By Kristen French In 1998, neuroscientist Christof Koch bet philosopher David Chalmers that within 25 years, scientists would discover the neural correlates of consciousness. He was certain that we were on the cusp of solving the so-called hard problem: how the physical flesh of the brain gives way to the everyday streams of feelings, sensations, and thoughts that make up our waking experience. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . That bet didn’t go well for Koch: A couple of years ago, he paid up, delivering a case of fine wine to his opponent on a conference stage in New York City. But many scientists still believe that the scientific keys to the kingdom of consciousness are within reach. Lately, some are focusing their attention on a new technology called transcranial focused ultrasound, in which acoustic waves are transmitted through the skull deep into the interior tissues. These waves can be used to stimulate specific target areas as small as a few millimeters in size and to monitor the changes that result. Now, two researchers from MIT have mapped out specific ways to use the technology to chip away at the hard problem. Because transcranial focused ultrasound offers a powerful and noninvasive way to alter brain activity, it will allow scientists to track cause-and-effect for the first time, they argue. In a new paper, published in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, they plot out a series of experiments that will aim to answer how consciousness arises in the brain—and where. “Transcranial focused ultrasound will let you stimulate different parts of the brain in healthy subjects, in ways you just couldn’t before,” Daniel Freeman, an MIT researcher and co-author of the paper, explained in a statement. “This is a tool that’s not just useful for medicine or even basic science, but could also help address the hard problem of consciousness. It can probe where in the brain are the neural circuits that generate a sense of pain, a sense of vision, or even something as complex as human thought.” © 2026 NautilusNext Inc.,

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 30086 - Posted: 01.17.2026

By Azeen Ghorayshi A scientific review of 43 studies on acetaminophen use during pregnancy concluded that there was no evidence that the painkiller increased the risk of autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders. “We found no clinically important increase in the risk of autism, A.D.H.D. or intellectual disability,” Dr. Asma Khalil, a professor of obstetrics and maternal fetal medicine at St. George’s Hospital, University of London, and the lead author of the report, said at a news briefing. The study was published on Friday in the British medical journal The Lancet. Acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, remains “the first-line treatment that we would recommend if the pregnant women have pain or fever in pregnancy,” Dr. Khalil said. Studies that have examined a possible link between acetaminophen in pregnancy and a risk of neurodevelopmental disorders have produced conflicting data, with some finding no connection and others finding small increases in risk. The new review comes after President Trump told pregnant women during a news conference in September to “tough it out” and “fight like hell” not to take Tylenol, because he said the painkiller could cause autism in children. The message was delivered as part of a broader campaign by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to try to identify the causes behind rising autism rates among children in the United States, zeroing in on the unproven risks of acetaminophen and long-discredited theories that vaccines cause autism. Medical groups worldwide, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, quickly disputed the president’s statements. They argued that doctors already advised their pregnant patients to use acetaminophen judiciously, and cautioned that untreated fevers during pregnancy could cause health problems for the mother and the baby © 2026 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 30085 - Posted: 01.17.2026

By Angie Voyles Askham More than 200 published studies and at least seven ongoing clinical trials rely on potentially faulty brain network maps, according to a study published today in Nature Neuroscience. The findings cast doubt on a widely used method to generate brain network maps, says František Váša, senior lecturer in machine learning and computational neuroscience at King’s College London, who was not involved in the new study and has not used the approach in his own work. “I think it’s worth revisiting some of the literature critically,” he says. And for those who use the method or plan to, “proceed with caution,” he adds. The creators of the method, called lesion network mapping (LNM), say that the issues raised by the new study are not insurmountable. The study’s “results are often striking and tell an important cautionary point—that lesion network mapping can be prone to false-positive findings or nonspecific findings, and study designs need to be constructed carefully in a way that can account for this,” wrote LNM co-developer Aaron Boes, professor of pediatrics at the University of Iowa’s Carver College of Medicine, in an email to The Transmitter. Boes and his colleagues developed LNM in 2015 to identify the pattern of brain activity disrupted in a given neurological condition, whether obsessive-compulsive disorder, Parkinson’s disease or psychopathy. It spawned a new way to put functional MRI to practical use, offering a clear brain network to target for treatment, says Martijn van den Heuvel, professor of computational neuroimaging and brain systems at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and an investigator on the new study. © 2026 Simons Foundation

