African-Americans may be twice as likely as Caucasian Americans to develop Alzheimer's disease, but nobody knows why because studies investigating the underlying causes of illness have historically drawn from a nearly all-white pool of research participants. Consequently, little … | Continue reading
Picture yourself at a Las Vegas poker table, holding a bad hand—one with a very low chance of winning. Even so, the sight of the large stack of chips that piled up during a recent lucky streak nudges you to place a large bet anyway. | Continue reading
Humans, like other animals, possess an enormous learning capacity that allows for the apprehension of new sensory information to master new skills or to adapt to an ever-changing environment. However, many of the mechanisms that enable people to learn remain poorly understood. On … | Continue reading
Anxiety disorders are severe mental disorders in which patients suffer from intense fears and anxiety or from sudden, inexplicable panic attacks. In extreme cases, the affected individuals barely leave their homes, which can have serious consequences for their relationships with … | Continue reading
Every time we look at a face, we take in a flood of information effortlessly: age, gender, race, expression, the direction of our subject's gaze, perhaps even their mood. Faces draw us in and help us navigate relationships and the world around us. | Continue reading
New research from King's College London finds that an exaggerated immune response can trigger long-lasting fatigue, potentially explaining how chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) begins. The study is the most in-depth biological investigation yet into the role of the immune system in … | Continue reading
For more than 20 years, scientists at Scripps Research have chipped away at the challenges of designing an HIV vaccine. Now new research, published in Immunity, shows that their experimental vaccine strategy works in non-human primates. | Continue reading
A randomized trial by Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center researchers indicates that magnesium optimizes vitamin D status, raising it in people with deficient levels and lowering it in people with high levels. | Continue reading
We like to think of ourselves as individuals. | Continue reading
Over the past decade, social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have become a central part of everyday life. Despite their massive popularity, however, controversy abounds regarding their impact on mental health and wellbeing. A new research study by the University of Amst … | Continue reading
Using precise brain measurements, Yale researchers predicted how people's eyes move when viewing natural scenes, an advance in understanding the human visual system that can improve a host of artificial intelligence efforts, such as the development of driverless cars, said the re … | Continue reading
About 75 percent of amputees exhibit mobility of their phantom limb. Using this information, in collaboration with physicians, researchers from CNRS and Aix-Marseille University have developed a prototype capable of detecting these movements and activating a prosthetic arm. The p … | Continue reading
The English idiom "highbrow," derived from a physical description of a skull barely able to contain the brain inside of it, comes from a long-held belief in the existence of a link between brain size and intelligence. | Continue reading
Amphetamine and opioid use in pregnancy increased substantially over the last decade in the United States, a new Michigan Medicine-led study finds. And a disproportionate rise occurred in rural counties. | Continue reading
EXPLORER, the world's first medical imaging scanner that can capture a 3-D picture of the whole human body at once, has produced its first scans. | Continue reading
US authorities on Friday agreed on how to regulate food products cultured from animal cells—paving the way to get so-called "lab meat" on American plates. | Continue reading
Microscopic particles floating in the air we breathe come from sources such as fossil fuel combustion, fires, cigarettes and vehicles. Known as fine particulate matter, this form of air pollution increases the risk of cardiovascular and other serious health problems. | Continue reading
(HealthDay)—People with type 1 diabetes who use marijuana may double their risk of developing a life-threatening complication, a new study suggests. | Continue reading
As the adage goes "neurons that fire together, wire together," but a new paper published today in Neuron demonstrates that, in addition to response similarity, projection target also constrains local connectivity. | Continue reading
Recent studies of complex brain disorders such as schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have identified a few "master keys," risk genes that sit at the center of a network of genes important for brain function. Researchers at Emory and the Chinese Academy of Sciences h … | Continue reading
Research at the University of York has shown that the accepted hierarchy of human senses—sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell—is not universally true across all cultures. | Continue reading
The National Toxicology Program (NTP) concluded there is clear evidence that male rats exposed to high levels of radio frequency radiation (RFR) like that used in 2G and 3G cell phones developed cancerous heart tumors, according to final reports released today. There was also som … | Continue reading
To reduce your risk of cancer, you know you should quit smoking, exercise regularly, wear sunscreen, and take advantage of screening tests. New research suggests another item might be added to this list: Choose organic foods over conventional ones. | Continue reading
Researchers at Yale have identified a high-salt environment as one of the contributing factors to the development of multiple sclerosis (MS). | Continue reading
