Brains

Machine learning is helping neuroscientists organize vast quantities of cells’ genetic data in the latest neurobiological cartography effort.

New experiments reveal how astrocytes tune neuronal activity to modulate our mental and emotional states. The results suggest that neuron-only brain models, such as connectomes, leave out a crucial layer of regulation.

Researchers recorded the neurons that shape directional navigation as bats explored a remote island off the coast of Tanzania.

Is language core to thought, or a separate process? For 15 years, the neuroscientist Ev Fedorenko has gathered evidence of a language network in the human brain — and has found some parallels to LLMs.

A sudden flash of insight is a product of your brain. Neuroscientists track the neural activity underlying an “aha” and how it might boost memory.

Neuroscientists probing the boundary between sleep and awareness are finding many types of liminal states, which help explain the sleep disorders that can result when sleep transitions go wrong.

A healthy brain maintains a harmony of neurons that excite or inhibit other neurons, but the lines between different types of cells are blurrier than researchers once thought.

A better understanding of human smell is emerging as scientists interrogate its fundamental elements: the odor molecules that enter your nose and the individual neurons that translate them into perception in your brain.

Studies of neural metabolism reveal our brain’s effort to keep us alive and the evolutionary constraints that sculpted our most complex organ.