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How common is sleeplessness really?

A new large-scale study shows that more than 850 million adults around the globe are living with sleeplessness, chronic insomnia. That's a lot of people! That means roughly one in six adults has frequent and lasting trouble with sleep, in a way that impacts their daily life. Of

Senescence: Can tired old spine cells bounce back - and take your back pain with them?

What goes wrong in your spine over time Almost everyone deals with lower back pain at some point in their life. A common reason for this pain lies deep in the spine: the gradual wear and tear of intervertebral discs. These discs are structured like jelly donuts, with a soft,

Food & memory & sleep. Your brain does more after dinner than you think.

We often imagine the brain as a thinking machine, but in reality, it is just as much a body controller. An example of such a controller is the hippocampus, a region renowned for its roles in memory and navigation. It turns out this brain area also helps control how the

Recommended Reading: A guide to understanding neurodiversity

The last decade of research in neurodiversity has resulted in a fundamental shift in how we understand human cognitive and neurological differences. We have moved away from viewing neurodivergens with focus on deficits. Instead, the new concepts frame the differences as natural and valuable parts of human diversity. Like biodiversity

Booze and brain: Neurons in trouble

Our brain is not just brain cells, little grey units full of thoughts and electricity and intellect ... The brain is full of helper cells called astrocytes, two for every brain cell. Once thought to just fill space, these cells actually do a lot to support neurons and help the brain

How our brains gamble on love: Choosing a partner

When it comes to choosing a romantic partner, we’re playing a high-stakes guessing game.  You quickly know, almost immediately, if you find someone attractive, but figuring out if they’re kind, reliable, or share your sense of humor takes time—and time is limited in the big mating game.

Wisdom, resilience, and well-being through life. What we can learn from the + 100 year olds

Philosophy meets neuroscience As more people live longer than ever before, scientists and philosophers are teaming up to understand what makes aging not just bearable, but beautiful. And three timeless human traits - wisdom, resilience, and well-being - are at the heart of it. Philosophers since ancient times have linked

Auch! Repeated head trauma changes brain chemistry in former football players

What happens in the brain after years of football tackles? Spoiler: it’s not just about concussions. Even without knockouts or dramatic injuries, decades after having left college, the brain may be quietly keeping score. A new study sampled cerebrospinal fluid of former American football players, looking for changes in

Work experience, education, and social status influence your brain anatomy

Your brain's structure may be shaped not just by age or genetics, but also by your socioeconomic position throughout life. In a major new study, researchers analyzed data from hundreds of thousands of people to explore how income, education, and job status influence brain anatomy. Their findings show

Pain relief without addiction? Meet Suzetrigine (JOURNAVX), the next-gen painkiller

New hope for pain relief without addiction risk Pain management has long relied on medications that affect the brain's pain centers, but many of these come with risks of side effects and addiction. Among the most concerning are opioids, which can be effective but carry a high potential

Hormone therapy may protect the mind

Estrogen plays an important role in brain health throughout a woman’s life. This hormone supports the brain’s ability to adapt and form new connections - and much more. But measuring brain estrogen levels directly in living people is quite difficult. So it's not easy to find

Your brain keeps track of family, friends and foes

You need food. You need sleep. And — you guessed it — you need people. Being social isn’t just nice, it’s necessary and much more than chatting or going to parties. From birth, we depend on others, not just for survival, but for emotional health and mental development. It’s

You started learning to speak before being born

Why do we speak? Why don't we just communicate with gestures, since sign language is just as delicate and detailed a way to communicate as the spoken language? One major reason spoken language may have become dominant over gesture lies in how our senses develop before birth. Long

How did that get in there? Microplastics in our brains

Plastic Heads, Literally? You may have thought you were cutting down on plastic by ditching plastic bags and sipping from a reusable bottle. Good job. Unfortunately, the bad news is that plastic seems to be winning anyway. It has been found in a number of our organs inside our bodies,