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 30084 - Posted: 01.17.2026

By Darren Incorvaia Much like his ninja namesake, Naruto the white-lipped peccary was a bit of a loner. Named after the titular character from a popular manga and anime, Naruto was the youngest male and one of the least social in his group of 17 peccaries, all of whom were born and raised in captivity at the Laboratory of Applied Ethology at the State University of Santa Cruz in Ilhéus, Brazil. Destined for reintroduction into Brazil’s Estação Veracel Private Natural Heritage Reserve and the Pau-Brasil Ecological Station, the peccaries were each given a personality test of sorts by lab researchers. The piglike mammals were video recorded as they went about their daily lives, resulting in 17 hours’ worth of behavioral data. Their aggressive actions, friendly touches and moments of exploration were tallied so that the peccaries could be ranked in traits such as boldness and sociability. The goal was to determine whether an individual peccary’s behavioral traits influenced its survival when released into the wild. White-lipped peccaries (Tayassu pecari) are listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN. In Brazil, the size of the species’ historical range had plunged by 60 percent by 2020, and past efforts to reintroduce them had met limited success. Around the globe, scientists are increasingly recognizing how a reintroduced animal’s personality can impact how both individuals and groups fare in the wild. Such work is part of a growing trend to infuse the study of personality, and how it affects behavior, into conservation. When working with wild animals and tight budgets, personality tests may not always be possible. But understanding animal personality could help conservationists choose which individuals stand the best chance of surviving — helping to restore populations threatened with extinction. © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2026.

Keyword: Emotions; Evolution
Link ID: 30083 - Posted: 01.17.2026

Andee Tagle He couldn't stop fixating on it. "I started getting into the frame of mind most people get sucked into. I worried, 'What's going on? Is there something wrong with me?'" he says. That fear of not being able to sleep is a phenomenon called "sleep anxiety," says Orma, who went on to become a specialist in insomnia treatment. Left untreated, that anxiety can prevent people from actually falling asleep. "The more you focus on it, the less chance you'll sleep, which then makes you more anxious. That's the cycle that spins," he says. One of the most powerful ways to overcome sleep anxiety is cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I). It's well studied, doesn't rely on sleep drugs and has been shown to be effective for clinical insomnia. Orma used this treatment to heal his sleep, and it's now the main focus of his therapy practice. Typically, a CBT-I program lasts about six to eight weeks, and each week, you and a provider work on a strategy to reset sleep behaviors and restructure your thinking around rest. But you don't have to be in an official program to benefit from CBT-I. Whether you're dealing with some sleep stress or just the occasional off-night, these CBT-I practices can help. Wake up at the same time every day Having a consistent wake-up time helps your body know when it's time to get sleepy, says Aric Prather, a sleep scientist and the author of The Sleep Prescription: 7 Days to Unlocking Your Best Rest. The sleepy cues are managed by your circadian rhythm, or your body's internal clock. A set wake-up time keeps your internal clock ticking on time. © 2026 npr

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 30082 - Posted: 01.17.2026

By Andrew Jacobs In the billion-dollar race to commercialize psychedelic medicine, psilocybin, a naturally occurring hallucinogen better known as magic mushrooms, or “shrooms,” has decisively pulled ahead of the pack. The Food and Drug Administration in November said it would move up its review of a psilocybin treatment for severe depression by nine to 12 months, according to the applicant, Compass Pathways. It hopes to receive the agency’s approval for the therapy before the end of the year. The news is among the first concrete signs that the Trump administration is recognizing psychedelic medicine as a potential therapy tool. The moves have injected a fresh dose of optimism into a nascent field, which was rattled by the F.D.A.’s rejection in 2024 of MDMA-assisted therapy, the first psychedelic to reach a formal review by federal regulators. “Between research results and policy changes, it’s a watershed moment for psychedelic health care, and psilocybin is the star,” said Nate Howard, director of operations at InnerTrek, a psilocybin clinic in Portland, Ore. Mr. Howard was a driving force behind a successful ballot measure in 2023 that created Oregon’s psilocybin program. State lawmakers, however, are not waiting for regulators in the nation’s capital. Last year, New Mexico joined Colorado and Oregon in offering legal psilocybin therapy to adults. Lawmakers in a dozen states, including North Carolina, Maryland, Georgia and California, are considering easing restrictions on the drug using public funds to research the potential benefits of psilocybin therapy. © 2026 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 30081 - Posted: 01.14.2026

