Neuroscie
Prefrontal Cortex Can Block Creative Problem-Solving
Summary: Researchers discovered an unexpected role for the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), a region traditionally viewed as the executive driver of behavioral flexibility. The team demonstrated that the mPFC can…
Why Psychedelics Make Everything Feel Deeply Connected
Summary: Researchers introduce “apical hypercontextualisation”—a bottom-up neurobiological mechanism explaining how psychedelics (psilocybin, LSD, DMT, mescaline) transform perception and cognition. Moving beyond macro-scale whole-brain neuroimaging, the framework focuses on the cellular…
Early Stress Heightens Adult Anxiety
Summary: Researchers uncovered a fundamental epigenetic mechanism explaining how early-life adversity permanently alters the brain’s stress response networks. The study identified that childhood trauma increases levels of the enzyme SETD7…
Peripheral Blood Cells Replenish Aging Human Microglia
Summary: Researchers revealed that aging leads to a massive, previously unrecognized migration of peripheral blood stem cell-derived immune cells into the human brain. The team dismantled the long-held dogma that…
Life
Nature
Newfound bat skeletons are the oldest on record
Two fossilized bat skeletons unearthed in western Wyoming represent a new species and are the oldest set of bat bones yet discovered, researchers say. The incredibly complete fossils of Icaronycteris…
Astronomy
Asteroid 2024 YR4 was Earth’s first real-life defense test
Artist’s depiction of an asteroid floating in space. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, N. Bartmann (ESA/Webb), Martin Kornmesser (ESA), Serge Brunier (ESO), Nick Risinger (Photopic Sky Survey) At this point in…
How do you fire someone into the sun?
Firing our villain straight at the Sun results in a big miss. Credit: Michael Brown, CC BY To point a rocket directly at the sun and hit would require great…
Cosmic ray puzzle resolved as scientists link ‘knee’ formation to black holes
LHAASO experiment. Credit: LHAASO Collaboration Milestone results released by the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) on November 16 have solved a decades-old mystery about the cosmic ray energy…
If the supernova standard candle is wrong, it could solve the Hubble tension
An illustration showing how Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAOs) expand with the universe. Credit: Gabriela Secara, Perimeter Institute CC-BY-4.0 Last time I wrote about new data that overturns the standard cosmological…
