Brain & memory

Large trials found that aspirin does not protect older adults against dementia. A new analysis of one of those trials suggests…

Why do some people stay sharp as they age while others lose their memory? A gene active in a key brain region offers a clue,…

Over a billion people worldwide live with hearing loss. Hearing aids are seen as a practical fix. But new large-scale research…

Millions of people take fish oil supplements hoping to protect their memory. A new two-year clinical trial confirms the oil…

The APOE4 gene is the most common genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers already knew it affects fat…

Peroxisomes are cellular structures that process fats and break down harmful byproducts. There are signs that they function…

Scientists have found a way to limit brain damage in Alzheimer’s disease without removing the well-known tau protein. In mice,…

The immune system is involved in Alzheimer’s disease, but studying how that works in human brain tissue is difficult.

The aging brain loses its grip on details. But a new analysis suggests this is not purely a decline.

Some people carry a gene that sharply raises their risk of Alzheimer’s disease, yet remain mentally sharp into their eighties.

You do not need to reach ten thousand steps a day to protect your brain.

Sleep changes after fifty in predictable ways. What is normal, what harms your memory, and what actually helps? The state of…

As the brain ages, key connections between nerve cells start to malfunction. Researchers have now identified an enzyme that…

Some brain cells long considered purely protective may turn harmful with age.

During the menopausal transition, sixteen proteins in the blood shift in ways that are linked to brain health later in life.

Alzheimer’s research has long focused on amyloid-beta. But there may be a second culprit hiding in plain sight.

What happens in the brain after amyloid plaques are removed? A rare look inside the brain of an Alzheimer’s patient offers an…

Why does a particular gene raise Alzheimer’s risk so strongly? Researchers found a clue in chemical markings on DNA, and it…

After a stroke, many patients are left with lasting memory and movement problems. Researchers tested an approach in mice that…

The way the resting brain generates electrical signals changes as people grow older. Researchers have now managed to measure…

The way the brain changes in normal aging is fundamentally different from what happens in Alzheimer’s disease.

Many people feel sluggish and sleepy in winter. New research in fruit flies identifies a neurological circuit that drives…

The way someone talks reveals more about the state of their brain than you might expect. Researchers have now used it to build…

Bacteria in your gut produce a compound that actively worsens brain damage after a stroke. The link turns out to be…

A European study of 86,149 people in 27 countries found that people in countries with widespread multilingualism less often…

Brain degeneration linked to tau proteins may be triggered from outside the brain itself.

Using light to switch individual brain cells on and off sounds like science fiction.

People with osteoporosis have a strikingly elevated risk of dementia. And people with dementia more often lose bone density.…

Could what you eat protect your brain from shrinking? A new study suggests that people who closely follow the MIND diet show…

A compound produced by gut bacteria may contribute to brain changes involved in Alzheimer’s disease.

Not all APOE genes are equal. People carrying the APOE2 variant appear to have a lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease than those…

People with bulimia nervosa respond differently to negative feelings than people without an eating disorder. That difference…

Nearly a quarter of people carry the APOE4 gene, the strongest known genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s.

People who age biologically faster in their forties report more memory problems a decade later.

Brain damage in Alzheimer’s disease may begin far from the brain.

Why does learning become harder as we age? New research points to mitochondria, the energy-producing structures inside cells.

The Earth’s magnetic field is so unremarkable that nobody thinks about it. But shield fruit flies with a Parkinson’s-like…

What happens to your senses during the earliest phase of life shapes how sensitive they remain for good.

A small protein is sharply depleted in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. Replenishing it reduced tau build-up in mice,…

Immune cells delivered via bone marrow transplantation do more than restore the body’s defenses. They also transfer their own…

Some people carry variants of DNA repair proteins that impair how those proteins function.

In Alzheimer’s disease, the tau protein accumulates in neurons in an abnormal form.

Everyone knows that sleep is essential for memory. But which cells are actually responsible?

A young orangutan knows early on how to find fruit. But truly mastering survival in the rainforest takes years.

