E. coli Remembers the Hard Times. Its Grandchildren Do Too.
The memory isn't stored in a brain. It's inherited. Granddaughter cells behave differently because of stress their ancestors survived. What does that mean for antibiotic treatment?
Medicine & Health
Resistant PTSD May Have Met Its Match in Mushrooms
The improvement began before the first dose. Then the symptoms dropped much further. A small trial is raising a surprisingly complicated question about what makes psychedelic therapy work.
AI Sees Colors That Aren't There
A black-and-white spinning disk has fooled human eyes for generations. Now a predictive network is producing the same illusion, and its training history may explain why.
More Than Half the Memory Connections Disappeared. The Memories Didn't.
The brain can lose more than half its memory-related connections and still remember. What got preserved, and why, is the part science hasn't figured out yet.
A Pill Full of Bacteria Could Read Your Blood Sugar
Engineered gut bacteria that sense rising blood sugar and manufacture a drug on demand. It worked in monkeys. Humans are the open question.
Mammals Have One Antibody System. Bats Didn't Get the Memo.
Bats carry Ebola, coronaviruses and worse without breaking a sweat. Turns out they may have been running a completely different immune system.
Lab-Grown Brain Cells Know How Old They Are
Scientists spent five years watching a dish of stem cells grow like an actual human organ. Then they tried to reset part of it. Something unexpected came along for the ride.
The Song Stuck in Your Head Leaves a Readable Trace in Your Brain
Ten people imagined familiar melodies without making a sound. What their neural activity revealed was detailed enough for researchers to reconstruct the actual notes.
A Deadly Hospital Fungus Hides in Hair Follicles
This superbug isn't hiding from your immune defenses. It's borrowing them. What researchers found changes how we understand why it's nearly impossible to clear from the skin.
Your Teeth Know Something Your Oncologist Didn't
The cancer survival gap was nearly two years, and it had something to do with tooth count, but nothing to do with chewing.
The Brain Tumor Is in the Skull. The Fight Against It Is in the Neck.
The tumor is in the skull. So why does removing the immune response from the neck make the treatment stop working?
Your Midlife Brain Swaps Out Its Immune Cells for Angrier Ones
Something in your head has been quietly changing crews since your 50s. Nobody vetted the new hires, and researchers just got their first real look at who showed up.
Your Sweet Tooth Is 4 Million Years Old
New research says the modern brain wasn't built on meat alone. Fruit and honey may have paid nearly as much of the bill.
Reducing the Deadliest Ovarian Cancer by Nearly 80% Doesn't Require Removing Ovaries
Surgeons have been in the room with the answer for decades. What took so long, and what still stands between knowing and doing?
The Dunning-Kruger Effect Has It Backwards
Everyone assumed the loudest person in the room was proof. Turns out the math was lying, and the most skilled people may be the most deluded about their limits.
Mescaline Threw a Brain Party. The Cerebellum Crashed It.
Used in ceremony for 5,700 years, and neuroscience only just looked inside. What turned up wasn't on anybody's map.
A Mental Disorder and Lung Disease Share a Genetic Link
One of psychiatry's most debated diagnoses just turned up sharing DNA with a completely unrelated organ system. Diagnostic categories, it turns out, are not how biology actually sorts itself.
Your Brain Has a Secret Drain. Aging Is Slowly Closing It.
Cerebrospinal fluid escapes through microscopic holes in a skull bone near your nose. The passage narrows over decades, but a nasal spray restored full flow in older mice.