A new study reveals that mice use specialized brain cells to track progress toward goals, even in unfamiliar situations. The findings suggest that animals—and possibly humans—rely on internal maps of behavior, not just physical space.
Category: neuroscience – Page 8
A new drug targeting inflammation in the brain has been shown to bolster the blood-brain barrier in mice, pioneering a potential shift in the fight against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.
“Finding [the drug] blocks brain inflammation and protects the blood-brain barrier was an exciting new discovery,” says pathologist Sanford Markowitz from Case Western Reserve University (CWRU).
What’s more, the researchers note that amyloid levels – the abnormally clumping proteins traditionally thought to play a role in the progress of Alzheimer’s – remained the same. This suggests the new treatment, focusing on an immune protein called 15-PGDH, targets a completely different physiological pathway than many existing medications.
New research reveals that neurons in the basal ganglia not only initiate movement but also suppress it with remarkable precision, challenging the traditional view that they merely act as a brake.
Caffeine is not only found in coffee, but also in tea, chocolate, energy drinks and many soft drinks, making it one of the most widely consumed psychoactive substances in the world.
In a study published in Communications Biology, a team of researchers from Université de Montréal shed new light on how caffeine can modify sleep and influence the brain’s recovery—both physical and cognitive—overnight.
The research was led by Philipp Thölke, a research trainee at UdeM’s Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience Laboratory (CoCo Lab), and co-led by the lab’s director, Karim Jerbi, a psychology professor and researcher at Mila–Quebec AI Institute.
In a study published in Neuron, a research team led by Prof. Wang Liping from the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences revealed the neural circuit underlying individual differences in visual escape habituation.
Emotional responses, such as fear behaviors, are evolutionarily conserved mechanisms that enable organisms to detect and avoid danger, ensuring survival. Since Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” (1859) proposed that individual differences drive natural selection, understanding behavioral adaptation has become essential for unraveling biodiversity and survival strategies.
Repeated exposure to predators can elicit divergent coping strategies—habituation or sensitization—that are dependent on sensory inputs, internal physiological states, and prior experiences. However, the neural circuits underlying individual variability in the regulation of internal states and habituation to repeated threats remain poorly understood.
From brain fog to depression and long Covid — here’s why creatine is gaining attention beyond the gym.
Neuralink did not immediately return requests for comment outside regular business hours.
Semafor’s report corroborates earlier reporting from Bloomberg, which noted in April that the startup was looking to raise $500 million at an $8.5 billion pre-money valuation.
Neuralink last year received “breakthrough device” clearance from the U.S. FDA. Three people have so far received implants made by Neuralink. Earlier this month, a nonverbal patient posted a video about how he uses a Neuralink implant to edit and narrate YouTube videos with just his brain signals.
Whether or not we have partial free will could soon be resolved by experiments in quantum physics, with potential consequences for everything from religion to quantum computers
Genetic studies can offer powerful insights for the development of disease-modifying therapies for Alzheimer’s disease. Protective genetic variants that delay the onset of cognitive impairment have been found in people with sporadic Alzheimer’s disease and in carriers of mutations that usually cause autosomal-dominant Alzheimer’s disease in mid-life. The study of families who carry autosomal dominant mutations provides a unique opportunity to uncover genetic modifiers of disease progression, including rare variants in genes such as APOE and RELN.