Brain/Neuroscience
Is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) a legitimate diagnosis?
Is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) a legitimate diagnosis or is it mostly a fraud? The answer has important implications ...
Skin cells of schizophrenia patients reveal faulty genetic pathway that began in womb
The skin cells of four adults with schizophrenia have provided an unprecedented "window" into how the disease began while they ...
Evolutionary tradeoffs: Genes linked to autism may persist because they make us smarter
Autism genes may have been conserved during human evolution because they make us smarter, say scientists. More inherited genetic variants ...
Human brain could evolve to require very little sleep, study of tiny Mexican cavefish suggests
Neuroscientists at Florida Atlantic University have been studying Mexican cavefish to provide insight into the evolutionary mechanisms regulating sleep loss ...
When Celebrity And Science Collide: Hollywood And The Anti-Biotechnology Food Movement
Celebrityhood does not equate with science knowledge. The opinions of music and media stars are no more relevant to the ...
Neanderthals’ legacy genes: Some people taller, protect against schizophrenia
Neanderthals are still affecting what illnesses some people develop, how tall they are and how their immune systems work, despite ...
Autism, other brain disorders linked to network of 91 genes
Gene discovery research is uncovering similarities and differences underlying a variety of disorders affecting the developing brain, including autism, attention ...
Cell atlas: 37 trillion cells in the human body will be catalogued in ambitious effort
The objective is to construct the first comprehensive “cell atlas,” or map of human cells, a technological marvel that should ...
Golfing bumblebees? Amazing video of insect learning could spark artificial intelligence research
Bumblebees have learned to push a ball into a hole to get a reward, stretching what was thought possible for ...
Stress defense: Your biological clock activates protective genes as you age
Researchers at Oregon State University have discovered that a subset of genes involved in daily circadian rhythms, or the "biological ...
Excessive hand washing? Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) linked to gene mutations associated with autism
We know obsessive-compulsive disorder has a genetic basis, and now researchers are digging into our DNA to figure out exactly ...
Meditation may reduce anxiety, stress levels by altering brain’s white matter
Researchers believe they have created the world’s first mouse model of meditation by using light to trigger brain activity similar ...
New frontier in fight against Alzheimer’s, epilepsy opens with discovery of learning mechanism
Researchers have discovered a brand new mechanism that controls the way nerve cells in our brain communicate with each other ...
Tired of overeating? ‘Fullness’ gene could lead to appetite-supressing drug
Scientists claim to have discovered a gene that triggers a feeling of fullness and could help prevent the urge to ...
Autism could be detected as early as 1 year old, with MRI scans
Children with autism tend to be diagnosed around age 4, after a child begins to socialize and speak. But the earlier a ...
Does poor motivation or ‘bad parenting’ cause ADHD? Studies say it’s in the brain structure
For the first time, scientists can point to substantial empirical evidence that people with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder have brain structures that differ ...
Fighting cancer by shifting the body’s immune system into overdrive
Gene-targeted treatments and immunotherapy offer great promise to cure cancer, but they work in less than half of patients and ...
‘Brain fingerprints’: Will semantic memory identification replace fingerprints and passwords?
Semantic memory identification is an emerging ID technology based on the patterns of electrical signals that your brain puts out ...
Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s linked to body’s mishandling of ‘garbage’
A new study...may help explain how diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s spread in the brain. Sometimes when neurons dispose of ...
Epigenetics Around the Web: Engineering better humans? Fearmongering in Canada? Fake autism treatments?
Epigenetics Around the Web is a weekly roundup of studies and news in the field of epigenetics presented by GLP ...
Is there a metabolic on-off switch that could prevent chronic fatigue syndrome?
Evidence is mounting that chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is caused by the body swapping to less efficient ways of generating ...
Brain implants might soon restore vision to the blind, improve digestion, relieve PTSD symptoms
[Brain implant experiments] like those that let a paralyzed person swig coffee using a robotic arm, or that let blind ...
Without Glyphosate, What Would Farming Look Like?
Dave Walton--who grows corn, soybeans, alfalfa and hay, and is director of the Iowa Soybean Association—discusses the ecological consequences if ...
Harvard School of Public Health accused of scare mongering about conventional food, promoting organics
[Editor's note: Kevin Folta is a molecular geneticist and chair of the horticultural sciences department at the University of Florida.] Apparently ...
Evolution of the mind: How termite colonies are models of the human brain
[Editor's note: Excerpts from an interview with Daniel Dennett, cognitive scientist and philosopher at Tufts University, who recently wrote From Bacteria ...
Autism risk higher for females with ‘male-like brains’
One feature of brain anatomy that is characteristic of males is associated with an increased risk of autism, according to ...
Enhancing humans: Becoming a cyborg could end up as a privilege of the wealthy
Within the next 200 years, humans will have become so merged with technology that we’ll have evolved into “God-like cyborgs” ...