Forgetting details in later life is usually framed as decline.

A rare childhood brain disorder has uncovered an unexpected mechanism: the way proteins are chemically decorated with sugar…

Alzheimer’s is seen as a brain disease. But the damage may not even originate in the brain itself. A growing body of evidence…

Huntington’s disease has no effective treatment. Yet twenty patients showed measurable improvement after twelve weeks of…

Babies who are later diagnosed with autism often show delays in learning to speak. But when exactly does that difference begin…

Many people with long COVID struggle for months with extreme fatigue, slowed movement, and poor concentration.

People who are blind tend to have a finer sense of touch. But how does that work in the brain?

A protein in the brain declines with age. In mice, lower levels are linked to more inflammation, weaker bones, thinner skin,…

Researchers are developing techniques that convert support cells in the brain into new neurons. It sounds promising, but in…

After decades focused on amyloid-beta in Alzheimer’s disease, researchers are now turning to tau. This protein causes damage…

When retinal cells die in mammals, they are gone for good. That makes vision loss from retinal damage nearly irreversible.

Hundreds of tiny proteins active in the brain’s outer layer have been systematically mapped for the first time in people with…

Chronic procrastination is not a willpower problem. It is a measurable pattern in the brain.

The brain has a built-in mechanism to prevent nerve cells from becoming overactive.

Older people find it harder to unlearn old habits and adopt new ones. The same is true for mice.

Hundreds of tiny proteins in the brain have been overlooked by scientists for years. A new atlas maps more than a thousand of…

Which lifestyle choices keep your memory sharp after 50? Exercise, sleep, diet and cognitive training: here is what the…

An almost unknown layer of the cerebral cortex turns out to play a key role in regulating the sleep-wake cycle.

Lung cells respond faster after a previous infection. Not through new genes, but via a component of the innate immune system.

The brain has its own immune system, largely walled off from the rest of the body. Yet certain immune cells from the…

The APOE4 gene is the strongest known genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. But how exactly does it cause damage inside…

Starting cholesterol-lowering medication shortly after a type 2 diabetes diagnosis appears to reduce the risk of developing…

Sleep is not one unified state. While deep sleep gets most of the attention in memory research, REM sleep turns out to have…

Electrical brain stimulation is already used to treat depression and epilepsy.

Nerve stimulation at the ankle has been used for years to treat bladder problems such as overactive bladder. But how it…

Longer nerves break down more easily. That has long been suspected, but the reason remains partly unclear.

The brain shrinks and loses structure over time. Yet one region does something unexpected: it keeps functioning almost as well…

A gene long linked to Alzheimer’s disease does something else too: it destabilises how DNA is packaged inside cells,…

What if tiny packages from young blood could be modified to reach the brain more effectively?

What if you could replace damaged brain cells with new ones, made from cells already present in the brain?

For people with Alexander disease, a rare and deadly neurological condition, a treatment now exists.

A substance found in edible sea squirts improved memory, reduced inflammation, and even gave older mice thicker, darker fur.…

A protein that normally helps cells process genetic information may play a key role in Alzheimer’s disease. Reducing its…

The brain’s own immune cells can become damaged with age. When they do, they release a protein that disrupts surrounding brain…

Not all parts of the brain decline at the same rate in Lewy body dementia.

What does your brain actually do while you sleep? Far from nothing. During the quiet phase of sleep, memories are consolidated.

What if the familiar amyloid plaques are not the first trigger of Alzheimer’s disease, but a different protein is?

Your brain processes what you see across multiple layers simultaneously. Researchers have now measured in detail which brain…

Psychedelics are already being studied as treatments for depression and anxiety. But new scientific commentary suggests…

Alzheimer’s doesn’t start with forgetting. It starts with a microscopic cluster of misfolded protein in your blood, years…

The immune cells that protect your brain can grow old and start secreting something harmful to their neighbours. A newly…

Making it to your nineties with a sharp mind sounds like a victory.

Amyloid plaques are considered the earliest visible sign of Alzheimer’s on a brain scan.

