Catherine Offord
Are our brains wired for numbers?
[Cognitive neuroscientist Brian] Butterworth is one of several researchers who believe that the human brain can be thought of as ...
Can dogs see optical illusions too?
Psychologists use visual illusions all the time to study the shortcuts the human brain uses to extract information about the ...
Dream engineering: Virtual reality and brain stimulation yield surprising insight into the brain
[Adam] Haar Horowitz is one of a small but growing group of researchers who call themselves dream engineers and are ...
Infographic: How social isolation forced by the coronavirus affects the brain?
[B]efore COVID-19 began its global spread, millions of people were already what researchers consider to be socially isolated—separated from society, ...
Infographic: How our brains keep track of time
It’s unclear how the brain keeps track of the timing of events within a memory. One theory posits that, as ...
Hydroxychloroquine trials halted after World Health Organization cites ‘significantly higher risk of death’ for COVID-19 patients
The World Health Organization has suspended testing of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine after a study published in The Lancet reported ...
Targeting cancer cells by ‘putting the brakes’ on their ability to mutate and evolve
The vast majority of cancer deaths in the US come about not because of a lack of treatment, but because ...
Infographic: Track the global spread of the coronavirus
The numbers for COVID-19 cases and deaths are changing rapidly. The following charts only provide an approximation of the current ...
Infographic: What suicidal behavior looks like in the brain
Scientists have identified several key neurobiological pathways with ties to suicidal behaviors. Research in the field addresses only a fraction ...
Can we use the brain’s ‘biochemical changes’ to predict—and prevent— suicide?
No field of scientific inquiry can single-handedly untangle a phenomenon as complex as suicide. But [Kees] van Heeringen and many ...
Was it ‘bad luck’—not ancient humans—that drove Neanderthals to extinction?
Neanderthals may have gone extinct due to chance, and not, as some researchers previously thought, due to competition for resources ...
‘Time to stop debating’: Researchers blame enterovirus for mysterious polio-like paralysis in kids
A team of researchers has published evidence that an enterovirus is to blame for a mysterious neurologic illness that has ...
‘If you get better, you stay better’: Deep brain stimulation could offer long-lasting depression treatment
Deep brain stimulation can durably improve depression symptoms in people who don’t respond well to other treatments, according to a ...
Exploring origins of the female orgasm. Is it an ‘evolutionary throwback’?
The female orgasm might have evolved as part of a biological mechanism to induce ovulation, according to findings published [September ...
Infographic: Quantum ‘tricks’ influence photosynthesis, other biological functions
ENZYME CATALYSIS: A TUNNEL THROUGH THE BARRIER Traditional theories of enzyme catalysis hold that the proteins speed up reactions by ...
Facing Ebola outbreak, Uganda approves 3 experimental treatments
Health authorities in Uganda have approved the use of three experimental treatments against Ebola in the country. The decision comes ...
Off-target RNA mutations: Why this ‘more precise genome-editing’ technique needs improvement
Base editors designed to convert one DNA nucleotide to another may also perform large numbers of unwanted edits to RNA, ...
Infographic: How do urban environments drive genetic change?
Air pollution may favor the adaptation of organisms to become more stress-resistant than their rural counterparts. There is some evidence ...
Immunotherapy more effective in patients with more cancer mutations, study shows
The number of mutations in a tumor’s genome may predict how well a patient will benefit from treatment with immune ...
Urbanization is a ‘massive unplanned experiment’: How cities affect evolution
[C]ities are having profound effects on their animal and plant residents. Globally, about 0.5 percent of Earth’s land area is ...
Bee-friendly pesticides? Protein discovery could lead to less toxic neonicotinoid insecticides
[S]tudies have shown that not all the compounds are equally toxic to [honeybees], suggesting that there might be variation in ...
Transgenic silkworms engineered to spin tough-fiber spider silk
In Jon Rice’s office is a small incubator full of tiny insect eggs—one of many such incubators kept at Kraig ...
Data storage may be coming to a molecule near you
[George Church] and two Harvard colleagues translated an HTML draft of a 50,000-word book on synthetic biology, coauthored by Church, ...
Synthetic tissue transmits electrical signals, like neurons
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Researchers at the University ...
Epigenetic inheritance may contribute to diabetes risk
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. While scientists have identified ...
