1+ week, 3+ day ago   (1184+ words) Confidence builds a sense of control, and two brain circuits turn that estimate into how much you learn from a win or a loss. When a job application disappears into silence, you have to decide whether the resume was weak…...

3+ day, 18+ hour ago   (1003+ words) Carefully timed sounds can make fluid waves larger in the sleeping brain, giving researchers a new way to study how brain activity and CSF flow are connected. Sleep is often treated as a time when the brain simply shuts down....

4+ day, 13+ hour ago   (1442+ words) A fruit fly can taste food all over its body. New research shows how those signals travel through the brain to control eating. A fruit fly lands on something sweet and its mouthparts unfold toward it. The obvious way to…...

6+ day, 1+ hour ago   (1126+ words) Two groups of brainstem cells build sleep drive in mice, and damping them cut sleep by nearly 70% without the usual damage. Push through a long enough day and the urge to sleep stops being a choice. That pressure builds the…...

1+ week, 4+ day ago   (1122+ words) The human body depends on cells passing information to one another. Heart cells need to work together, nerve cells need to carry signals, and many other tissues depend on cells knowing what nearby cells are doing. This raises a basic…...

1+ week, 4+ day ago   (1228+ words) To find buried prey, the elephantnose fish senses tiny electric fields while firing its own pulses. A brain map shows how neurons filter them out. In muddy African rivers, an elephantnose fish hunts with sensors in its skin that pick…...

1+ week, 4+ day ago   (927+ words) DNA normally uses four letters. In lab tests, a bacterial enzyme successfully read eight, including four synthetic bases. All life writes with four letters. Because A pairs only with T, and G only with C, a cell can copy its…...

2+ week, 1+ hour ago   (703+ words) Genetic recombination in sperm can begin earlier than expected, revealing a previously overlooked source of human genetic diversity. Every child inherits a genome that’s uniquely their own, shuffled together from both parents through a process called recombination. Scientists have generally…...

2+ week, 2+ day ago   (1227+ words) Ancient DNA suggests Jomon people evolved several genetic adaptations for surviving the extreme cold of the Ice Age. Step outside underdressed in January and your body shivers, which is muscle burning fuel to make heat. Underneath that, a second system…...

2+ week, 3+ day ago   (1114+ words) A tiny head-mounted microscope lets researchers watch and activate individual brain cells while mice move freely. Watching individual brain cells fire in fine detail inside a living animal has often meant holding the animal’s head in place. But a mouse…...