When Herminia Pasantes Ordóñez was about 14 years old, in 1950, she heard her mother tell her father that she would never find a husband. Pasantes had to wear thick…
Category: Neuroscience
How scientists are shifting their search for links between diet and dementia
The internet is rife with advice for keeping the brain sharp as we age, and much of it is focused on the foods we eat. Headlines promise that oatmeal will…
Glial cells may take on big jobs in unexpected parts of the body
In the theater of the brain, nerve cells have long been cast as the stars, bringing mental scenes to life with their electrical and chemical performances. Yet many of the…
Headbutts hurt the brain, even for a musk ox
Punishing headbutts damage the brains of musk oxen. That observation, made for the first time and reported May 17 in Acta Neuropathologica, suggests that a life full of bell-ringing clashes is…
COVID-19 has killed a million Americans. Our minds can’t comprehend that number
One million deaths. That is now roughly the toll of COVID-19 in the United States. And that official milestone is almost certainly an undercount. The World Health Organization’s data suggest…
Baby marmosets may practice their first distinctive cries in the womb
Cradled inside the hushed world of the womb, fetuses might be preparing to come out howling. In the same way newborn humans can cry as soon as they’re born, common…
A very specific kind of brain cell dies off in people with Parkinson’s
Deep in the human brain, a very specific kind of cell dies during Parkinson’s disease. For the first time, researchers have sorted large numbers of human brain cells in the…
Mom’s voice holds a special place in kids’ brains. That changes for teens
Young kids’ brains are especially tuned to their mothers’ voices. Teenagers’ brains, in their typical rebellious glory, are most decidedly not. That conclusion, described April 28 in the Journal of…
Where you grew up may shape your navigational skills
Score one for the country mouse. People who grow up outside of cities are better at finding their way around than urbanites, a large study on navigation suggests. The results,…
Here are the Top 10 times scientific imagination failed
Science, some would say, is an enterprise that should concern itself solely with cold, hard facts. Flights of imagination should be the province of philosophers and poets. On the other…
