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How serotonin balances communication within the brain

Our brain is steadily engaged in soliloquies. These internal communications are usually also bombarded with external sensory events. Hence, the impact of the two neuronal processes need to be permanently fine-tuned to avoid their imbalance. A team of s…

Babies retain even detailed events during a nap

While sleeping the brain goes through previously experienced things, consolidates new memory contents and summarizes similar experiences into more general knowledge. This also applies to babies. However, they can more than just generalize what they hav…

Students who listened to Beethoven during lecture — and in dreamland — did better on test

College students who listened to classical music by Beethoven and Chopin during a computer-interactive lecture on microeconomics — and heard the music played again that night — did better on a test the next day than did peers who heard the same lectu…

Treatment relieves depression in 90% of participants in small study

A new form of magnetic brain stimulation rapidly relieved symptoms of severe depression in 90% of participants in a small study.

Neuroscientists find memory cells that help us interpret new situations

Neuroscientists have identified populations of cells that encode distinctive segments of an overall experience. These chunks of memory are encoded separately from the neural code that stores detailed memories of a specific experience.

Scientists reveal brain tumors impact normally helpful cells

Unprovoked recurrent seizures are a serious problem affecting most patients who suffer from glioma, a primary brain tumor composed of malignant glial cells. Researchers tested the hypothesis that glioma-induces processes that renders a type of brain ce…

Stress thwarts our ability to plan ahead by disrupting how we use memory

Pairing brain scans with virtual-navigation tasks, researchers found that people make less efficient and effective plans when stressed.

Lucy had an ape-like brain

A new study led by paleoanthropologists reveals that Lucy’s species Australopithecus afarensis had an ape-like brain. However, the protracted brain growth suggests that — as is the case in humans — infants may have had a long dependence on caregivers.

Chilling concussed cells shows promise for full recovery

In the future, treating a concussion could be as simple as cooling the brain. New findings support the treatment approach at the cellular level.

Gut communicates with the entire brain through cross-talking neurons

You know that feeling in your gut? We think of it as an innate intuition that sparks deep in the belly and helps guide our actions, if we let it. It’s also a metaphor for what scientists call the ‘gut-brain axis,’ a biological reality in which the gut …