Humans
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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Humans
Two feet or four, software is the same
All walking animals use the same basic nerve patterns to put one leg in front of the other(s).
By Nick Bascom - Psychology
Babies may benefit from moms’ lasting melancholy
Fetuses pick up on maternal depression and thrive after birth if mothers don’t get better, a new study suggests.
By Bruce Bower - Health & Medicine
Highlights from the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting
Stress and motherhood, tandem MRIs, the memory benefits of resveratrol and more from the organization's meeting November 12-16 in Washington, D.C.
By Science News - Health & Medicine
Busting blood clots with a nanoparticle
An experimental technology that delivers medication directly to a dangerous blockage might augment heart attack treatment, a new study finds.
By Nathan Seppa - Health & Medicine
Highlights from the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions
Vitamin D and heart disease, the effectiveness of external defibrillators, a shot to lower cholesterol, and more from the Orlando, Fla., meeting.
By Nathan Seppa - Health & Medicine
Magic trick reveals unconscious knowledge
People know more than they think when it comes to visual information, study shows.
- Health & Medicine
Exceptional memory linked to bulked-up parts of brain
People with total recall of their life’s events have enlargement in a region also associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
- Health & Medicine
Childhood sex abuse tied to heart risk
Women victimized as children or in adolescence have increased cardiac disease in adulthood, a study shows.
By Nathan Seppa - Health & Medicine
Sleep doesn’t help old folks remember
Reduced quality of slumber with age erases memory benefits of snoozing.
- Health & Medicine
Mirrors can alleviate arthritis
Swapped-hand illusion produces drop in pain ratings, preliminary study shows.
- Tech
Hooking fish, not endangered turtles
A tuna fisherman has taken it upon himself to make the seas safer for sea turtles, animals that are threatened or endangered with extinction worldwide. He’s designed a new hook that he says will make bait unavailable to marine birds and turtles until long after it’s sunk well below the range where these animals venture to eat.
By Janet Raloff - Humans
Future wars may be fought by synapses
Neuroscientists consider defense applications of recent insights into how the brain works.