After a decade of failure in treating Alzheimer's with drugs, the National Institutes of Health is funding a five-year effort in Seattle to learn more about how the disease starts in the brain.
Researchers say clusters of human brain cells grown in the lab can spontaneously generate electrical patterns similar to the brain waves of a 6-month-old fetus.
Move over, fruit flies, rats and zebrafish. Squid and octopuses have elaborate brains and behaviors, and scientists say studying them in the laboratory could yield important biological insights.
Researchers have pinpointed the neurons that give pain its unpleasant edge. By turning these neurons off in mice, the scientists relieved the unpleasantness of pain without numbing sensation.
Doctors are closer to a test in live brains that could help diagnose chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a disease that's been linked to concussions and other repeated brain assaults.
Experiments with small clusters of networked brain cells are helping scientists see how real brains develop normally, and what goes awry when cells have trouble making connections.
Each lab-grown cluster of human cells fits on a pin's head, but contains some of the cell types and circuitry of a real brain. The structures already are offering insights into how Zika attacks.
To study dogs' brain activity, scientists had to train canines to hold absolutely still for eight minutes without restraint. But how do you get a dog to freeze that long inside a clanging MRI scanner?
Researchers have failed repeatedly in their efforts to slow or halt Alzheimer's disease. But there are hints that an experimental drug can do what previous medicines could not.
Eight people with serious spinal injuries who practiced hours of interaction with wearable machines for months regained lost feeling and some ability to move.
A few people with high-functioning autism say they've been briefly helped by exposure to transcranial magnetic stimulation. But there's a cost, one mother found, to getting ahead of the science.
Kim was an accomplished doctor with plenty of friends. But a few pulses from an electromagnet to her brain at age 54 made her reconsider how she sees herself — and the world.
In mice, monkeys and people, exercise releases a protein called cathepsin B. And as blood and brain levels of this protein rise, memory gets better. But the protein has a dark side, too.
Once an obscure hub of specialists, the yearly gathering of the Society of Neuroscience now draws some of the biggest and brightest from other fields too, seeking answers to brain and body secrets.
