Flaws in a test used in clinical trials to assess patients could be undermining the search for a drug to treat Alzheimer’s. The scientists published their findings in two papers in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia (1, 2). In the past two years, there have been a number of clinical trials producing disappointing results for [...]

In November, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine implanted a pacemaker-like device into the brain of a patient in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. This device provides deep brain stimulation and has been used in thousands of people with Parkinson’s disease. It is seen as a possible way of boosting memory and reversing cognitive decline. [...]

Researchers have discovered one of the reasons why it may seem like older people fall victim to financial fraud. Scientists have found out that the human ability to judge trustworthiness of people’s faces diminishes with age. The scientists published their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Shelley Taylor, psychologist at [...]

The Semantic Pointer Architecture Unified Network (Spaun) was created by theoretical neuroscientists to simulate complex behavior from fewer neurons. The scientists published their findings in the journal Science. Spaun contains 2.5 million simulated neurons, which is a lot fewer than the 86 billion that the average human has, but enough to recognize lists of numbers, [...]

A new study from researchers at King’s College in London indicates that smoking rots the brain by damaging memory, learning, and reasoning. The scientists published their findings in the journal Age and Ageing. The study included 8,800 people over the age of 50, and showed that high blood pressure as well as being overweight seemed [...]

The brain scans of French and Mandarin native speakers have shown that people use the same areas in the brain for reading, no matter what language they are reading. The scientists published their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Reading is connected to two neural systems, one that recognizes the [...]

Rappers improvising rhymes while their brains are being scanned in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine have provided an insight into the creative process. The scientists published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports. Freestyle rapping, in which a rapper improvises a song by stringing together unrehearsed lyrics, is one of the highest prized [...]

A Canadian man who was thought to have been in a persistent vegetative state for more than a decade has been able to communicate to scientists that he isn’t in any pain. This marks the first time that an uncommunicative, severely brain-injured patient has been able to give clinically-relevant answers to physicians. Scott Routley, 39, [...]

Photographs of Albert Einstein’s brain were taken shortly after his death, but were never analyzed in detail until now. The analysis has revealed several unique features of his brain, providing clues about the neural basis of his extraordinary mental abilities. The scientists published their findings in the journal Brain. While doing Einstein’s autopsy, Thomas Harvey, [...]

Neurotic people, such as anxious worriers, depressives, and those who have a temper, might not be very healthy, especially when compared to people who demonstrate openness, extroversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. However, researchers at the University of Rochester have shown that neuroticism leads to lower levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6), a biomarker for inflammation. Inflammation is linked [...]

Stressful experiences in the first year of life can drive hormonal changes in girls later in childhood. These chemical changes lead to abnormal brain connectivity, signs of anxiety and depression at age 18. The researchers published their findings in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Stress in early life is a risk factor for a large variety [...]

The addition of a light-sensitive protein to a small part of a rat’s brain allowed researchers to silence the neurons in the infralimbic cortex (ILC) with a flash of yellow light, delivered to the rat’s brain via an optic fiber. The light flashes for three seconds and the habit disappears. The scientists published their findings [...]