neuroscience
35 stories tagged "neuroscience"
Your Aging Brain May Be Swapping Details for Wisdom. Nobody Has Measured the Wisdom.
Three neuroscientists argue that midlife forgetting is the brain shifting toward meaning. Older studies document the lost detail and the confident false memories that come with it. The promised wisdom has never been measured.
Brain & AgingClear Most of the Brain's Microglia and Alzheimer's Mice Sleep Two Hours More, Plaque Load Unchanged
In amyloid mice, plaque piled up while lost sleep held flat, and the sleep came back when most microglia were cleared. That is an awkward result for an industry selling plaque removal.
Brain & AgingThe Growth Hormone Mice Release in Sleep Circles Back to Wake Them Up
In mice, growth hormone released during sleep makes the brain's alertness center more excitable and pushes the animal toward waking. The viral headline about building muscle and burning fat describes something the study never tested.
Brain & AgingSusumu Tonegawa Caught Your Immune Cells Rewriting Their Own DNA, Then Went Hunting for Memories
Tonegawa, who died in July at 86, won the 1987 Nobel alone for showing how immune cells cut and paste their own genes to make antibodies, then moved to neuroscience and helped tie specific memories to brain cells that can be switched on with light in mice.
Brain & AgingScientists Watched a Cannabinoid Cut the Brake on Fear Neurons in Mice
In mice, a synthetic cannabinoid switched off the inhibition holding a cluster of fear neurons in check, and higher doses plus stress released that brake together. It is a possible mechanism for why a heavy high can curdle into dread.
Brain & AgingIn Aging Brains, Thicker Myelin Showed Up Where Thinking Fell Fastest
In brain tissue from a subset of 866 Scots tested from age 70 to 82, the fastest decliners had smaller nerve fibers, thicker myelin and fewer myelin-making cells carrying the stress protein NRF2.
Brain & AgingA Helsinki Team Sorted Depression Into Five Brain Patterns. The Last Famous Attempt Collapsed on Replication.
A Helsinki team used magnetic brain scans to sort 263 depressed patients into five connectivity profiles, then said the scans still can't pick anyone's treatment.
Brain & AgingAfter 30 Hours Awake, a 20-Minute Bike Ride Saved About as Much Memory as a 90-Minute Nap
Sleepless volunteers who cycled for 20 minutes recognized nearly as many photos three days later as those given a 90-minute nap, even though the ride left their fatigue markers right where they were.
Brain & AgingUnder Propofol, the Hippocampus Still Sorts Nouns From Verbs and Leans Toward the Next Word
Recordings from 651 neurons in seven anesthetized patients show the hippocampus learning tones and tracking word meaning, and a German trial suggests that what reaches those ears can change how much opioid a patient needs afterward.
Brain & AgingWhen the Shocks Stopped, People With Insomnia Got More Aroused, Not Less
In a third analysis of the same Boston volunteers, people with insomnia grew more aroused once the shocks stopped. The signal showed up only after engineers modeled the slow background sweat, and the next-day test missed significance.
Nutrition & FoodForget You Ate Lunch and You'll Eat Another One: Your Memory Center Helps Run Your Appetite
Two amnesic patients ate a second full lunch minutes after the first. Rats with silenced meal-memory neurons came back to eat sooner. In healthy young adults, one week of waffles and fast food dulled both word recall and the normal drop in food craving after a full breakfast.
Brain & AgingBlood Pours Into the Mouse Cortex Seconds Before REM, Then the Neurons Run Low on Fuel Anyway
About 50 seconds before REM sleep starts, blood volume surges across a sleeping mouse's cortex. Then the neurons' usable energy drops sharply anyway, and no one can yet say what they are burning it on.
Brain & AgingFreeze a Brain Cell Fast Enough and Its Bare Wires Turn Out to Be Strings of Pearls, Not Smooth Tubes
The bumps along the brain's thinnest fibers were written off as damage for a century. Johns Hopkins froze the tissue fast enough to catch them intact, and to watch them swell when the neuron fires hard.
Brain & AgingUSC Scanned 459 Aging Brains Across India. The Wiring Just Under the Cortex, Not the Gray Matter, Tracked Who Stayed Sharp.
In 459 older adults across India, healthier short-range wiring just beneath the cortex was tied to a weaker link between gray matter loss and cognition, and the tie was strongest in people with the least schooling.
Brain & AgingThey Didn't Rewrite the Memory. A Flinch of Surprise Predicted Who Got Better.
Polish researchers had 180 young adults imagine a defender stepping into a painful childhood memory. The rewrite itself helped only modestly. What predicted who improved was an involuntary jolt of surprise, measured in the skin, when the expected blow never came.
Brain & AgingThe Calm-Down Breath That Made People Bet Bigger
A 2-second inhale and an 8-second exhale slowed 41 people's hearts and, across the same sessions, made them more willing to take the risky bet. The pull came from the reward side, not from any loss of caution.
Brain & AgingIn Mice, Early-Life Stress Writes a Molecular Mark Onto the Brain's Reward Neurons. Turn One Enzyme Down, and It Never Sets
Early-life stress raises an enzyme called SETD7 in the brain's dopamine neurons, loosening the DNA around stress genes so they fire too easily into adulthood. When researchers blocked it in mice, the stressed animals did not develop the same anxiety-like stress sensitivity, and stayed as social and
Brain & AgingIn Abstinent Mice, a Deep Brain Region More Than Doubles Its Activity Before Relapse
In mice, a deep brain region more than doubled its activity after they quit drinking, before they touched a drop again. Relapse-like drinking may be a brain adaptation, not a failure of will.
Brain & AgingA Brain Clock Says Your Fourth Language Is Worth 13 Years. Nobody's Published the Proof.
The 13-years-younger figure comes from a conference talk with no paper behind it, and the sturdier study underneath still can't tell you whether the languages did anything at all.
Metabolic & WeightThe Hunger Neurons Ozempic Was Meant to Silence Are the Ones Burning Your Fat
Silence the hunger neurons and semaglutide keeps killing appetite, but in Yale's female mice the lost fat came back within 15 days.
Brain & AgingThe Marmoset Under Salk's Claim That Brain Waves Build the Reality You See
A Salk lab says the electrical waves rolling across your cortex are a generative engine that builds what you see. The catch: the splashy new paper is a review, and the experiments under it are marmosets squinting at faint dots.
Brain & AgingThe Craving Brake Nobody Mapped: How GLP-1 Drugs Quiet Cravings From the Lateral Septum
The anti-craving effect pushing people to use a diabetes shot off-label against drinking traces to a brain region built to inhibit, not to reward, and the human evidence is still just two small trials deep.
Brain & AgingChristof Koch Bet a Case of Wine That Science Would Find Consciousness in the Brain by 2023. He Lost.
At a symposium in Portugal, the neuroscientist who spent 25 years hunting consciousness inside the brain conceded the field's central promise is still unpaid, and floated that consciousness might be fundamental to reality rather than manufactured by neurons.
Brain & AgingYour First Pregnancy Rewires the Brain for One Baby. Your Second Rewires It for the Chaos of Two.
Amsterdam researchers scanned 110 women and found each pregnancy leaves its own mark, and the brain changes tied to maternal depression showed up months earlier the second time around.