Featured
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Nature Careers Podcast |
How trauma’s effects can pass from generation to generation
Neuroepigenetics researcher Isabelle Mansuy investigates how life life experiences and environmental factors can shape not only us, but also our descendants.
- Dom Byrne
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Research Briefing |
How flies remember a rich experience from its individual components
Multisensory information improves subsequent memory performance. In Drosophila flies, learning re-routes activity through neuronal networks in the brain such that individual components of a multisensory experience can trigger retrieval of the memory of the whole event. As a result, memory performance for both the combined and individual components of the experience is improved.
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News & Views |
A redrawn map for the human motor cortex
The human brain’s motor cortex is often regarded as a linear map with discrete sections, each controlling different parts of the body. The discovery that portions of the motor cortex have other functions points to a different type of map.
- David A. Leopold
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News |
Famous ‘homunculus’ brain map redrawn to include complex movements
Textbook homunculus diagram depicts how the brain controls individual body parts — the revamp could improve treatments for brain injury.
- Max Kozlov
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News |
How octopuses taste with their arms
Ultra-specialized proteins enable octopuses and squids to taste surfaces with their suckers — and these proteins are tailored to each animal’s way of life.
- Sara Reardon
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Nature Careers Podcast |
Understanding the difference between the mind and the brain
Neuroscientist Chantel Prat is keen to understand why, despite a growing awareness of diversity and its importance, we still sometimes struggle to accept different perspectives.
- Dom Byrne
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News |
How virtual models of the brain could transform epilepsy surgery
An ongoing clinical trial aims to test whether digital models built using brain-scan data can help to identify where seizures originate.
- Miryam Naddaf
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Nature Careers Podcast |
The hospital conversation that set a young epilepsy patient on the neuroscience career path
Epilepsy researcher Christin Godale credits a child neurologist for spotting her curiosity about the the human brain and her medical condition.
- Dom Byrne
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News Feature |
Chronic pain can be treated — so why are millions still suffering?
Science is beginning to uncover the multiple processes driving persistent pain. But connecting people with treatments that will help them remains a challenge.
- Lucy Odling-Smee
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Nature Careers Podcast |
How ice hockey helped me to explain how unborn babies’ brains are built
William Harris is fascinated by the complexities of neural development. He turned to a sport he loves to explain it to a general audience.
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News |
Fruit flies are first known animals that can taste alkaline foods
The ability to detect high pH could allow the insects to avoid toxic substances.
- Smriti Mallapaty
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Nature Careers Podcast |
The brain science collaboration that offers hope to blind people
A key aim of Pieter Roelfsema’s research is to develop a device to restore rudimentary eyesight to people whose optic nerve has died.
- Dom Byrne
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Matters Arising
| Open AccessReply to: Common orthopaedic trauma may explain 31,000-year-old remains
- Melandri Vlok
- , Tim Maloney
- & Maxime Aubert
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Nature Careers Podcast |
Social sponges: Gendered brain development comes from society, not biology
After debunking many myths around male and female brains, Gina Rippon’s research interests now include gender gaps in science and why they persist, even in allegedly gender-equal societies.
- Dom Byrne
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News |
Gigantic map of fly brain is a first for a complex animal
Fruit fly ‘connectome’ will help researchers to study how the brain works, and could further understanding of neurological diseases.
- Miryam Naddaf
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Nature Index |
Japan’s rising research stars: Yasuka Toda
Toda’s research shows that a love for umami allowed our evolutionary ancestors to start eating plants.
- Sandy Ong
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News & Views |
How loss of social status affects the brain
Dominant mice that are forced to unexpectedly give way to subordinates in a rigged test lose social status and miss opportunities for pleasure. These effects are due to changes in a neuronal circuit that involves the brain’s ‘anti-reward’ centre.
- Alexander Z. Harris
- & Nancy Padilla-Coreano
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News |
Anxiety can be created by the body, mouse heart study suggests
Artificially raising a mouse’s heart rate leads to anxious behaviour.
- Sara Reardon
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Career Q&A |
How I wrote a popular science book about consciousness — and why
Neuroscientist Anil Seth draws on his 20-year career to reveal that the mystery of consciousness need not be beyond science.
- Emily Cooke
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News Feature |
Your brain could be controlling how sick you get — and how you recover
Scientists are deciphering how the brain choreographs immune responses, hoping to find treatments for a range of diseases.
- Diana Kwon
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Nature Careers Podcast |
Brain and behaviour: understanding the neural effects of cannabis
Natasha Mason explores how best to mitigate the negative effects of the world’s most widely used illicit drug.
- Dom Byrne
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Research Briefing |
The brain’s encoding of warm and cool
The cerebral cortex is the outer folded layer of the brain. It contains a population of neuronal cells that is dedicated to the representation of temperature. The activity of neurons in this ‘thermal cortex’ is different for warming compared with cooling, and is required for the perception of temperature.
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Career Q&A |
How a grisly historical accident set one neuroscientist on the road to writing a book
A psychology class about railway engineer Phineas Gage’s behaviour change after a metal rod speared his brain in 1848 led Chantel Prat, author of The Neuroscience of You, switching disciplines.
- Emily Cooke
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News |
CRISPR voles can’t detect ‘love hormone’ oxytocin — but still mate for life
Prairie voles lacking oxytocin receptors bonded with mates and cared for pups.
