As a type of immune cell, it has always been considered one of the good guys. But in a stunning breakthrough in schizophrenia research, scientists say the "macrophage" immune cell can go rogue, causing havoc in the brain. "Macrophage" means "big eaters" in Greek and is a fitting name for the cell because - when behaving - it digests cellular debris and foreign substances.

Researchers at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience in Norway in have discovered a network of brain cells that expresses our sense of time within experiences and memories. "This network provides timestamps for events and keeps track of the order of events within an experience," says Professor Edvard Moser, Nobel laureate and director of the Kavli Institute, which is based at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). This area of the brain where time is experienced is located right next to the area that codes for space.

In an effort to research how certain personality traits protect against emotional distress, such as depression and anxiety, researchers at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois examined 85 healthy college students. The study, “Neuro-Behavioral Mechanisms of Resilience against Emotional Distress: An Integrative Brain-Personality-Symptom Approach using Structural Equation Modeling,” was published in the August edition of Personality Neuroscience.

A new study finds that people with larger volumes in the prefrontal cortical brain regions may be more likely to have greater personality traits that can protect against emotional distress, such as optimism. For the study, researchers at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois looked at a sample of 85 healthy college students to see how a number of personality traits can protect a person’s brain against symptoms of emotional distress, particularly depression and anxiety.

With every heartbeat, fluid squishes through the brain and jiggles it like a bowl full of jelly. A new twist on magnetic resonance imaging illuminates these pulsing brain ripples, movements so subtle that they had escaped detection by current imaging technology. Abnormal brain motion could signal trouble, such as aneurysms or damage from a concussion.

We humans are deeply social creatures. We live our lives in the company of others: we work together, eat together, play together, and sleep together. Yet, for some of us, interacting with other people can really be “hell.” The prospect of talking with a stranger, ordering food in a restaurant, or speaking up in a work meeting, can, for some people, be an incredibly daunting and fear-provoking experience. This is very much the case for sufferers of “social anxiety disorder.”

A boy who had large parts of the right side of his brain removed due to a slow-growing tumor made a nearly full recovery in the three years after his surgery, with other areas of his brain compensating for the loss, researchers reveal this week in Cell Reports. Their case study highlights the brain’s tremendous ability to adapt to such losses and will help researchers...

Two papers released Wednesday in Neuron delve deep into the way we perceive the world, revealing that we don’t actually register much of it. Our attention systems, the authors show, are extremely ill-equipped for modern society. Rather than take in the world in a constant stream of information, consciousness oscillates in and out of focus, meaning that what we think we know about the world has actually just been pieced together from limited information. Their estimates of how often we are actually focused suggest we don’t know much about the world at all.

Does music serve as an alternative medicine enhancement?

Pract Neurol doi:10.1136/practneurol-2015-001139

An over-reliance on using computers and search engines is weakening people's memories, according to a study. It showed many people use computers instead of memorising information. Many adults who could still recall their phone numbers from childhood could not remember their current work number or numbers of family members.

Meet the woman from Perth whose super sense of smell could change the way Parkinson's disease is diagnosed. Joy Milne's husband, Les, died in June, aged 65. He worked as a consultant anaesthetist before being diagnosed with Parkinson's at the age of 45.

A company called EnChroma has built a pair of glasses that claims to restore colour vision for the colourblind. Predictably, the internet has erupted with excitement. But it’s not the first... By Diane Kelly and Maddie Stone.

“Hey, we need the police stat, to the hospital. We have a family member with a gun.” This is the call that a staff member at Tomball Regional Medical Center put in 11 months ago, when George Pickering of Pinehurst, Tex., angrily pulled out a 9 mm handgun while standing at his son’s hospital bedside. Gary Hammond, Tomball police’s head of criminal investigations, told the Houston Chronicle at the time that Pickering was “distraught” over the care his son...

Need to remember something important? Take a break. A proper one – no TV or flicking through your phone messages. It seems that resting in a quiet room for 10 minutes without stimulation can boost our ability to remember new information. The effect is particularly strong in people with amnesia, suggesting that they may not have lost the ability to form new memories after all.

Scientists showed that they could alter brain activity of rats and either wake them up or put them in an unconscious state by changing the firing rates of neurons in the central thalamus, a region known to regulate arousal. (Dec. 17)

Could hypnosis help to reduce the psychological trauma associated with “awake craniotomy” for brain cancers? A new “hypnosedation” technique offers a new alternative...

