Quick: look around the room you're in. You see a chair. A phone. Maybe a coffee mug. Those are things. But you also see the wood grain of the table, the coffee in the mug, the air itself (well, sort of). Those are stuff. Congratulations, your brain just performed a categorization task that...

Here's the thing about living in the real world: everything happens at once. You're not just breathing air pollution OR experiencing chronic stress OR getting exposed to industrial chemicals. You're doing all of it simultaneously, while also sleeping badly, eating questionable takeout, and maybe...

Ever wonder how your brain knows it's morning before you've even opened your eyes? There's a tiny squad of specialized cells in your retina working round the clock to keep your internal rhythm synced with the sun. But here's where it gets interesting: a new study in Cell Reports reveals that these...

The age at which someone gets diagnosed with autism varies wildly. Some children are identified before they can tie their shoes. Others don't get a diagnosis until they're teenagers, adults, or sometimes never at all. The usual explanations for this have focused on things like access to healthcare,...

Misinformation spreads faster than ever. A review in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews examines what makes some people more susceptible than others.

You know how after a nerve injury, even the lightest touch can feel like someone's attacking you with a cheese grater? Turns out there's a very specific molecular villain behind this, and scientists just caught it red-handed. A study in The Journal of Clinical Investigation reveals that after nerve...

Your body is running a ridiculously precise 24-hour clock in nearly every cell you own. It tells you when to sleep, when to eat, when to be alert, and when to feel like a zombie. The engineering behind this system is genuinely impressive, with multiple redundant controls and feedback loops that...

Neurons adjust their sensitivity when activity drops - a process called homeostatic synaptic plasticity. A study in eLife identifies a presynaptic protein essential for this compensation in cortical cultures.

There's a frustrating pattern in cancer research that drives everyone crazy. A new drug looks absolutely brilliant when you test it on cancer cells in a dish. It kills tumors left and right. Everyone gets excited. The drug moves forward. Then it reaches patients and... nothing. It flops. The tumors...

You know how you get a little snippy when you haven't eaten in a while? Maybe you snap at your partner or feel irrationally annoyed by someone chewing too loudly. Well, mice take the whole "hangry" concept to a place that would make even the hungriest among us pause. According to research from the...