- Heidi Ledford
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News |
Brain stimulation boosts hearing in rats with ear implants
Study identifies neurons that can improve sound perception, which could explain the variation in performance in people with cochlear devices.
- Miryam Naddaf
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News |
Severe COVID could cause markers of old age in the brain
Key genes that are active in the brains of older people are also active in the brains of people who developed serious COVID-19.
- Heidi Ledford
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Research Briefing |
How two intermingled sensory pathways combine to encode touch
Touch signals from the skin are carried to the brain by intermingled projections of two pathways in the spinal cord. These pathways convey distinct features of tactile stimuli, and converge differentially on brainstem neurons that direct different aspects of touch to various brain regions.
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Career Q&A |
Why women aren’t from Venus, and men aren’t from Mars
Neuroscientist Gina Rippon describes how and why she tackled the nature–nurture debate in her book The Gendered Brain, and the media furore it caused.
- Emily Cooke
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News & Views |
Alzheimer’s risk variant APOE4 linked to myelin-assembly malfunction
People who carry a particular variant of the APOE gene are at increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. It emerges that this might be due to decreased production of a fatty substance called myelin by oligodendrocyte cells.
- Karl Carlström
- & Gonçalo Castelo-Branco
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News & Views |
Flies catch wind of where smells come from
A clever application of perception-altering technology, enabled by genetic manipulations, provides insight into how fruit flies follow tendrils of airborne odour plumes to localize the source of smells.
- Floris van Breugel
- & Bingni W. Brunton
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Article |
Synchrotron tomography of a stem lizard elucidates early squamate anatomy
A study using high-resolution synchrotron phase-contrast tomography documents the near-complete skeleton of a stem squamate, Bellairsia gracilis, from the Middle Jurassic epoch of Scotland, providing insights into early squamate anatomy.
- Mateusz Tałanda
- , Vincent Fernandez
- & Roger J. Benson
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Technology Feature |
Thumb-sized microscope captures images deep inside the brains of active animals
After years of development, researchers have managed to shrink two-photon microscopy into a device that can be mounted on rodents’ heads without impeding behaviour.
- Esther Landhuis
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News |
Faster MRI scan captures brain activity in mice
Improved technique could provide fine-scale insights into how brain regions communicate.
- McKenzie Prillaman
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Outlook |
Finding medical value in mescaline
After millennia of sacramental use, mescaline is finally entering fully powered clinical trials.
- Eric Bender
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Outlook |
Your brain on psychedelics
Mind-altering drugs are shaking up medicine — but how they actually work remains a mystery. A flurry of imaging studies could clarify the picture.
- Liam Drew
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News |
Millions are mourning the Queen — what’s the science behind public grief?
Most of the people mourning the death of Queen Elizabeth II were not close to her — research can shed light on the nature of their grief.
- Katharine Sanderson
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News |
Did this gene give modern human brains their edge?
A mutation present in modern humans seems to drive greater neuron growth than does an ancient hominin version.
- Sara Reardon
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Editorial |
Cognitive neuroscience at the crossroads
Researchers shouldn’t fear papers that test and find flaws in methods. Such work contributes to better experimental designs and better science.
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Outlook |
Wiring up the brain to beat depression
Despite its chequered past, deep-brain electrical stimulation is finally showing some signs of success.
- Liam Drew
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Outlook |
Brain-cell growth keeps mood disorders at bay
Neurogenesis can halt depressive symptoms or prevent them from emerging. Harnessing this phenomenon could open up treatment options.
- Elizabeth Svoboda
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News |
Brain stimulation leads to long-lasting improvements in memory
After four days of non-invasive electrical stimulation, trial participants were better at recalling information for up to a month.
- Diana Kwon
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News & Views |
A gene-expression axis defines neuron behaviour
A combination of functional imaging and gene-expression profiling in brain tissue has been used to unravel the properties of 35 subtypes of neuron in mice, revealing a gene-expression axis that governs each subtype’s activity.
- Hongkui Zeng
- & Saskia E. J. de Vries
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Outlook |
The science of smell steps into the spotlight
With millions of people losing their ability to detect aromas as a result of COVID-19, our most underappreciated sense is drawing researchers’ attention.
- Richard Hodson
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Outlook |
Restoring smell with an electronic nose
Development of an olfactory implant that could tackle anosmia is in its early stages.
- Simon Makin
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Outlook |
Unpicking the link between smell and memories
The ability of aromas to bring back highly specific memories is becoming better understood, and could be used to boost and heal our brains.
- Roxanne Khamsi
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Outlook |
Building neural networks that smell like a brain
Computational neuroscientist Guangyu Robert Yang lifts the lid on the use of machine learning to detect and process odours, and the wider implications for neuroscience.
- Conor Purcell
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Outlook |
Olfactory receptors are not unique to the nose
The hundreds of receptors that give us our sense of smell have been found to have important roles in other parts of the body, and the prospect of targeting them with drugs is growing.
- Liam Drew
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Outlook |
The dogs learning to sniff out disease
Veterinarian Cynthia Otto explains how we might harness animals’ ability to smell human illnesses — including COVID-19.
- Julianna Photopoulos
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Outlook |
The science behind COVID’s assault on smell
The loss of the sense of smell has been a hallmark symptom of COVID-19. The mechanisms behind SARS-CoV-2’s ability to interfere with this sense — as well as why variants such as Omicron do so less frequently — are becoming clearer.
- Elie Dolgin