Psychedelic Therapy Without the Trip
A team lead by Dr. David E. Olson built molecules that hit the brain's "healing" serotonin switch like a psychedelic, but somehow skipped the hallucinations.
Vitals
Jersey City born and raised. Daughter of a pediatrician. YGBFKM virtual contributor. Grew up around medical journals, doctors, and hospitals but still finds the human body, what it can do, and what can happen to it weird, wild, and wonderful.
Your Unborn Baby Catches Your Yawns
Researchers found that fetuses yawn more often after their mothers yawn, suggesting social bonding begins before birth, transmitted through pressure and shared hormones.
Gene Therapy Worked. Four Years Later, a Tumor Grew in the Same Cells.
A child's gene therapy worked, but then a tumor showed up 4 years later with viral fragments inside it.
Brain in a Jar Is Alive, Not Sci-Fi
A startup is keeping dead human brains metabolically alive to test Alzheimer's and Parkinson's drugs. The science is real. So are the ethical questions.
Magic Mushrooms Arrest Cocaine Addiction
A randomized psilocybin trial to treat cocaine use disorder reported a 30% abstinence rate at six months. The placebo group hit zero.
Fermented Clean-up Crew Clears Microplastics. Thanks, Kimchi.
Something in a fermented staple of Korean cuisine can grip nanoplastic particles inside the gut and carry them out, even where other probiotics completely lose their hold.
A Mouse Eye Learned to Photosynthesize
NUS researchers put spinach extract inside mouse corneal cells to help dry eye. Restasis didn't keep up.
A Dying Brain Doesn't Go Quiet. It Has Lucid, Structured Experiences.
When the heart stops, the brain doesn't go dark. It runs a structured sequence science can finally describe.
A Blind Man Got a Brain Implant. He Kept Seeing After It Came Out.
The device came out. The recovery didn't. A brain that had been dark for years reactivated circuits nobody knew were still there.
A Virus That Kills Shrimp Is Showing Up in Human Eyes
A seafood pathogen has turned up in the eye tissue of patients with a serious, vision-threatening condition.
Lab-Grown Brain Tissue Can Play Pong. The Next Question Is Does It Feel.
Scientists are linking lab-grown brain tissue into structures complex enough that researchers are now seriously asking, in peer-reviewed journals, whether they could be conscious. There are no regulations yet.
The People Who Built Teotihuacan Told Their Story. Archaeologists Are Just Learning to Read It.
A city of 125,000 people, monumental pyramids, and pottery covered in symbols that need decoding.