Why do some people stay sharp into old age while others decline early? New research points to a specific brain cell type as a…

Some people perform far better on cognitive tests than their brain scans would predict. Others fall short.

Your brain at rest says less about your memory than previously assumed. Scientists found that brain activity during…

Your heart rate rises and falls in a slow, rhythmic pattern while you sleep. New research shows this rhythm is directly tied…

Aged cells in the brain behave like a slow infection. They send out signals that push neighboring cells into the same aging state.

Updated guidelines for preventing migraine have been released for the first time in fourteen years.

Tiny sleep interruptions you barely notice at night could signal a higher genetic risk for Alzheimer’s, years before any…

Senescent cells, cells that stop dividing but refuse to die, accumulate in the brain as we age.

Emotions are not snapshots. They develop across time, with different brain networks becoming active in sequence. New research…

Autism is linked to hundreds of different gene mutations. Yet many of them produce similar neurodevelopmental outcomes. New…

In ALS, motor neurons die. New mouse research suggests the disease itself is not the only driver: specific brain immune cells…

Your gut bacteria do far more than digest food. They communicate constantly with your genes, immune system and brain. And as…

From consistent bedtimes to cognitive behavioural therapy: these are the seven best-supported ways to sleep better, and one…

A vaccine against shingles appears to do more than protect against a painful rash.

Recovery after a stroke is rarely complete. But in mice, researchers managed to substantially improve recovery by partially…

Senescent brain cells do not stay quiet. They emit chemical signals that push neighbouring cells into the same dysfunctional…

People with no vascular risk factors at age 55 live more than twelve years longer without dementia than those who have three.

The brain has its own internal blood supply, precisely calibrated to which cells are active at any given moment.

In ALS, the brain’s immune cells turn against healthy motor neurons. They eat them alive, mistaking a stress signal for a…

There is not one single way to live longer. New genetic research in small roundworms shows that at least three different…

Air pollution raises the risk of Parkinson’s disease. But the mechanism doesn’t run only through the lungs. A new analysis…

Microglia, the brain’s immune cells, change their behavior as you age. New research explains how shifts in their metabolism…

The composition of gut bacteria changes dramatically as you age. That has consequences for your entire body, from your immune…

While you sleep, the day’s experiences are converted into long-term memories. New research shows this is not random: specific…

In a Harvard laboratory, miniature brains survived for more than five years. During that time they developed in ways…

Your brain constantly predicts what will happen next based on past experience. When something deviates from that prediction,…

In Alzheimer’s disease, proteins clump together in the brain and destroy nerve cells.

Aging blood stem cells drive chronic inflammation. But what pushes those stem cells into that state in the first place? A…

Why does exercise help people with Parkinson’s disease? It turns out muscles don’t just generate movement. They also send…

Women who used estrogen-only hormone therapy later in life were 39 percent less likely to be diagnosed with dementia. They…

Regular physical activity in your forties and fifties may keep your brain sharper in old age. So does stable blood sugar.

Your brain may be biologically older than your birth certificate suggests. Scientists are building clocks to measure that gap,…

A protein that clumps together in Alzheimer’s disease also directly damages the energy-producing structures inside brain…

What if some of the cells in your brain carried a sibling’s genome?

Parkinson’s is known as a disease in which nerve cells die. But new research shows that support cells in the brain are damaged…

While you sleep, your brain processes what happened during the day.

Your immune system remembers past threats so it can respond faster next time. But with age, that memory can go wrong.

Huntington’s disease damages the brain decades before diagnosis.

Nearly half of all dementia cases may be delayed by addressing risk factors that people can actually change. That is the…

A promising principle from mouse studies turns out to be harder to apply in people.

Neurons are covered in tiny protrusions called dendritic spines. Their shape and size may signal vulnerability to psychiatric…

Primates have exceptionally sharp vision compared to other mammals. Researchers traced the evolutionary origin of that ability…

Urination looks effortless, but it requires split-second coordination between the bladder and the urethral sphincter.…

Neurons are long cells with an unusual energy problem: they need to move their power generators (mitochondria) over large…

Not every mutation in the same gene leads to the same disease.

