About Us
Founded in 1944, the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science develops philanthropic support for the Weizmann Institute in Israel, and advances its mission of science for the future of humanity.
Apr 15, 2010... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—April 15, 2010—Weizmann Institute scientists have "trained" an electronic system to be able to predict the pleasantness of novel odors, just like a human would perceive them—turning on its head the popular notion that smell is completely personal. In research published in PLoS Computational Biology, the scientists argue that the perception of an odor's pleasantness is innately hard-wired to its molecular structure, and it is only within specific contexts that individual or cultural differences are made apparent.
Aug 24, 2016...
Credit: Thomas Fuchs
Compared with other bodily excretions, tears are vastly understudied. Collecting the salty drops is tedious – weepy donors are rare, men hardly ever sign up and tears must be “fresh” for their makeup to be properly analyzed. As a result, researchers lack a consensus about the purpose of a basic human behavior. Is crying a primal way to communicate that many species share, as some chemists hypothesize? Or is it, as psychologists have put forth, a uniquely human key to social bonding? Israeli neurobiologist Noam Sobel has a plan to advance the field: he has perfected a way to flash-freeze tears and is now working to create a “tear bank” for researchers around the world.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/bat-nav-reveals-how-the-brain-tracks-other-animals/
Jan 12, 2018...
Bats have helped to decipher how we map the movements of ourselves and others. Credit: Weizmann Inst. of Science.
The brain’s navigation system — which keeps track of where we are in space — also monitors the movements of others, experiments in bats and rats suggest.
In a study published in Science on 11 January, neuroscientists in Israel pinpoint individual brain cells that seem specialized to track other animals or objects. These cells occur in the same region of the brain — the hippocampus — as cells that are known to map a bat’s own location. In a second paper, scientists in Japan report finding similar brain activity when rats watched other rats moving.
Jul 24, 2006...
After a hard day’s work, Rick Allen of Aptos, Calif., can’t wait to jump in his car and zone out to the music on his iPod.
“Rather than listening to the radio, I listen to my iPod because it’s my music,” he said. “There are no news or commercial interruptions, so I get to be in my own little world.”
Allen is among millions of users of Apple Computer iPods and other MP3 digital devices who depend on their tiny music players as a prime means of escape from the cares of the day.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/alcohol-improves-your-sense-of-smell-in-moderation/
Jul 22, 2014...
How do you smell after a drink? Quite well, it turns out. A modest amount of alcohol boosts your sense of smell.
It is well known that we can improve our sense of smell through practice. But a few people have also experienced a boost after drug use or brain damage. This suggests our sensitivity to smell may be damped by some sort of inhibition in the brain, which can be lifted under some circumstances, says Yaara Endevelt of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/learning-doesn-t-stop-when-you-re-asleep/
Aug 27, 2012...
Chris Gash
People can learn new associations between scents and sounds in their sleep, according to a new study in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
Researchers had sleepers wear masks into which pleasant and unpleasant odors were pumped: shampoo and perfume, or carrion and rotting fish. The smells were accompanied with different tones.
When the sleeping subjects were exposed to a bad smell, they breathed shallowly. When they were exposed to a good smell, they inhaled deeply. They eventually responded this way to smell-associated tones regardless of whether the smell was present.
Sep 21, 2016... So, it might seem like proper grammar and all, but there’s one punctuation mark that is perceived as more passive-aggressive than all of the rest: the period. A study conducted at Binghamton University said that when 126 undergraduates were presented with a series of text exchanges, they found those sentences ending with a period to be less sincere than everything else. “Texting is lacking many of the social cues used in actual face-to-face conversations. When speaking, people easily convey social and emotional information with eye gaze, facial expressions, tone of voice, pauses, and so on," lead researcher Celia Klin PhD, said in statement. "People obviously can't use these mechanisms when they are texting. Thus, it makes sense that texters rely on what they have available to them—emoticons, deliberate misspellings that mimic speech sounds and, according to our data, punctuation." If nothing ends your text better than a period, or an exclamation mark makes you feel like you’re trying too hard, consider just leaving it open. It’s better than the alternative. Period. These are other annoying texting habits you might not be aware of.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/learning-a-new-sense/
Nov 05, 2012... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—November 5, 2012—Rats use a sense that humans don’t: “whisking.” They move their facial whiskers back and forth about eight times a second to locate objects in their environment. Could humans acquire this sense? And if so, what could understanding the process of adapting to new sensory input tell us about how humans normally sense? At the Weizmann Institute of Science, researchers explored these questions by attaching plastic “whiskers” to the fingers of blindfolded volunteers and asking them to carry out a location task. The findings, which recently appeared in the Journal of Neuroscience, have yielded new insight into the process of sensing, and they may point to new avenues in developing aids for the blind.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/how-to-learn-in-your-sleep/
Aug 26, 2012...
Anat Arzi of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and her colleagues used a simple form of learning called classical conditioning to teach 55 healthy participants to associate odours with sounds as they slept.
Associations learned while asleep can be retained after waking up. TIPS/PHOTOSHOT
They repeatedly exposed the sleeping participants to pleasant odours, such as deodorant and shampoo, and unpleasant odours such as rotting fish and meat, and played a specific sound to accompany each scent.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/the-truth-about-pheromones/
Mar 01, 2012...
After playing a sad movie scene for a group of women, researchers collected their tears and placed the unidentified fluid under men's noses. The result was a reduced sexual arousal and testosterone levels.
The sight of someone in tears might make you feel concerned. But the smell of tears, researchers say, has a different effect.
"You might think—we did—that [smelling] tears might create empathy," says Noam Sobel, a neurobiologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. He and his colleagues had women watch a sad movie scene, collected their tears and placed samples of the unidentified fluid under men's noses. The tears did not elicit empathy in a standard lab test, but they did reduce the men's sexual arousal and testosterone levels. Apparently the tears sent a message that romance was off the table.
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