousness, ...

You may have heard the myth that humans use only 10% of their brains. That statement is patently untrue — most people use all of their brains, all of the time. But for people who have survived a ...