Scientific American

Over the last decade, significant advances in research, education, early detection methods and treatment have boosted cancer survival rates while ...

We all know people who say they have “no sense of direction,” and our tendency is almost always to minimize ...

Knowing how the human brain develops is critical to understanding how things can go awry in neurodevelopmental disorders, from intellectual ...

Placebo effects, exercise highs, getting sick when you’re stressed out—the popular press and the scientific literature alike are replete with ...

Drugs originally developed to treat diseases ranging from diabetes to alcoholism may have applications in cancer treatment, according to a ...

Glutamate is often called the “major excitatory neurotransmitter” within the brain. It is the brain’s “go” signal. [Neuroscientist David] Baker ...

At least nine gene therapies have been approved for certain kinds of cancer, some viral infections and a few inherited ...

How old is your four-legged best friend? Common wisdom says that a dog ages seven years for every human year ...

Why does exercise affect the brain at all? Physical activity improves the function of many organ systems in the body, ...

MDMA, or ecstasy, once had the reputation of exclusively being an illicit party drug popular at raves and dance clubs ...

Facebook recently announced it had acquired CTRL-Labs, a U.S. start-up working on wearable tech that allows people to control digital devices ...

One of the most fervent of late 19th century materialists, T.H. Huxley, described human beings as “conscious automata” with no ...

One hypothesis for how humans transitioned from developing a robust Neandertal visage in maturity to retaining finer features throughout life ...

What do the sounds of whispering, crinkling paper, and tapping fingernails have in common? What about the sight of soft ...

Babies are constantly surrounded by human language, always listening and processing. Eventually they put sounds together to produce a "daddy," or a ...

Despite a decades-long search, scientists have yet to pinpoint effective ways of protecting the brain from poststroke damage. In recent ...

Neuroscientists have always presumed that learning and memory depend on strengthening or weakening the connection points between neurons (synapses), increasing ...

Is there a place for artificial intelligence (AI) in the field of medicine? Will doctors one day be replaced by ...

Are negative emotions all bad? Should we really try to get rid of them? After all, we figure that thumbs ...

Without understanding the root cause of infertility, treating it often becomes a guessing game. For doctors to effectively aid a ...

Common topics of marital disagreement are money, sex and time spent together. None of this will surprise anyone who has ...

Many Americans will face some form of significant medical decision-making during their lifetimes, either for themselves or for their loved ...

Why sleep has restorative—or damaging—effects on cognition and brain health has been an enduring mystery in biology. Researchers think cerebrospinal ...

The international effort to achieve [polio eradication] passed a major milestone [recently] with the worldwide eradication of wild poliovirus type ...

In a new study, technology replaces language as a means of communicating by directly linking the activity of human brains. Electrical ...

CRISPR is usually thought of as a laboratory tool to edit DNA in order to fix genetic defects or enhance ...

[A] study, appearing [October 28] in the journal Nature, uses genetic, archaeological, linguistic and climatic evidence to argue that the ancestral homeland ...

We all wish we could get by on less sleep, but one father and son actually can—without suffering any health ...