Neuroscience

Neuroscience

An AI can decode speech from brain activity with surprising accuracy

Developed by Facebook’s parent company, Meta, the AI could eventually be used to help people who can’t communicate through speech, typing or gestures.

Neuroscience

COVID-19 gave new urgency to the science of restoring smell

With newfound pressure from the pandemic, olfactory training and a host of other newer treatments are now getting a lot more attention.

Neuroscience

Sleep deprivation may make people less generous

Helping each other is inherently human. Yet new research shows that sleep deprivation may dampen people’s desire to donate money.

Neuroscience

An hour after pigs’ deaths, an artificial system restored cellular life

Sensors, pumps and artificial fluid staved off tissue damage in pigs after cardiac arrest. The system may one day preserve organs for transplantation.

Neuroscience

Spinal stimulation gives some people with paralysis more freedom

Methods that stimulate the spine with electrodes promise to improve the lives of people with spinal cord injuries, in ways that go well beyond walking.

Neuroscience

Herminia Pasantes discovered how taurine helps brain cells regulate their size

Mexican scientist Herminia Pasantes spent decades studying how nerve cells regulate their size and why it’s so vital.

Health & Medicine

How scientists are shifting their search for links between diet and dementia

Studies of food’s impact on Alzheimer’s disease and dementia are hampered by complexity. Scientists hope new research approaches prove more fruitful.

Neuroscience

Glial cells may take on big jobs in unexpected parts of the body

Scientists are finding mysterious glia in the heart, spleen and lungs and wonder what they’re doing there.

Neuroscience

Headbutts hurt the brain, even for a musk ox

Though musk oxen are built to bash, a study of the headbutters turned up signs of brain damage. But that may not be catastrophic for the bovids.

Science & Society

COVID-19 has killed a million Americans. Our minds can’t comprehend that number

We intuitively compare large, approximate quantities but cannot grasp such a big, abstract number as a million U.S. COVID-19 deaths.

Animals

Baby marmosets may practice their first distinctive cries in the womb

Ultrasounds tracking fetal mouth movements in baby marmosets pinpoint the early development of the motor skills needed for vocalization.

Neuroscience

A very specific kind of brain cell dies off in people with Parkinson’s

Of out 10 kinds of dopamine-making nerve cells, only one type is extra vulnerable in Parkinson’s disease.