Nicola Davis Science correspondent Same-sex sexual behaviour among non-human primates may arise as a way to reinforce bonds and keep societies together in the face of environmental or social challenges, researchers have suggested. Prof Vincent Savolainen, a co-author of the paper from Imperial College London, added that while the work focused on our living evolutionary cousins, early human species probably experienced similar challenges, raising the likelihood they, too, showed such behaviour. “There were many different species that unfortunately [are] all gone, that must have done this same thing as we see in apes, for example,” he said. Writing in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, Savolainen and colleagues reported how they analysed accounts of same-sex sexual behaviour in non-human primates, finding it to be widespread in most major groups, with reports in 59 species including chimpanzees, Barbary macaques and mountain gorillas. That, they added, either suggested an evolutionary origin far back in the primate family tree, or the independent evolution of the behaviour multiple times. While some studies have previously highlighted the possibility such behaviour could help reduce tensions in groups or aid bonding, the new study looked across different species to explore its possible drivers. The results reveal it to be more likely in species living in drier environments, where resources are scarce, and where there is greater risk from predators. “Previous research has shown there is a heritable element to [same-sex sexual behaviour], however, there is also environmental influence which is often overlooked,” said Chloe Coxshall, the first author of the study. © 2026 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 30080 - Posted: 01.14.2026

Lynne Peeples Sometimes the hardest part of doing an unpleasant task is simply getting started — typing the first word of a long report, lifting a dirty dish on the top of an overfilled sink or removing clothes from an unused exercise machine. The obstacle isn’t necessarily a lack of interest in completing a task, but the brain’s resistance to taking the first step. Now, scientists might have identified the neural circuit behind this resistance, and a way to ease it. In a study1 published today in Current Biology, researchers describe a pathway in the brain that seems to act as a ‘motivation brake’, dampening the drive to begin a task. When the team selectively suppressed this circuit in macaque monkeys, goal-directed behaviour rebounded. “The change after this modulation was dramatic,” says study co-author Ken-ichi Amemori, a neuroscientist at Kyoto University in Japan. The motivation brake, which can be particularly stubborn for people with certain psychiatric conditions, such as schizophrenia and major depressive disorder, is distinct from the avoidance of tasks driven by risk aversion in anxiety disorders. Pearl Chiu, a computational psychiatrist at Virginia Tech in Roanoke, who was not involved in the study, says that understanding this difference is essential for developing new treatments and refining current ones. “Being able to restore motivation, that’s especially exciting,” she says. Motivated macaques Previous work on task initiation has implicated a neural circuit connecting two parts of the brain known as the ventral striatum and ventral pallidum, both of which are involved in processing motivation and reward2,3,4. But attempts to isolate the circuit’s role have fallen short. Electrical stimulation, for example, inadvertently activates downstream regions, affecting motivation, but also anxiety. © 2026 Springer Nature Limited

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Emotions
Link ID: 30079 - Posted: 01.14.2026

By Sujata Gupta Chimps ages 2 to 5 are more likely than older chimps to free-fall from tree limbs in the forest canopies or leap wildly from branch to branch, researchers report January 7 in iScience. Past age 5, those dangerous canopy behaviors decrease by roughly 3 percent each year. Among humans, teens are the real daredevils. They are, for instance, more likely than other children to break bones and die from injuries. But human toddlers might behave as recklessly as chimp toddlers were it not for parents and caregivers putting the kibosh on all the fun — and broken bones, says biologist Lauren Sarringhaus of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va. “If humans scaled back their oversight, our kids would be way more daredevilish.” Humans and chimpanzees show markedly different caregiving patterns, say Sarringhaus and others. Chimp moms largely parent alone. Dads don’t help. Nor, typically, do grandmothers, older siblings or other group members. Chimpanzees cling to their moms for the first five years of life, but by age 2 or so, they begin to explore more independently. Moms can’t readily help kids swinging high up in the air. By comparison, the presence of alloparents, or caregivers beyond the parents, are a defining feature of human groups, Sarringhaus says. In modern times, alloparents have come to include teachers and coaches for a plethora of supervised after-school activities. Nowadays, many developmental experts in the Western world have been decrying the rise of intensive or helicopter parenting in which kids spend less time unsupervised and playing outside than those in generations past. “It’s a really exciting avenue of research of how caregiving influences risk-taking behavior. There’s not a lot of research out there addressing this point,” says Lou Haux, a psychologist and primatologist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, who was not involved with the study. © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2026