The brain uses electrical waves to process information. New findings suggest that these waves in the navigation circuit are…

The tau protein has long been a prime suspect in Alzheimer’s disease.

Five different treatments that extend mouse lifespan all raise the same molecule in blood and brain.

In Parkinson’s disease, nerve cells die in a brain region that controls movement. But the damage begins far earlier, at the…

Standard methods for analyzing brain activity use a single template for all ages. That template fits older brains poorly.

Two people watch the same film. Their brains respond differently. New research shows that genes largely determine how your…

Tau has long been a prime suspect in Alzheimer’s disease. Now it turns out the protein can also directly sabotage the…

Neuroscientists have long assumed the brain processes visual information like an assembly line: from back to front, from…

Why do people relapse after weeks or months without drugs? New research in rats identifies a specific brain connection that…

The brain’s ageing is not driven by neurons alone. Their support cells, called glia, play an important role too.

The brain has its own drainage system for metabolic waste. It deteriorates with age, and that deterioration is linked to the…

While you sleep, your brain may be signalling how fast it is ageing. A machine-learning analysis of overnight brainwave…

Not everyone suffers the same brain damage from poor sleep. A gene involved in the brain’s overnight cleaning system appears…

The brain replaces its own immune cells as it ages. But the newcomers are more inflammatory than their predecessors.

Briefly breathing slightly higher concentrations of CO₂ appears to stimulate the ageing brain’s cleaning system. That sounds…

Brain cells do not process information like a simple switch. Their branches (dendrites) actively perform their own…

Morphine, the most powerful painkiller we have, does not work the same way in everyone.

There are not enough specialists to properly support everyone living with dementia.

Not everyone with Alzheimer’s-related brain changes develops dementia. Why some people decline while others stay sharp has…

A much-discussed Parkinson’s inhibitor does something unexpected: depending on how the molecule approaches its target, it…

Blood tests for Alzheimer’s are improving rapidly. But the cognitive assessments doctors use have barely changed. A commentary…

Existing drugs that clear amyloid from the brain can cause small brain bleeds or brain swelling in some patients.

A neuropeptide long known as a digestive hormone turns out to play a key role in spatial learning and memory. Switching it off…

Your brain has its own cleaning system that flushes out waste, mostly while you sleep.

Inside every cell sits a nucleus containing three metres of DNA, folded with precision. How that folding changes with disease…

Poor sleep in Alzheimer’s has long been blamed on the brain plaques that define the disease.

Not every Alzheimer’s patient responds to treatment the same way. That has long been known, but there was no reliable method…

Aging brain cells accumulate fat. That might sound trivial, but researchers now link this fat buildup directly to Alzheimer’s…

Clumping tau proteins are one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers found a natural cellular protection…

Some people reach their eighties with memories that seem two decades younger. Scientists expected their genes to hold the…

When cells produce too many damaged proteins, they come under stress. A built-in emergency programme helps them survive.

Some people carry a gene that appears to protect them against Alzheimer’s and brain aging.

For years, Alzheimer’s research focused on amyloid, a protein that clumps in the brain.

Deep inside the brain, dedicated cells clean up waste, kill damaged cells and fight infection.

The DNA inside our cells is not simply coiled up randomly. It has a precise three-dimensional structure that determines which…

Long-term alcohol use damages your DNA through oxidative stress, epigenetic changes, and direct harm to brain cells and sperm.…

In Parkinson’s disease, specific brain cells die preferentially. Researchers long believed a well-known mitochondrial quality…

The brain’s memory hub, the hippocampus, changes with age not only in activity but in how its DNA is physically organized.

We eat plants, and the energy-producing structures inside those plants may reach our brain.

A blood test that can distinguish three forms of dementia from one another: it sounds futuristic, but a large international…

Watching a lot of television in midlife appears to be linked to brain changes decades later.

