Elevated blood levels of a specific protein may help scientists predict who has a better chance of bouncing back from a traumatic brain injury. The protein, called neurofilament light or…
Category: Neuroscience
Ripples in rats’ brains tied to memory may also reduce sugar levels
Ripples of nerve cell activity that lock in memories may have an unexpected job outside of the brain: Dropping blood sugar levels in the body. Just after a burst of…
How Hans Berger’s quest for telepathy spurred modern brain science
A brush with death led Hans Berger to invent a machine that could eavesdrop on the brain. In 1893, when he was 19, Berger fell off his horse during maneuvers…
Controlling nerve cells with light opened new ways to study the brain
Some big scientific discoveries aren’t actually discovered. They are borrowed. That’s what happened when scientists enlisted proteins from an unlikely lender: green algae. Cells of the algal species Chlamydomonas reinhardtii…
A deep look at a speck of human brain reveals never-before-seen quirks
A new view of the human brain shows its cellular residents in all their wild and weird glory. The map, drawn from a tiny piece of a woman’s brain, charts…
FDA approved a new Alzheimer’s drug despite controversy over whether it works
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,…
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…
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…
