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Precisely timed electrical stimulation to the left side of the brain can reliably and significantly enhance learning and memory performance by as much as 15 percent, according to a study by a team of University of Pennsylvania neuroscientists published  in Nature Communications. It is the first time such a connection has been made […]

Between the ages of two and four, the human brain has an estimated one quadrillion synapses – the electrical connections between neurons. As we age, pruning out extraneous synapses enables existing ones to run more efficiently and is just as important as forming new cellular connections. An imbalance between synapse […]

It’s a fact of life, for lifeforms big and small, that the mind declines with age. Now researchers at UC San Francisco have identified the buildup of one brain chemical as a key culprit behind age-related learning and memory impairments. Tuning levels of this chemical in the worm C. elegans, they […]

It used to be that everyone knew that you are born with all the brain cells you’ll ever have. Then UC San Francisco’s Arturo Alvarez-Buylla, PhD, and other neuroscientists discovered in birds and mice that stem cells in certain parts of the brain do produce new neurons throughout the animal’s life. […]

Experts from the University of Exeter and University College London(UCL) have developed a cognitive test to detect subtle memory deficits years before Alzheimer's disease symptoms develop, set out in a paper published in The Lancet Neurology. The study involved 21 people who carry the mutation for early onset Alzheimer's disease who have not shown any […]

For more than 35 years, scientists have tried to isolate embryonic stem cells in cows without much success. Under the right conditions, embryonic stem cells can grow indefinitely and make any other cell type or tissue, which has huge implications for creating genetically superior cows. In a study published in […]

MIT neuroscientists have uncovered a cellular pathway that allows specific synapses to become stronger during memory formation. The findings provide the first glimpse of the molecular mechanism by which long-term memories are encoded in a region of the hippocampus called CA3. The researchers found that a protein called Npas4, previously […]

As a basic unit of life, the cell is one of the most carefully studied components of all living organisms. Yet details on basic processes such as how cells are shaped have remained a mystery. Working at the intersection of biology and physics, scientists at the University of California San […]

One of the many ways science is going to find new solutions is biomimetics – also called bionik – where you try to imitate or restore nature's amazing properties all the way down to the molecular level. On the nanotechnical scale, researchers are working to produce artificial body cells and […]

“Hairy” nanoparticles made with light-sensitive materials that assemble themselves could one day become “nano-carriers” providing doctors a new way to simultaneously introduce both therapeutic drugs and cancer-fighting heat into tumors. That’s one potential application for a new technology that combines water-repelling yet light-sensitive and water-absorbing materials into polymeric nano-reactors for […]

SC research sheds new light on how a breakdown in the brain’s vascular system predates the accumulation of toxic plaques and tangles in the brain that bring about Alzheimer’s disease. The research suggests an earlier target for preventing dementia and Alzheimer’s. Nearly 50 percent of all dementias, including Alzheimer’s, begins […]

Simple motion inside biological cells, such as the streaming of cytoplasm – the liquid cell interior – is widely believed to be essential for cells and the development of complex organisms. But due to the lack of suitable tools, this intracellular motion could so far not be tested as hypothesized. […]