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Evolution
Link ID: 30078 - Posted: 01.14.2026

Allison Aubrey If you feel a lift after exercise, you're in good company. Movement can boost mood, and according to the results of a new study, it can also help relieve symptoms of depression. As part of a review of evidence by the Cochrane collaboration — an independent network of researchers — scientists evaluated 73 randomized controlled trials that included about 5,000 people with depression, many of whom also tried antidepressant medication. "We found that exercise was as effective as pharmacological treatments or psychological therapies as well," says Andrew Clegg, a professor at the University of Lancashire in the U.K. The findings are not a surprise to psychiatrist Dr. Stephen Mateka, medical director of psychiatry at Inspira Health. "This new Cochrane review reinforces the evidence that exercise is one of the most evidence-based tools for improving mood," says Mateka. He explains how it mirrors some of the effects of medication. "Exercise can help improve neurotransmitter function, like serotonin as well as dopamine and endorphins. So there is certainly overlap between exercise and how antidepressants offer relief," Mateka says. And there's another powerful effect too. Exercise can trigger the release of brain growth factors, explains Dr. Nicholas Fabiano of the University of Ottawa. He says depression can decrease neuroplasticity, making it harder for the brain to adapt and change. "The brain in depression is thought to be less plastic. So there's less what we call neurotrophic factors, or BDNF," Fabiano explains. He calls it the Miracle-Gro for the brain. "And we know that exercise can also boost it. So I think exercise is a fundamental pillar we really need to counsel patients on," he says. © 2026 npr

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 30077 - Posted: 01.14.2026

By Azeen Ghorayshi Academic research labs across the country are working to find biological markers that can predict whether a child is at risk of developing autism. And companies are rushing to turn the findings into commercial tests, despite limited evidence to back their validity, raising concerns that their results could mislead desperate parents. They include one test that examines a strand of hair to rule out an autism diagnosis in babies as young as one month old. Two other tests just entered the market. One promises to predict autism risk based on skin cells collected as early as days after birth. Another looks for the presence of certain antibodies in a mother’s blood to determine whether her children, or babies that she might have in the future, are at risk of developing autism. For decades, clinicians and parents have hoped for a biological test that could help determine if a child has autism. The push to commercialize investigators’ early research has accelerated as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has elevated the neurodevelopmental disorder into a national political priority, creating new funding for autism research and reviving long-discredited theories about autism and vaccines. But the new tests, largely aimed as a screening tool for the general population, are not yet reliable enough to be offered commercially, outside scientists familiar with the tests say, especially in a landscape where families are already inundated with incorrect or unverified information about autism. None of the tests has gone through large experimental trials or had its validity evaluated by a regulatory agency. “All of these tests are interesting hypotheses,” said Joseph Buxbaum, a neuroscientist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai who studies the genetics of autism. But they are “absolutely not at a point for any kind of clinical use,” he said. © 2026 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 30076 - Posted: 01.10.2026

Nell Greenfieldboyce If you've ever had to spell out words like W-A-L-K or T-R-E-A-T around a dog, you know that some dogs listen in to humans' chitchat and can pick out certain key words. Well, it turns out that some genius dogs can learn a brand new word, like the name of an unfamiliar toy, by just overhearing brief interactions between two people. Your dog is a good boy, but that's not necessarily because of its breed Animals Your dog is a good boy, but that's not necessarily because of its breed What's more, these "gifted" dogs can learn the name of a new toy even if they first hear this word when the toy is out of sight — as long as their favorite human is looking at the spot where the toy is hidden. That's according to a new study in the journal Science. "What we found in this study is that the dogs are using social communication. They're using these social cues to understand what the owners are talking about," says cognitive scientist Shany Dror of Eötvös Loránd University and the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna. Sponsor Message "This tells us that the ability to use social information is actually something that humans probably had before they had language," she says, "and language was kind of hitchhiking on these social abilities." Fetch the ball — or the frisbee? © 2026 npr

