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Magazine
In the Sept. 29 SN: Tomorrow’s burger, inside three big physics experiments, enterovirus outbreak patterns, Jupiter’s wacky magnetism, crop pests like it warm, firefly flashing methods and more.
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News
A brain chemical tied to narcolepsy may play a role in opioid addiction
06/27/2018 - 14:00 Neuroscience, HealthUsing opioids gives some brain cells a call to action.
Opioid addicts’ brains, examined after death, contain about 50 percent more nerve cells that release a molecule called hypocretin, compared with people who didn’t use the drugs, a new study finds. Giving the opiate morphine to mice also induced similar changes in their brains. But the increase didn’t come from new nerve cells, or...
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News in Brief
Watch the brain jiggle with each heartbeat
06/26/2018 - 07:00 NeuroscienceWith every heartbeat, fluid squishes through the brain and jiggles it like a bowl full of jelly.
A new twist on magnetic resonance imaging illuminates these pulsing brain ripples, movements so subtle that they had escaped detection by current imaging technology. Abnormal brain motion could signal trouble, such as aneurysms or damage from a concussion.
In the new work, scientists...
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Science Ticker
How domestication changed rabbits’ brains
06/25/2018 - 15:00 Neuroscience, AnimalsDomestic rabbits have smaller brains relative to their body size than wild rabbits do, a new study determined. And that’s not the only change getting tamed by humans wrought on bunny brains.
Two “fear centers” are the most altered brain regions between wild and domestic rabbits. Domestic rabbits have smaller amygdalae (emotion-processing centers that play a key role in the fight-or-...
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News
New studies add evidence to a possible link between Alzheimer’s and herpesvirus
06/22/2018 - 06:00 Health, Neuroscience, GeneticsJoel Dudley and his colleagues were searching through datasets for Alzheimer’s disease vulnerabilities to exploit in creating a treatment when they stumbled across a surprising correlation: Many of the brains they looked at had signs of herpesvirus infection. But those from people with Alzheimer’s disease had much higher levels of viral DNA than those from healthy people.
In particular,...
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Science Ticker
Splitting families may end, but migrant kids’ trauma needs to be studied
06/20/2018 - 17:39 Neuroscience, Psychology, Science & SocietyFaced with a growing outcry against separating migrant children from their families at the U.S. border — including this statement from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine — President Trump reversed course June 20 and issued an executive order aimed at keeping detained families together.
Scientists, armed with evidence that traumatic events early in life can have...
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News
Bees join an exclusive crew of animals that get the concept of zero
06/07/2018 - 16:58 Animals, NeuroscienceA little brain can be surprisingly good at nothing. Honeybees are the first invertebrates to pass a test of recognizing where zero goes in numerical order, a new study finds.
Even small children struggle with recognizing “nothing” as being less than one, says cognitive behavioral scientist Scarlett Howard of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia. But honeybees trained...
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News
What we know — and don’t know — about a new migraine drug
06/05/2018 - 14:17 Health, Clinical Trials, NeuroscienceMigraines have plagued humans since time immemorial. Now a new migraine prevention treatment, recently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, promises long-awaited relief from the debilitating condition. But whether the drug will turn out to be a real solution for the 1 in 7 Americans who suffer from migraines, severe headaches that often come with nausea and visual auras, isn’t...
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News
Here’s why scientists are questioning whether ‘sonic attacks’ are real
06/01/2018 - 07:00 Neuroscience, Physics, Science & SocietyAn account of another alleged “sonic attack” has surfaced, this time from a U.S. government employee in China. The employee reported “subtle and vague, but abnormal, sensations of sound and pressure,” according to a U.S. Embassy health alert. The episode mirrors reports from American diplomats in Cuba in late 2016, and fuels the debate among scientists about what, if anything, is actually...
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News in Brief
RNA injected from one sea slug into another may transfer memories
05/14/2018 - 13:49 NeuroscienceSluggish memories might be captured via RNA. The molecule, when taken from one sea slug and injected into another, appeared to transfer a rudimentary memory between the two, a new study suggests.
Most neuroscientists believe long-term memories are stored by strengthening connections between nerve cells in the brain (SN: 2/3/18, p. 22). But these results, reported May 14 in eNeuro, buoy a...
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News
This AI uses the same kind of brain wiring as mammals to navigate
05/09/2018 - 13:00 Artificial Intelligence, NeuroscienceAn artificial intelligence that navigates its environment much like mammals do could help solve a mystery about our own internal GPS.
Equipped with virtual versions of specialized brain nerve cells called grid cells, the AI could easily solve and plan new routes through virtual mazes. That performance, described online May 9 in Nature, suggests the grid cells in animal brains play a...