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.…
Category: Life
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…
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…
A new book reveals stories of ancient life written in North America’s rocks
How the Mountains GrewJohn DvorakPegasus Books, $29.95 Imagine a world where pigeon-sized dragonflies soar above spiders with half-meter-long legs, where 2-meter-long millipedes slither and 20-kilogram scorpions hunt. About 300 million…
If confirmed, tubes in 890-million-year-old rock may be the oldest animal fossils
Pale, wormlike tubes in 890-million-year-old rock may be ancient sea sponges, a new study concludes. If confirmed, that controversial claim would push back the origin of the earliest sponges by…
3.42-billion-year-old fossil threads may be the oldest known archaea microbes
Threadlike filaments pressed in rock may be the remnants of archaea that burped methane near hydrothermal vents 3.42 billion years ago. If so, these strands in rock excavated in South…
