David A. Leopold is in the Section on Cognitive Neurophysiology and Imaging, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethseda, Maryland 20814, USA. In the 1930s, the neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield ...

Facial expression control starts in a very old part of the nervous system. In the brain stem sits the facial nucleus, which ...

In a recent study published in the Nature Journal, researchers performed precision functional mapping (PFM) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to map the functional organization of the ...

Faces are so important to social communication that we’ve evolved specialized brain cells just to recognize them, a new study ...

Within the brain’s frontal lobe lies the primary motor cortex, a sliver of neurons that coordinates movement. Beginning in the 1930s, scientists developed a map of this brain region called a ...

The motor cortex homunculus is getting a makeover. New research has essentially redrawn the motor cortex and constitutes one of the most substantial shifts in our topographical knowledge of a sensory ...

Scientists found evidence of two interleaved systems, which may help explain the connection between what's going on in our bodies and what's going on in brain areas involved in thoughts and emotions.

The classical view of how the human brain controls voluntary movement might not tell the whole story. That map of the primary motor cortex — the motor homunculus — shows how this brain region is ...

Researchers have discovered that the dorsal premotor cortex serves a 'meta-learning' function, overseeing and regulating physical movements. Once believed to be limited to movement planning, this ...

Okazaki, Japan – When we learn a motor pattern such as a new sport or dance, movements that were not possible at the beginning can be memorized and made easy through practice. It has been widely ...