This study is radically changing how we view the process of evolution.

How can people brought back from death after cardiac arrest report having experienced lucid and vivid memories and recollections without a functioning brain? The study of near-death experiences is …

General anaesthetic is supposed to make surgery painless. But now there's evidence that one person in 20 may be awake when doctors think they're under.

Scientists restore some activity within the brains of dead pigs, raising hopes it could lead to new therapies for stroke and other conditions.

“We knew that the brain has an amazing ability to adapt itself, but we were not sure that we could observe these changes so quickly. Understanding of how we can impact on brain wiring and functioning is the key to treat neurological disorders”, says Theo Marins, a biomedical scientist from IDOR and the Ph.D. responsible for the study.

Social neuroscientists ask what happens at the level of neurons when you tell someone a story or a group watches movies

The treatment is aimed at “working memory,” the ability to hold information in mind for a matter of seconds. It’s crucial for things like taking medications, paying bills, buying groceries or planning.

A quest to understand how human intelligence evolved raises some ethical questions.

Why humans can't thrive on plants alone.

A study found that a hormone meant to protect animals’ brains actually enhanced them. Ethicists are wondering what happens if it becomes viable for humans.

A five-minute workout called Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training (IMST) lowers blood pressure in middle-aged to older adults; it also improves artery function and scores on memory tests, according to new research.

Study points toward lifelong neuron formation in the human brain’s hippocampus, with implications for memory and disease

Researchers have established how a protein called alpha-synuclein, which is closely associated with Parkinson's Disease, functions in healthy human brains. By showing how the protein works in healthy patients, the study offers important clues about what may be happening when people develop the disease itself. Parkinson's disease is one of a group of conditions known as "protein misfolding diseases," because they are characterized by specific proteins becoming distorted and malfunctioning. These proteins then cluster into thread-like chains, which are toxic to other cells.

For years, drugmakers have tried targeting a brain compound called beta amyloid. Not one of those attempts has worked.

Mental illness affects millions of Americans. Many people with bipolar disorder, depression, and schizophrenia suffer hallucinations, the perception of something that is not present. From phantom smells to hearing voices and seeing things that are not there, hallucinations can take many forms and stem from many causes. It’s not just mental illness, either. Strokes, migraines and inner ear diseases can also lead to hallucinations. And obviously, psychedelic drugs do as well.

"After I got sober, it took me a little over a year to go a single day without wishing for a drink, but it was more than nine years before my craving to get high abated."

Inside a 25,000 square foot room within Argonne National Laboratory one of the most formidable supercomputers in the world — Theta — is applying its incredible computing power to the largest batch of data ever recorded or analyzed. It’s information that researchers hope might one day contribute to our understanding of intelligence itself.

Ernest Hemingway prized sleep for good reason. Not one to dwell on rest and recuperation, the novelist saw snoozing as a form of damage limitation. “I love sleep,” he once said. “My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake.” The author’s observation might be truer than he imagined. In a new study, scientists found that broken DNA builds up in brain cells in the daytime, and that repair work only reverses the damage during sleep.

The actor’s death leaves middle-age Americans wondering how it could happen — and whether it could happen to them. Here’s what scientists know.

Time wears differently on women’s and men’s brains. While the brain tends to shrink with age, men’s diminish faster than women’s. The brain’s metabolism slows as people grow older, and this, too, may differ between men and women. A new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis finds that women’s brains appear to be about three years younger than men’s of the same chronological age, metabolically speaking.

We all have things we’d rather forget. But for over four million people in the US who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), that need becomes very real. Erasing memories has always been the stuff of science fiction and wishful thinking. After all, what happened, happened—your experiences are solidified in your head as part of your past, perhaps even molding your personality. But does it have to be this way?

Anticholinergic drugs are generally bad for the brain. They affect the crucial neurochemical acetylcholine. One worry about anticholinergic drugs is a link to memory problems or Alzheimer’s disease (Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 46(4);

Most people with dementia have a number of brain abnormalities, not just Alzheimer’s disease. The finding is forcing scientists to rethink the search for treatments.

Researchers from Cambridge University have clinically proven that their app will improve concentration in a month.

We measure time in set amounts— seconds, minutes, and hours. But the way time feels is more slippery. 

In a scientific first, Columbia neuroengineers have created a system that translates thought into intelligible, recognizable speech. By monitoring someone’s brain activity, the technology can reconstruct the words a person hears with unprecedented clarity. This breakthrough, which harnesses the power of speech synthesizers and artificial intelligence, could lead to new ways for computers to communicate directly with the brain. It also lays the groundwork for helping people who cannot speak, such as those living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or recovering from stroke, regain their ability to communicate with the outside world.

What separates a lethal prion from dementia-inducing amyloid plaque? Maybe not much

As powerful as the human brain is, once it's damaged it can't really recover completely. Now researchers at Penn State may have found a way to boost the brain's regenerative abilities, using certain molecules to convert neighboring cells into new neurons. The technique could eventually lead to pills that treat brain injuries, stroke or Alzheimer's disease.

On a hot day last spring, I removed my shoes at the hospital’s entrance and walked up to the second-floor lobby, where a clerk in his late 20s was processing patients. An older woman placed a shoebox before him and lifted off its lid, revealing a bloody white parakeet, the victim of a cat attack. The man in front of me in line held, in a small cage, a dove that had collided with a glass tower in the financial district. A girl no older than 7 came in behind me clutching, in her bare hands, a white hen with a slumped neck.

An experimental drug that bolsters ailing brain cells has raised hopes of a treatment for memory loss, poor decision making and other mental impairments that often strike in old age. The drug could be taken as a daily pill by over-55s if clinical trials, which are expected to start within two years, show that the medicine is safe and effective at preventing memory lapses. Tests in the lab showed that old animals had far better memory skills half an hour after receiving the drug. After two months on the treatment, brain cells which had shrunk in the animals had grown back, scientists found.

Sleep is pretty great. In humans, evidence suggests it has a whole range of benefits, including this one: it keeps the brain healthy by letting neurons prune unnecessary synaptic connections we make during the day.

Toy dolls can bring children comfort. And they may provide a similar perk later in life for people with dementia.

Think about the people in your life who are 65 or older. Some of them are experiencing the usual mental difficulties of old age, like forgetfulness or a dwindling attention span. Yet others somehow manage to remain mentally sharp. My father-in-law, a retired doctor, is 83 and he still edits books and runs several medical websites.

If doctors said that aborting an unborn child would be the best option for everyone, most people would listen and take their advice. Especially if they were told not once, not twice, but five times to have the procedure.Shelley and Rob Wall were advised to have an abortion after finding out that their baby had no brain as it wasn’t developing correctly. However, they stuck to their guns and decided to keep the baby. Six years on, he is appearing on national television on Good Morning Britain. Watch the clip below.

Or when you’re talking about a movie with that great actor everyone knows, and when you start saying his or her name, your brain stops. Then you start naming other movies the actors played in, start to describe his looks, even quote some of the lines he spoke in several movies, yet the name keeps escaping your mind. It’s on the tip of your tongue and decides to stay there…