A man paralysed by a spinal cord injury had not been able to feel his dog for years. A brain implant changed that.

Older adults who closely follow a Mediterranean diet have higher blood levels of two small proteins linked to heart and brain…

A drug originally developed for spinal cord injury appears to do something no approved Alzheimer’s treatment has managed:…

Physical activity is widely considered one of the best things you can do for your brain.

The brain keeps making new neurons throughout life. But chronic inflammation appears to shut that process down. Researchers…

Parkinson’s is widely seen as a brain disease. But new research suggests it may partly originate outside the brain, driven by…

Where you live shapes your dementia risk more than most people realize.

In Alzheimer’s disease, a harmful protein spreads through the brain in a predictable pattern. Researchers can now track that…

In Huntington’s disease, brain regions degenerate in a fixed sequence. A new scanning method can now visualize that sequence…

Parkinson’s disease may not start in the brain at all. New research suggests that inflammation in peripheral tissues sends…

In the aging brain, damaged immune cells accumulate in a very specific region: the white matter.

How does your brain know what to pay attention to when you are holding two things in mind at once?

For years, Alzheimer’s research focused mainly on amyloid plaques. At the major AAIC conference in London, the spotlight is…

A century-old tuberculosis vaccine appears to do something surprising in the brain.

When danger looms, the brain often opts for stillness over action. But which brain region drives that choice? Surprisingly,…

How does your brain know whether it made the right choice? A new experiment reveals which brain region monitors that and how…

Alzheimer’s disease spreads from cell to cell. Now researchers know which protein holds the door open. Tau proteins accumulate…

Oestrogen does more than regulate reproduction. The hormone influences how brain cells develop and how they age.

Years before the first Parkinson’s symptoms appear, the brain may already struggle to clear its own waste. That pattern can…

A compound made by gut bacteria appears to damage the brain. And the older you get, the more of it circulates in your blood.

Tiny hairs on your lung cells keep your airways clean. When those hairs stop moving properly, chronic disease follows. New…

Astronauts consistently move more slowly in space, even when speed is required. A new study reveals the reason: their brains…

The brain does not just remember who someone is. It remembers how they behaved, and it updates that memory when behaviour…

Not all cells in your body read their genes the same way. Even in healthy tissue, neighboring cells can activate different…

Antibodies are known for fighting infection. But new research shows they also help shape the connections between brain cells…

The immune system can turn against its own host. That is the core of autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis.

Most people with extensive Alzheimer’s damage in the brain develop dementia. Some do not. Scientists are now beginning to…

Alzheimer’s destroys memory by killing neurons. But exactly how those neurons die has long been unclear.

In childhood cancer, predicting who responds well to treatment and who does not is critical.

Doctors have treated a common type of stroke with blood thinners and clot-busting drugs for decades. But new research suggests…

A small brain region targeted in Parkinson’s treatment also plays a key role in how decisions are shaped by reward.

ALS kills nerve cells fast, and no treatment stops the process.

Many cancer patients lose dramatic amounts of weight, not because they refuse to eat, but because their body actively…

An experimental Alzheimer’s drug targeting the protein tau has shown promising early results. Detailed data will be presented…

Brain cells don’t always behave the same way. The genetics of brain disorders, it turns out, depends heavily on whether a…

How does Alzheimer’s keep reaching new parts of the brain? A common brain protein appears to be ferrying toxic tau fragments…

Your body doesn’t age uniformly. Some cell types are biologically far older than others, and that gap may determine which…

Regular exercise keeps the brain healthy for longer. But how exactly does that work? New research turns the spotlight on the…

Everyone knows vitamin B12 as an energy vitamin. But researchers are now finding that a deficiency strikes early, before…

When algae die en masse, it is not random. They coordinate their own death through a lightning-fast iron-catalyzed chain reaction.

Long before any symptoms appear, your blood may already be signaling how your brain is aging.