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 30075 - Posted: 01.10.2026

Ian Sample Science editor New therapies for Alzheimer’s disease should target a particular gene linked to the condition, according to researchers who said most cases would never arise if its harmful effects were neutralised. The call to action follows the arrival of the first wave of drugs that aim to treat Alzheimer’s patients by removing toxic proteins from the brain. While the drugs slow the disease down, the benefits are minor, and they have been rejected for widespread use by the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice). In searching for alternative therapies, scientists at UCL say drug developers should focus on two risk-raising variants of a gene named Apoe. Therapies designed to block the variants’ impact have “vast potential” for preventing the disease, they claim. Dr Dylan Williams, a genetic epidemiologist at UCL, said: “Most Alzheimer’s disease cases would not arise without the contribution of just this single gene: Apoe. We need to think about it as a direct target. Almost all potential Alzheimer’s cases could benefit from Apoe-related interventions.” More than half a million people in the UK, and more than 40 million worldwide, are living with Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia. Several genes contribute to Alzheimer’s risk and lifestyle is important too: smoking, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol all make the disease more likely. Williams and his colleagues analysed medical records from more than 450,000 people of European ancestry to calculate how much Alzheimer’s disease arose due to different variants of the Apoe gene. People inherit two copies of the gene – one from each parent – and there are three main variants: Apoe2, 3 and 4. © 2026 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Alzheimers; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 30074 - Posted: 01.10.2026

By Natalia Mesa Nestled in the ventromedial nucleus of the hypothalamus lies a cluster of neurons that can make otherwise mild-mannered mice fly into a rage. Stimulating these neurons, as if flipping a switch, prompts male mice to attack their cagemates. The optogenetic manipulation of these and other specialized hypothalamic neurons, starting in the early 2010s, supported the long-standing idea that distinct cell types act as an “on” switch for different innate behaviors. But it has proved challenging to disentangle the neural signals that underlie those innate behaviors from ones that drive an animal’s internal state—such as anger, hunger or sexual arousal. Mounting evidence suggests that the hypothalamus also gives rise to these internal states, which can shape innate perceptions and behaviors. Rather than triggering an innate behavior, a specific pattern of population activity encodes the intensity and duration of anger and sexual arousal, according to four studies published within the past three years. This work is “revolutionary for the hypothalamus community,” says Tatiana Engel, associate professor of computational neuroscience at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, who was not involved in the studies. It upends the notion that the neurons in the hypothalamus merely act as a simple switchboard, Engel says. Instead, local computations in the hypothalamus keep track of the animal’s internal state and influence its behavior, the studies suggest. The hypothalamic signals that encode the intensity and duration of aggression and sexual arousal can be represented by a mathematical model called a line attractor, the four studies show. © 2026 Simons Foundation

Keyword: Emotions; Evolution
Link ID: 30073 - Posted: 01.10.2026

By Sachin Rawat One can spend hours looking at a calm sunset or a clear night sky. These scenes are not only effortless on the eyes — they may also be easy on the brain. People tend to like visual stimuli that require little cognitive effort to process, researchers report in the December PNAS Nexus. The brain is the most energy-guzzling organ in the body, and visual processing alone accounts for nearly half of its energy use. Researchers have long studied how the visual system conserves energy. But the new study addresses the question from a different perspective. “Not only is the visual system optimized for efficiency, but we might have aesthetic preferences for stimuli that are efficient to process,” says Mick Bonner, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved in the study. Neuroscientist Dirk Bernhardt-Walther of the University of Toronto and his colleagues suspected that such preferences could have evolved as cognitive shortcuts, helping organisms avoid excessive effort as they navigate their environment. To probe the energy consumed in visual processing, the researchers turned to an existing functional MRI dataset, in which four individuals viewed 5,000 images while their brain activity was monitored. Measurements of oxygen consumption in different parts of the brain provided an indicator of metabolic activity. The team also ran these images through an artificial neural network trained on object and scene recognition, using the proportion of activated “neurons” as a proxy for metabolic expense. The researchers then compared these metabolic cost estimates — both human and artificial — to the images’ aesthetic ratings, gathered from more than 1,000 online survey respondents who scored each picture on a five-point scale. In both cases, the metabolic effort required to process the images was inversely proportional to their aesthetic ratings. © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2026.

