Brain News and Research

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The human brain is the center of the human nervous system and is a highly complex organ. Enclosed in the cranium, it has the same general structure as the brains of other mammals, but is over three times as large as the brain of a typical mammal with an equivalent body size.

Homer1 Gene Plays a Critical Role in Shaping Attention

Attention disorders such as ADHD involve a breakdown in our ability to separate signal from noise.

26 Dec 2025

Computational Tool Maps the Dance of Circadian Synchrony

What makes someone a "morning lark" or a "night owl?" Why does jet lag hit us so hard, and why do some people struggle each winter with seasonal affective disorder?

26 Dec 2025

Stem Cells Mimic Earliest Stages of Brain Development in a Dish

Researchers have made great strides to understand early signs of autism. Studies have found that certain factors like genetics, sleep deprivation, excess fluid in the brain-and brain size-can increase the risk of neurodevelopmental conditions, like autism.

26 Dec 2025

Stem Cell Models Offer Insights Into Early Brain Development and Autism

24 Dec 2025

Genetic Factor "Fru" Influences Bees' Cooperative Food-Seeking Behavior

A team of biologists from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU), along with researchers from Bochum and Paris, has uncovered a genetic component underlying intricate social behaviors in bees.

24 Dec 2025

UT Southwestern Researchers Design Tau Protein to Combat Neurodegenerative Diseases

A designer version of the tau protein, developed by a team led by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers, maintains its biological function while resisting aggregation, a pathological trait linked to neurodegenerative diseases called tauopathies. These findings, reported in Structure, could lead to new treatments for conditions including Alzheimer's disease, frontotemporal dementia, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), and progressive supranuclear palsy.

24 Dec 2025

Mapping the Four Dimensional Organization of the Human Genome

A new study challenges what's long been assumed about genetic variants thought to always cause inherited blindness.

23 Dec 2025

New vCATCH Method Maps Drug Binding Across Every Cell in the Body

When you take a drug, where in your body does it actually go? For most medications, scientists can make only educated guesses about the answer to this question.

23 Dec 2025

Machine Learning Models Identify Early Metabolic Shifts

Acute systemic inflammation has long been suspected to trigger harmful processes within the brain, contributing to neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. A new study published online in the Journal of Proteome Research on November 30, 2025, led by Professor Kei Zaitsu from the Faculty of Biology-Oriented Science and Technology, Kindai University, Japan, now provides compelling evidence that such inflammation causes region-specific metabolic disruption, identifying biochemical pathways that fail during the early stages of neuroinflammation.

22 Dec 2025

Researchers Uncover Gene Control Elements Tied to Alzheimer’s Disease

When most of us think of DNA, we have a vague idea it's made up of genes that give us our physical features, our behavioral quirks, and keep our cells and organs running.

19 Dec 2025

Long Non-Coding RNA Found to Directly Control Cell Size

What keeps our cells the right size? Scientists have long puzzled over this fundamental question, since cells that are too large or too small are linked to many diseases.

18 Dec 2025

Neuron Anatomy Shapes How the Brain Processes Odor Information

Closely related subtypes of dopamine-releasing neurons may play entirely separate roles in processing sensory information, depending on their physical structure.

17 Dec 2025

Light-Based Technique Reveals How Extracellular Vesicles Interact With Cells

The tiny bubbles that carry signals between cells throughout the body were discovered decades ago, but precisely what they contain and how their cargo affects recipient cells is still largely a mystery.

12 Dec 2025

Visualizing How Cancer Seed Cells Evade Brain Immunity

Metastasis occurs when cancer cells break away from the original tumor and travel through the bloodstream to form new tumors in other parts of the body. It is the leading cause of cancer-related death. Brain metastasis is particularly severe and affects 10-30% of patients with advanced lung, breast, and melanoma cancers.

12 Dec 2025

Changes in the Activity of KCC2 Protein Influence Reward Learning

A new finding from researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center shows that the learning process of associating cues with rewards can be altered by increased or decreased activity of a specific protein in the brain.

11 Dec 2025

MiniVolt Microscope Captures Neuron Voltage Signals in Freely Moving Animals

Researchers have built a tiny, lightweight microscope that captures neuron activity with unprecedented speed that can be used in freely moving animals.

8 Dec 2025

Spatial Touchstone Project Brings Standardization to Spatial Transcriptomics

Spatial transcriptomics provides a unique perspective on the genes that cells express and where those cells are located.

8 Dec 2025

Single-Cell RNA Imaging Uncovers Four Distinct Neuron Bands in the Hippocampus

Researchers at the Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute (Stevens INI) at the Keck School of Medicine of USC have identified a previously unknown pattern of organization in one of the brain's most important areas for learning and memory.

4 Dec 2025

Unraveling How GFAP Mutations Disrupt Mitochondria in Alexander Disease

Some brain disorders are straightforward, such as the direct frontal lobe assault of a concussion or traumatic brain injury. Others, like Alexander disease, are akin to guerilla warfare.

2 Dec 2025

How Singing Mice Reveal the Roots of Vocal Communication

All mice squeak, but only some sing. Scotinomys teguina, aka Alston's singing mice, hail from the cloud forests of Costa Rica. More than 2,000 miles north, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) neuroscientists study these musically gifted mammals to better understand the evolutionary origins of vocal communication.

2 Dec 2025