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Why do we stay in relationships that make us unhappy?

If your relationship is making you so unhappy, why is it so hard to break up? A new study finds an unexpected answer to this question.

Brain-eating amoebae halted by silver nanoparticles

Halloween is just around the corner, and some people will celebrate by watching scary movies about brain-eating zombies. But even more frightening are real-life parasites that feed on the human brain, and they can be harder to kill than their horror-mo…

A new model for how working memory gets you through the day

MIT neuroscientists present a new model of working memory that explains how the brain holds information in mind (the ‘memory’ part) and also executes volitional control over it (the ‘working’ part).

Study reveals how the brain overcomes its own limitations

Neuroscientists have discovered how the brain tries to compensate for its poor performance in tasks that require complicated mental transformations.

Cannabis withdrawal can be ‘highly disabling’

Cannabis withdrawal syndrome is real and can have ‘highly disabling’ effects — especially psychologically — warn the authors of a new study.

To see what’s right in front of you, your brain may need some rewiring

As you encounter new experiences and form new memories, your brain changes. Now, researchers show that some of these change occur in a brain region devoted to visual perception.

New insight into how our brain perceives places

Experiments using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) showed that the brain’s parahippocampal place area responded more strongly to a scene recognition task while the occipital place area responded more to a navigation task.

Neurons reliably respond to straight lines

Single neurons in the brain’s primary visual cortex can reliably detect straight lines, even though the cellular makeup of the neurons is constantly changing, according to a new study. The study’s findings lay the groundwork for future studies into how…

Avoiding the hippocampus during whole-brain radiotherapy prevents cognitive side effects

Whole-brain radiotherapy can be delivered more safely to patients with brain metastases by avoiding the hippocampus, according to a new study.

Does lavender really help with anxiety?

A study of mice reveals that the scent of linalool, a natural alcohol found in lavender, relieves anxiety through its effect on olfactory nerve cells.