For how we live.
In 20 healthy young adults, closed-loop acoustic stimulation of slow waves boosted word recall, and the benefit tracked a shift in how sleep spindles nested within slow oscillations.
A 40-person Harvard trial aimed accelerated magnetic stimulation using each patient's own connectivity scan. Depression scores fell further than with standard scalp measurement, though the trial was small.
About a quarter of people sneeze on stepping into bright light. It runs in families, has been tied to specific gene variants, and looks like visual signals spilling into the sneeze circuit.
The idea that sleep flushes toxins from the brain rests largely on mouse experiments. A 2024 study using the same animal measured the opposite direction, and none of it has been shown in humans.
The reflex that stands body hair on end in the cold or at a stirring piece of music is largely a leftover from furrier ancestors — but new work shows the same wiring quietly keeps hair able to regrow.
The endorphin story is a long-standing guess. When researchers blocked opioid signalling in 63 runners, the euphoria and calm still arrived — pointing to the body's own cannabis-like molecules instead.
The pruning of fingertips in a long bath is an active job done by the sympathetic nerves, not water soaking in. Whether the wrinkles are useful is a genuine, unresolved argument.
A Nature study traced stress-driven greying in mice to sympathetic nerves that deplete pigment stem cells. Separate human work shows some grey hairs regain colour.
Implanted electrodes now decode attempted speech into text for people who cannot speak. Results are striking — up to 62 words a minute — but come from single participants, need brain surgery, and remain research.
A meta-analysis of consumer neurofeedback found no benefit for cognition, mindfulness or physical health and only a small effect on distress — even though the headbands do record real brain activity.
In 62 adults scanned under psilocybin during rest, meditation, music, and film, brain networks reorganized differently by setting — and more reorganization tracked with more positive experiences.
University of Florida researchers identify excess glycan production as a driver of Alzheimer's pathology, and find oral glucosamine worsened cognition in mice and tracked with faster decline.
The same drug sold as Zepbound and Mounjaro reduced cocaine-evoked dopamine release and blocked drug-associated place preference in rodents. It's animal data, not a human addiction treatment.
Researchers profiled nearly 356,000 nuclei from post-mortem hippocampi across five groups. Chromatin accessibility in neurogenic cells was already altered in people with preclinical Alzheimer's pathology.