Summary: A new neuroimaging study provides an insight into the neurobiology of those willing to commit terrorist acts.

Two proteins central to the pathology of Alzheimer’s disease act as prions – spreading through tissue like an infection by forcing normal proteins to adopt the same misfolded shape. 

The pursuit of science is usually an unending stream of embarrassments for the human ego. No, the sun doesn’t revolve around us. No, we’re not all that different from common animals. No, we’re not even the only humans. But, in some ways at least, our brains really are special.

Experiences such as poverty, residential instability, or parental divorce or substance abuse, can affect executive function and lead to changes in a child’s brain chemistry.

Neuroscientists identify a brain circuit that helps break decisions down into smaller pieces.

The protocol uses EEG to control virtual avatars and robotic exoskeleton walkers while the patient wears a “tactile shirt” that offers sensory feedback.

Summary: Music specially composed for preterm babies helps strengthen the development of neural networks and may help to limit neurodevelopmental delays often experienced by those born prematurely.

Boston University neuroscientist Steve Ramirez and collaborators have published a new paper showing memories are pliable if you know which regions of the brain’s hippocampus to stimulate, which could someday enable personalized treatment for people with PTSD, depression and anxiety.

New artwork created by artificial intelligence does weird things to the primate brain. When shown to macaques, AI-generated images purposefully caused nerve cells in the monkeys’ brains to fire more than pictures of real-world objects. The AI could also design patterns that activated specific neurons while suppressing others, researchers report in the May 3 Science.

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 …

You’ve probably heard about microdosing, the “productivity hack” popular among Silicon Valley engineers and business leaders. Microdosers take regular small doses of LSD or magic mushrooms. At these doses, they don’t experience mind-bending, hallucinatory trips, but they say they get a jolt in creativity and focus that can elevate work performance, help relationships, and generally improve a stressful and demanding daily life. If its proponents are to be believed, microdosing offers the cure for an era dominated by digital distractions and existential anxiety—a cup of coffee with a little Tony Robbins stirred in.

A Boston University researcher says we are one step closer to diagnosing CTE in living people. CTE researchers have discovered that an experimental PET scan on living people is able to detect abnormal brain tissue—called tau protein—in patterns similar to those found in the brains of deceased people diagnosed with CTE after death.

“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.

In a stunning piece of research, Stanford neuroscientists have hunted down a single gene that encodes a protein responsible for age-related cognitive losses, targeted it with special blocking antibodies, and shown in mice that these antibodies can rejuvenate old brains to work as well as young ones.

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.

Why humans can't thrive on plants alone.

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

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.

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.

Men and women can’t feel each other’s pain. Literally. We have different biological pathways for chronic pain, which means pain-relieving drugs that work for one sex might fail in the other half of the population. So why don’t we have pain medicines designed just for men or women? The reason is simple: Because no one has looked for them. Drug development begins with studies on rats and mice, and until three years ago, almost all that research used only male animals. As a result, women in particular may be left with unnecessary pain—but men might be too.