Keyword: Vision; Emotions
Link ID: 30072 - Posted: 01.10.2026

By Carl Zimmer If you live in the United States, chances are you’re familiar with the game rock-paper-scissors. You put out your hand in one of three gestures: clenching it in a fist (rock), holding it out flat (paper) or holding up two fingers in a “V” (scissors). Rock beats scissors, scissors beat paper and paper beats rock. Americans by no means have a monopoly on the game. People play it around the world in many variations, and under many names. In Japan, where the game has existed for thousands of years, it’s known as janken. In Indonesia, it’s known as earwig-man-elephant: The elephant kills the man, the man kills the earwig and the earwig crawls up through the elephant’s trunk and eats its brain. The game is so common that it exists beyond our own species. Over millions of years, animals have evolved their own version of rock-paper-scissors. For them, winning the game means passing down their genes to future generations. A study published on Thursday in the journal Science reveals the hidden biology that makes the game possible — and shows how it may be an important source of nature’s diversity. The first clues that nature also played rock-paper-scissors emerged three decades ago in the dry hills outside Merced, Calif. Barry Sinervo, a biologist then at Indiana University, studied the common side-blotched lizard there. He would mark the lizards — named for the dark blue or black spot on their side, just behind the front leg — release them into the tall grass and catch the survivors to check up on them in later years. Dr. Sinervo, who later joined the faculty at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and who died in 2021, grew fascinated by the strange mating habits of the lizards. At the start of every breeding season, the males developed one of three colors on their throats: blue, orange or yellow. And depending on their color, the males behaved differently. © 2026 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Aggression; Animal Communication
Link ID: 30071 - Posted: 01.07.2026

By Jack Tamisiea You don’t need a brain to benefit from a good night of sleep. Despite lacking a central nervous system, jellyfish and sea anemones have sleep patterns remarkably similar to those of humans, researchers report today in Nature Communications. The work supports the idea that sleep arose early in animal evolution to help the first neurons repair themselves, says Cheryl Van Buskirk, a geneticist at California State University, Northridge who was not involved with the research. “This study is another nail in the coffin of the idea that sleep evolved to manage complex, powerful brains.” In nature, sleep is risky: Snoozing organisms are vulnerable to predators. Yet species across the animal kingdom spend multiple hours a day dozing off—even ancient groups including cnidarians, which include jellyfish, anemones, and corals—all among the earliest animals to develop neurons. Researchers have recorded sleeplike behavior in upside-down jellyfish in the genus Cassiopea and small freshwater relatives of jellyfish known as hydra. To learn more about why these simple animals sleep, researchers in Israel studied the starlet sea anemone (Nematostella vectensis) and an upside-down jellyfish (Cassiopea andromeda). Both species reside along the bottoms of shallow lagoons with their tentacles hovering in the water to snag prey. In the lab, the team housed several jellyfish in an aquarium and exposed them to 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness over multiple days. They used infrared cameras to monitor how often the critters pulsed their umbrellalike bells, a sign of wakefulness. © 2026 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sleep; Evolution
Link ID: 30070 - Posted: 01.07.2026

