The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a controversial Alzheimer’s treatment, the first that promises to slow the disease’s destruction in the brain, not just improve symptoms. The drug,…
Author: ID
A sweet father-son bond inspires tasty new molecule models
Thirteen-year-old Noah Shaw loves planets and has perfect pitch. He wants to be a scientist like his father Bryan Shaw, a biochemist at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. But Noah’s…
Playing brain training games regularly doesn’t boost brainpower
It’s an attractive idea: By playing online problem-solving, matching and other games for a few minutes a day, people can improve such mental abilities as reasoning, verbal skills and memory.…
A gene-based therapy partially restored a blind man’s vision
A new type of gene therapy that rewires nerve cells in the eye has given a blind man some limited vision. The 58-year-old man has a genetic disease called retinitis…
Mammal brains may use the same circuits to control tongues and limbs
Precise control of the tongue is often vital in life, from the way frogs capture flies to human speech (SN: 1/31/17). But much remains unknown about how the brain controls…
Brain implants turn imagined handwriting into text on a screen
Electrodes in a paralyzed man’s brain turned his imagined handwriting into words typed on a screen. The translation from brain to text may ultimately point to ways to help people…
Scientists remotely controlled the social behavior of mice with light
With the help of headsets and backpacks on mice, scientists are using light to switch nerve cells on and off in the rodents’ brains to probe the animals’ social behavior,…
Mild zaps to the brain can boost a pain-relieving placebo effect
Placebos can make us feel better. Mild electric zaps to the brain can make that effect even stronger, scientists report online May 3 in Proceedings of the National Academy of…
Surprisingly, humans recognize joyful screams faster than fearful screams
Screams of joy appear to be easier for our brains to comprehend than screams of fear, a new study suggests. The results add a surprising new layer to scientists’ long-held…
How fossilization preserved a 310-million-year-old horseshoe crab’s brain
Paleontologists can spend years carefully splitting rocks in search of the perfect fossil. But with a 310-million-year-old horseshoe crab brain, nature did the work, breaking the fossil in just the…
