The Brain in Search of ItselfBenjamin EhrlichFarrar, Straus and Giroux, $35 Spanish anatomist Santiago Ramón y Cajal is known as the father of modern neuroscience. Cajal was the first to…
Category: Neuroscience
A hit of dopamine sends mice into dreamland
A quick surge of dopamine shifts mice into a dreamy stage of sleep. In the rodents’ brains, the chemical messenger triggers rapid-eye-movement sleep, or REM, researchers report in the March…
Americans tend to assume imaginary faces are male
There may be a reason we see a man, rather than a maiden, in the moon. When people spot facelike patterns in inanimate objects, those faces are more likely to…
A faulty immune response may be behind lingering brain trouble after COVID-19
A tussle with COVID-19 can leave people’s brains fuzzy. SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19, doesn’t usually make it into the brain directly. But the immune system’s response to even mild…
50 years ago, scientists were on the trail of ‘memory molecules’
Learning and memory transfer: More experimental evidence — Science News, November 6, 1971 The first memory molecule has been isolated, characterized and synthesized … [from the brains of] rats that had been…
‘Feeling & Knowing’ explores the origin and evolution of consciousness
Feeling & KnowingAntonio DamasioPantheon, $26 Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio believes that the link between brain and body is the key to understanding consciousness. In his latest book, Feeling & Knowing: Making…
Brainless sponges contain early echoes of a nervous system
Brains are like sponges, slurping up new information. But sponges may also be a little bit like brains. Sponges, which are humans’ very distant evolutionary relatives, don’t have nervous systems.…
A blood test may help predict recovery from traumatic brain injury
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…
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…