By Holly Barker In early life, astrocytes help to mold neural pathways in response to the environment. In adulthood, however, those cells curb plasticity by secreting a protein that stabilizes circuits, according to a mouse study published last month in Nature. “It’s a new and unique take on the field,” says Ciaran Murphy-Royal, assistant professor of neuroscience at Montreal University, who was not involved in the study. Most research focuses on how glial cells drive plasticity but “not how they apply the brakes,” he says. Astrocytes promote synaptic remodeling during the development of sensory circuits by secreting factors and exerting physical control—in humans, a single astrocyte can clamp onto 2 million synapses, previous studies suggest. But the glial cells are also responsible for shutting down critical periods for vision and motor circuits in mice and fruit flies, respectively. It has been unclear whether this loss of plasticity can be reversed. Some evidence hints that modifying the neuronal environment—through matrix degradation or transplantation of young neurons—can rekindle flexibility in adult brains. The new findings confirm that in adulthood, plasticity is only dormant, rather than lost entirely, says Nicola Allen, professor of molecular neurobiology at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and an investigator on the new paper. “Neurons don’t lose an intrinsic ability to remodel, but that process is controlled by secreted factors in the environment,” she says. Specifically, astrocytes orchestrate that dormancy by releasing CCN1, a protein that stabilizes circuits by prompting the maturation of inhibitory neurons and glial cells, Allen’s team found. The findings suggest that astrocytes have an active role in stabilizing adult brain circuits. © 2026 Simons Foundation

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Glia
Link ID: 30069 - Posted: 01.07.2026

By Rachel Barr Philosophers and scientists have always kept close company. Look back far enough, and it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. Before we had instruments to measure reality, we had to reason our way into it, but that intellectual lineage is what eventually gave us the scientific method. As technology advanced and the scope for observation expanded, specializations splintered off from philosophy to reconstitute as the sciences. Astronomy cleared the sky of deities and showed us a universe governed by gravity, not gods. Geography mapped a not-so-flat Earth, then geology dated it, stratifying earthly time in isotopes and sedimentary layers. Physics folded time into space, and with it, reimagined us not as beings apart from nature, but as a continuation of its energy and mass. We are not, as Pink Floyd suggested, “lost souls swimming in a fishbowl.” We are matter, muddling our way through life in relativistic motion. Now, in the 21st century, science is tracing a map through the other great unknown: the mind. Advances in biophotonics and neuroimaging have brought us closer than ever to a material picture of the mind, but the questions we’re now brushing up against aren’t melting away under empirical gaze. Instead, neuroscience has wandered back to philosophy’s front door, testing the limits of its most durable questions. 1. Free will In the early 19th century, French physicist Pierre-Simon Laplace imagined the Universe as clockwork, each gear turning in obedience to natural law. He conceived of a demon who, knowing the position and momentum of every particle, could predict the future with perfect accuracy. This thought experiment crystallizes classical determinism: a world where there is no freedom, only inevitability.

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 30068 - Posted: 01.07.2026

By Diana Kwon edited by Jeanna Bryner By the time Maggie May, an Arkansas resident in her 30s, was admitted to a psychiatric clinic in 2024, she had been struggling for years with atypical anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder that leads to severe food restriction and profound disturbances in body image. (Her name has been changed for privacy.) She had already tried traditional interventions with a psychotherapist and a dietitian, but they had failed to improve her condition. So when May heard about a trial of a new and unconventional therapy, she jumped at the opportunity. The treatment was unusual in that alongside talk therapy, May underwent several sessions in a sensory-deprivation chamber: a dark, soundproof room where she floated in a shallow pool of water heated to match the temperature of her skin and saturated with Epsom salts to make her more buoyant. The goal was to blunt May’s external senses, enabling her to feel from within—focusing on the steady thudding of her heart, the gentle flow of air in and out of her lungs, and other internal bodily signals. The ability to connect with the body’s inner signals is called interoception. Some people are better at it than others, and one’s aptitude for it may change. Life events can also bolster or damage a person’s interoceptive skills. Sahib Khalsa, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and his colleagues think a disrupted interoception system might be one of the driving forces behind anorexia nervosa. So they decided to repurpose a decades-old therapy called flotation-REST (for “reduced environmental stimulation therapy”) and launched a trial with it in 2018. They hypothesized that in people with anorexia and some other disorders, an underreliance on internal signals may lead to an overreliance on external ones, such as how one looks in the mirror, that ultimately causes distorted body image, one of the key factors underlying these conditions. “When they’re in the float environment, they experience internal signals more strongly,” Khalsa says. “And having that experience may then confer a different understanding of the brain-body relationship that they have.” © 2025 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN,

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 30067 - Posted: 01.03.2026