Information recall goes beyond memory access to powerfully allow long-term memory enhancement. Using human brain imaging, researchers in the UK and US have observed that an attempt to remember a specific event, accompanied the re-activation of additional information from the same … | Continue reading
Lavender works its relaxing magic all around us: from garden borders to bath bombs to fabric softener. But why not in our hospitals and clinics? And what is the science behind the magic? | Continue reading
When we're born, our brains have a great deal of flexibility. Having this flexibility to grow and change gives the immature brain the ability to adapt to new experiences and organize its interconnecting web of neural circuits. As we age, this quality, called "plasticity," lessens … | Continue reading
Sleep stabilizes previously gained knowledge, and by doing so, helps to develop long-term memory. In a new study, Tübingen researchers Nicolas Lutz, Ines Wolf and Stefanie Hübner investigated whether sleep also improves learning performance in predictable processes. Their researc … | Continue reading
Biochemists, microbiologists, drug discovery experts and infectious disease doctors have teamed up in a new study that shows antibiotics are not always necessary to cure sepsis in mice. Instead of killing causative bacteria with antibiotics, researchers treated infected mice with … | Continue reading
One question that scientists and fitness experts alike would love to answer is whether exercise or nutrition has a bigger positive impact on bone strength. | Continue reading
Scientists studying how genetics impact brain disease have long sought a better experimental model. Cultures of genetically-modified cell lines can reveal some clues to how certain genes influence the development of psychiatric disorders and brain cancers. But such models cannot … | Continue reading
Identical brain mechanisms are responsible for triggering memory in both sleep and wakefulness, new research at the University of Birmingham has shown. | Continue reading
A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in the U.S. has developed a way to test surgical competency by using brain imaging technology to analyze the brains of surgeons in action. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes the … | Continue reading
Diet influences the composition of microbial populations in the mammary glands of nonhuman primates, researchers report October 2 in the journal Cell Reports. Specifically, a Mediterranean diet increased the abundance of probiotic bacteria previously shown to inhibit tumor growth … | Continue reading
If you've ever found yourself staring at a lengthy restaurant menu and been completely unable to decide what to order for lunch, you have experienced what psychologists call choice overload. The brain, faced with an overwhelming number of similar options, struggles to make a deci … | Continue reading
People can die simply because they've given up, life has beaten them and they feel defeat is inescapable, according to new research. | Continue reading
(HealthDay)—When they give up booze, some alcoholics have more severe withdrawal symptoms than others. This discrepancy may come down to genetics, researchers say. | Continue reading
Five years after he was paralysed in a snowmobile accident, a man in the US has learned to walk again aided by an electrical implant, in a potential breakthrough for spinal injury sufferers. | Continue reading
People blink every five seconds. During this brief moment, no light falls on the retina, yet people continue to observe a stable picture of the environment with no intervals of darkness. Caspar Schwiedrzik and Sandrin Sudmann, neuroscientists at the German Primate Center and the … | Continue reading
Odors surround us, providing cues about many aspects of personal identity, including health status. Now, research from the Monell Center extends the scope and significance of personal odors as a source of information about an individual's health. A new paper in the open-access jo … | Continue reading
If you've ever felt nauseous before an important presentation, or foggy after a big meal, then you know the power of the gut-brain connection. | Continue reading
How does your brain talk with your arm? The body doesn't use English, or any other spoken language. Biomedical engineers are developing methods for decoding the conversation, by analyzing electrical patterns in the motor control areas of the brain. | Continue reading
Unconscious gaze is controlled by an automatic selection process computed by a neural network in the brain. Details of this computation have now been studied by an international team collaborating with the Technical University of Munich (TUM). This finding could soon become rele … | Continue reading
A team of researchers has uncovered the distinct computations that occur when we switch between different languages, a finding that provides new insights into the nature of bilingualism. | Continue reading
An experimental cancer vaccine that boosts the immune system's ability to fight cancers could work in tandem with other cancer therapies to fight aggressive tumors, scientists reported recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. | Continue reading
Understanding the brain, in part, means understanding how behavior is created. | Continue reading
New research has identified the way nature creates its own plaster to try and prevent bacteria and other micro-organisms from penetrating open wounds. | Continue reading
Sleep is known to re-energize animals and consolidate their memories. Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, a mysterious stage of sleep in which animals dream, is known to play an important role in maintaining a healthy mental and physical life, but the molecular mechanisms behind this … | Continue reading