Taking a high dose of vitamin D3 is safe for people with multiple sclerosis and may help regulate the body's hyperactive immune response...

Neurologist Phil Kennedy set out to build the ultimate brain-computer interface. In the process he almost lost his mind. The brain surgery lasted 11 and a half hours, beginning on the afternoon of June 21, 2014, and stretching into the Caribbean predawn of the next day. In the afternoon, after the anesthesia had worn off, the neurosurgeon came in, removed his wire-frame glasses, and held them up for his bandaged patient to examine. “What are these called?” he asked.

Autopsies reveal plaques in the brains of people who died after receiving grafts from cadavers.

Astonishing operation to remove tumour requires subject to be conscious and talking to steer surgeon away from parts of the ‘eloquent brain.’ By Caroline Davies.

Science is taking big steps toward understanding the impact of concussion. (Mar. 5)

A concussion can do serious damage — unfortunately, it’s becoming more and more clear that symptoms vary from person to person, so identifying one isn’t easy. Researchers from Orlando Health, however, might have a solution. They have found evidence of concussions in patients who sustained a head injury up to seven days prior using a simple blood test. And it seems to work on people of all ages.

Before her accident Heather Thompson was, by any measure, very successful. She lived just outside Seattle’s urban sprawl, was a CEO and a nationally respected business strategist, married, and had a two-year-old daughter. “I was at the pinnacle of my career,” she said. Then… By Tanya Basu.

Do our dynamic brains predict the world? Andy Clark’s masterly book overturns traditional views about our brains, arguing they make internal models of reality which they then compare with incoming data. By Anil Ananthaswamy.

A groundbreaking trial to see if it is possible to regenerate the brains of dead people, has won approval from health watchdogs.

On a bitter, soul-shivering, damp, biting gray February day in Cleveland—that is to say, on a February day in Cleveland—a handless man is handling a nonexistent ball. Igor Spetic lost his right hand when his forearm was pulped in an industrial accident six years ago and had to be amputated. In an operation four years ago, a team of surgeons implanted a set of small translucent “interfaces” into the neural circuits of his upper arm.

Newly presented study discusses salt levels in the brain and how they play a very important role in whether a person is sleeping or awake at any given moment. Professor Maiken Nedergaard from the Center for Basic and Translational Neuroscience at University of Copenhagen says this information could prove quite beneficial in the study of psychiatric diseases …

Eating curry at least once a week may help to stave off dementia, new research suggests. For perhaps too many Britons, a trip to the curry house is an occasion not associated with improved memory and verbal skills. But a new trial by Australian scientists indicates that a weekly blast of spicy food will keep people sharper for longer in old age.

Zombies have become a mainstream way to suspend our disbelief and engage with the land of make-believe. However, they may be walking among us in real life thanks to a rare mental illness called Cotard’s Syndrome. By Jaleesa Baulkman. (May 25, ’16)

One moment you’re conscious, the next you’re not. For the first time, researchers have switched off consciousness by electrically stimulating a single brain area. Scientists have been probing individual regions of the brain for over a century, exploring their function by zapping them with electricity and temporarily putting them out of action. Despite this, they have never been able to turn off consciousness – until now.

People who meditate are more aware of their unconscious brain activity – or so a new take on a classic “free will” experiment suggests. The results hint that the feeling of conscious control over our actions can vary – and provide more clues to understanding the complex nature of free will. The famous experiment that challenged our notions of free will was first done in 1983 by neuroscientist Benjamin Libet. It involved measuring electrical activity in someone’s brain while asking them to press a button, whenever they like, while they watch a special clock that allows them to note the time precisely.

For centuries, philosophers and theologians have almost unanimously held that civilization as we know it depends on a widespread belief in free will—and that losing this belief could be calamitous. Our codes of ethics, for example, assume that we can freely choose between right and wrong. In the Christian tradition, this is known as “moral liberty”—the capacity to discern and pursue the good, instead of merely being compelled by appetites and desires.

Not much is definitively proven about consciousness, the awareness of one’s existence and surroundings, other than that it’s somehow linked to the brain. But theories as to how, exactly, grey matter generates consciousness are challenged when a fully-conscious man is found to be missing most of his brain. Several years ago, a 44-year-old Frenchman went to the hospital complaining of mild weakness in his left leg. It was discovered then that his skull was filled largely by fluid, leaving just a thin perimeter of actual brain tissue.