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biology

Close-up video of bubbles in a lava lamp moving and splitting under the influence of heat.
origins of life

At the Dawn of Life, Heat May Have Driven Cell Division

By Carrie Arnold
November 23, 2021
Read Later

A mathematical model shows how a thermodynamic mechanism could have made protocells split in two.

Illustration of tangled branches that can also look like the folds in a brain.
neuroscience

To Be Energy-Efficient, Brains Predict Their Perceptions

By Anil Ananthaswamy
November 15, 2021
Read Later

Results from neural networks support the idea that brains are “prediction machines” — and that they work that way to conserve energy.

immunology

The Brain Can Recall and Reawaken Past Immune Responses

By Esther Landhuis
November 8, 2021
Read Later

The brain not only helps to regulate immune responses, but also stores and retrieves “memories” of them.

Photo of the freshwater sponge Spongilla.
evolution

Sponge Genes Hint at the Origins of Neurons and Other Cells

By Viviane Callier
November 4, 2021
Read Later

A new study of gene expression in sponges reveals the complex diversity of their cells as well as some possibly ancient connections between the nervous, immune and digestive systems.

Photo of Anne Carpenter of the Broad Institute standing in front of a wall of colored microscopy images.
Q&A

Her Machine Learning Tools Pull Insights From Cell Images

By Esther Landhuis
November 2, 2021
Read Later

The computational biologist Anne Carpenter creates software that brings the power of machine learning to researchers seeking answers in mountains of cell images.

An illustration that shows words and music from an opera singer going into a listener’s brain.
neuroscience

The Brain Processes Speech in Parallel With Other Sounds

By Jordana Cepelewicz
October 21, 2021
Read Later

Scientists thought that the brain’s hearing centers might just process speech along with other sounds. But new work suggests that speech gets some special treatment very early on.

Photo of rat climbing through a lattice of thin rods.
neuroscience

How Animals Map 3D Spaces Surprises Brain Researchers

By Jordana Cepelewicz
October 14, 2021
Read Later

When animals move through 3D spaces, the neat system of grid cell activity they use for navigating on flat surfaces gets more disorderly. That has implications for some ideas about memory and other processes.

Nobel Prize

Chemistry Nobel Prize Honors Technique for Building Molecules

By Jordana Cepelewicz
October 6, 2021
Read Later

Benjamin List and David MacMillan received the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their development of asymmetrical organocatalysis.

Nobel Prize

Medicine Nobel Prize Goes to Temperature and Touch Discoveries

By Jordana Cepelewicz
October 4, 2021
Read Later

David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian were awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries of how we detect heat and touch.


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