Susie McKinnon doesn’t remember being a child or remember being any age other than she is now: in her 60s. She can’t remember special events, either. She knows she went to her nephew’s wedding. She knows her husband went with her. But she can’t actually remember being there. In fact, she has very few memories from her life – but she doesn’t have amnesia.

Suppose neuroscientists could predict your intentional actions before you can. Would that mean that you lack free will? I used to think that it would. Now I'm not so sure.

Scientists may have found brain cells to control posture. These neurons could explain spatial awareness in everything from yoga to sitting on the couch. 

The cerebellum can’t get no respect. Located inconveniently on the underside of the brain and initially thought to be limited to controlling movement, the cerebellum has long been treated like an afterthought by researchers studying higher brain functions. But researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis say overlooking the cerebellum is a mistake. Their findings, published Oct. 25 in Neuron, suggest that the cerebellum has a hand in every aspect of higher brain functions — not just movement, but attention, thinking, planning and decision-making.

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.

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.

Scientists in the UK and Sweden believe they’ve come across an unprecedented advance in Alzheimer’s disease research: A method of developing new drugs that can target the roots of the fatal disease in a way that previous attempts couldn’t. But while the latest published work is genuinely intriguing, outside experts are worried that the researchers’ claims to the public are too grandiose.

Air pollution can have a “huge” negative effect on cognitive intelligence – especially amongst older men – according to a study released this past August. The research is one of the first of its kind to focus on the links between air pollution and cognition in older people. It was undertaken by scientists at Peking University in Beijing, China and Yale University in the U.S. and was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. In particular...

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.