Memory

In the 1960s, worm-training experiments and their strange implications captivated the nation. Columnist Claire L. Evans follows the neuroscientists who attempted to recapture the magic.

Evolutionary biologists are uncovering genomic mechanisms that allow populations to adapt quickly to different, hyperlocal habitats without splitting into new species.

“Neurons that fire together, wire together” is not the full story. A novel mechanism explains how the brain can learn across longer timescales.

Take a jaunt through a jungle of strange neurons underlying your sense of touch, hundreds of millions of years of animal evolution and the dense neural networks of brains and AIs.

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 small but enthusiastic group of neuroscientists is exhuming overlooked experiments and performing new ones to explore whether cells record past experiences — fundamentally challenging what memory is.

How do memories last a lifetime when the molecules that form them turn over within days, weeks or months? An interaction between two proteins points to a molecular basis for memory.

By screening films in a brain scanner, neuroscientists discovered a rich library of neural scripts — from a trip through an airport to a marriage proposal — that form scaffolds for memories of our experiences.