Do we need words to think? For centuries, philosophers and linguists have leaned toward yes, the idea that language is the scaffolding of reasoning itself. A new study from MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research says otherwise: logical reasoning and... Continue Reading →
Every neuron in your brain is constantly drinking in its surroundings, pulling in nutrients, chemical signals, and bits of its own outer membrane in a process called endocytosis. It's how brain cells learn, remember, and stay maintained day to day.... Continue Reading →
Every night, in a state the brain enters without being asked, we become the authors of experiences we did not choose and cannot fully control. We fly. We sit exams for subjects we never studied. We speak with people who... Continue Reading →
Most of us already know music can bring old memories flooding back. A song from a particular summer, a wedding dance, a tune that played on a long drive: hear a few bars decades later and the moment returns almost... Continue Reading →
We all know the feeling: a bad night's sleep leaves you foggy, irritable, and struggling to remember where you put your keys. But new research published in Neuropsychopharmacology suggests that sleep deprivation does something more specific and more troubling than... Continue Reading →
A newly engineered protein called iGluSnFR4 lets researchers watch glutamate — the brain's main chemical messenger — arrive at individual synapses in real time. It may change everything we know about how neurons decide to fire.
You've probably heard that Alzheimer's involves sticky protein clumps forming in the brain. But here's what scientists have never been able to do, until now: watch it happen in real time. A team at Oregon State University, led by chemistry... Continue Reading →
In a new study published in The Lancet Digital Health, scientists at the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute (Stevens INI) have discovered that the brains of people who experience severe physical impairment after a stroke may reorganize themselves... Continue Reading →
Stanford Medicine scientists investigating the neurological basis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have found that hyperactivity in a specific brain region could drive behaviors commonly associated with the disorder. Using the Cntnap2 knockout mouse model, the researchers, led by John Huguenard, PhD,... Continue Reading →