What happens when brain cells lose their self-cleaning mechanism? Researchers long assumed the consequences would be swift and…

Your skin ages differently from your liver. Your muscle tissue follows a different pattern than your brain. But there are also…

What your blood looks like at fifty may predict how your brain holds up at seventy. A large study now maps that connection…

A four-day-old infant can already recognise a familiar word. And how well they do it depends on who is speaking.

The biggest genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease sits in a single gene: APOE4.

Parkinson’s disease has long been difficult to study in the lab: animal models only partially replicate the human condition.

How strong your grip is may reflect how your brain is wired. Researchers found that specific patterns of brain activity…

What happens to your brain in the first weeks after birth can permanently shape your behavior as an adult. That sounds…

There is a protein in your blood that measurably declines as you age. And as it drops, the risk of cognitive deterioration rises.

Sex hormones don’t just reshape the body during puberty; they actively reprogram the brain. New research identifies a specific…

The brain doesn’t just communicate through local signals. It also organizes activity through large rotating wave patterns that…

A copper-based compound restored the brain’s ability to clear toxic proteins linked to Alzheimer’s disease in laboratory…

Older adults vaccinated against shingles appear significantly less likely to develop dementia. That’s striking, because the…

Your immune system remembers more than just infections. Immune cells can learn from earlier activation and respond more…

A common respiratory virus can devastate motor neurons in some children. New research reveals how: it damages the gateways of…

A rare disease that makes children age decades too fast is teaching scientists about normal aging. Researchers gathered in…

Scientists long assumed there was one universal pathway to slow aging. New research in worms suggests there are at least…

Ritalin is known as a focus medication. But it also influences how we make decisions under pressure. And that effect runs in…

Tyrosine features in dozens of ‘focus supplements’ as safe and brain-supportive.

How do brain cells replenish their signaling machinery after every transmission? And does that depend on how active they are?…

The socioeconomic conditions you grow up in leave measurable traces in your brain.

Your tongue tastes, but your brain decides. A new study reveals which cells in the taste cortex are responsible for…

People with diabetes face a higher risk of dementia. But the relationship runs both ways: the two conditions reinforce each…

A new measure of biological aging looks not at your brain or your blood cells, but at your liver. And it predicts mortality…

Your body clock ticks like a watch, but that watch only keeps time because one enzyme is in the right place. New findings…

Your heart speeds up when you expect pain. But what happens if you receive false information about your own heartbeat?

You can recognise a smell, and you can also tell whether you have encountered it before. How do the brain’s systems separate…

What a child experiences in their first years shapes their brain. But which factor matters most?

After a concussion or more severe brain injury, many people struggle with lasting memory problems. Researchers have now mapped…

Researchers identified a new mechanism that damages nerve cells in Alzheimer’s disease. They also created an experimental…

Not everyone with amyloid plaques in the brain develops dementia. Some people reach a hundred years old with Alzheimer’s…

In Parkinson’s disease, one damaging protein accumulates inside nerve cells. Researchers have now uncovered a mechanism that…

Millions of people take glucosamine daily to ease joint pain. A large new study suggests the supplement may speed the…

A protein in brain cells turns out to be critical for Parkinson’s disease.

Mutations typically linked to blood cancer also appear to play a role in Alzheimer’s disease. That unexpected finding could…

When cells encounter damaging molecules like free radicals, they normally activate protective programmes. But who gives the…

The chronic low-grade inflammation that comes with old age has long been linked to dementia, heart problems and muscle loss.

What if you could get the benefits of sleep without sleeping? Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison did exactly that.

You can eat a generally healthy diet and still suffer cognitively if ultra-processed foods are part of the picture.

In healthy brains, an alarm system stands guard against invaders. In aging brains, that same system fires continuously,…

To understand what goes wrong in diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, you first need to know what a healthy brain looks…

How fast a baby grows in its first two years sets the wiring pattern of the brain. And that wiring predicts how flexibly the…

The same molecule can protect or harm your brain, depending entirely on where it comes from. Nitrate from spinach lowers…

Humans cooperate on a scale unique in the natural world. A new Science review shows how deeply that tendency is rooted in our…

Remote work seemed like a liberation. But for a growing number of people, it has also become a source of isolation and mental…

Bad memories keep people awake at night. But poor sleep also damages memory. That sounds like a loop, and it is.

Brain cells dispose of waste proteins differently from other cells in the body. A newly discovered system turns out to be…

A protein involved in cellular transport turns out to limit serious brain damage in mice. And it works across two distinct…

In Alzheimer’s disease, the brain’s immune system stays permanently switched on.

When it comes to diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, attention typically focuses on neurons dying.

The brain has its own immune cells that are supposed to clean up toxic debris, including the protein clumps linked to…

The tau protein, best known for its role in Alzheimer’s disease, appears to be involved in how neurons respond to DNA damage…

CBD is best known for easing pain or anxiety. But new research in mice suggests it may also suppress inflammation in the brain.

Not everyone’s brain ages at the same pace. A single gene variant appears to make neurons more resistant to harm.

Population aging raises dementia rates. But particulate air pollution does too, and possibly more than expected. New research…

Tau protein is best known as a culprit in Alzheimer’s disease. But it turns out to play an entirely different role too:…

Just two doses of a nasal spray improved memory and cognitive function in aging mice for several months.

Eating without being hungry: almost everyone knows the feeling. But which brain cells actually give permission to keep eating,…

You eat something, and your body knows almost immediately whether it contains enough building blocks. But how?

A protein best known from cancer research turns out to play a key role in brain aging.

An enzyme that received little scientific attention turns out to play a major role in amyloid accumulation in the brain.

A closely watched experimental Parkinson’s treatment has failed its first major clinical test.

Microglia, the immune cells of the brain, do more than clear damage. They also control hormone production through a specific…

Meeting current vitamin B12 guidelines might not be enough to protect the aging brain.

Sleep is not a passive state. While we sleep, the brain produces rhythmic electrical patterns that directly influence how…

Tuberculosis still kills more than a million people every year. Older adults are far more likely to die from it than younger…

The same protein accumulates in the brains of patients with more than twenty different diseases.

The number of clinical trials testing Alzheimer’s drugs is rising steadily. Yet approved treatments remain few. Researchers…

A single brain scan and an algorithm. That combination may be enough to predict whether someone will develop Alzheimer’s, how…

Old mice with Alzheimer’s features behaved like healthy young animals after a nanoparticle treatment. The therapy addresses…

Every bacterium in your body constantly sends out tiny molecular packages. A new hypothesis proposes that the build-up of…

Most people with dementia do not have one disease. They have two or three simultaneously. That makes treatment research far…

Forgetting where you put your keys may not be inevitable. A non-invasive brain stimulation technique targeting a specific…

One gene shapes Alzheimer’s risk more than any other. But the two most studied variants, one harmful, one protective, have…

Neurons must survive for decades without dividing. That makes DNA repair critical, and a new study shows one key repair…

Drinking two to three cups of coffee a day is associated with a 35 percent lower risk of dementia.

The brains of Alzheimer’s patients contain cells with DNA errors not found in healthy brains.

Genetically identical animals in the same environment still behave differently from each other. And their behavior shifts over…

When neurons die, they do not simply stop working. They send out signals that damage surrounding healthy cells. Researcher…

Until now, neuroscientists could distinguish at most two types of nerve cells at the same time while recording from a freely…

Obesity raises the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. The link has been suspected for years, but the underlying biology was murky. A…

The active compound in magic mushrooms reduces cocaine-seeking behaviour in animal models. That alone is notable.

Older people often say time seems to pass faster than it used to. A new theory links this to a concrete mechanism: the energy…

Tiny structures secreted by brain blood vessels may indicate whether someone is heading toward cognitive decline. That is the…

A gene already connected to a rare form of intellectual disability turns out to play a central role in regulating sleep.

The brain isn’t a fixed structure. It reorganizes itself continuously as we grow up, following predictable patterns, and a new…

Muscle loss in older age isn’t just about inactivity or poor diet.

In ALS and a form of frontotemporal dementia, a protein called TDP-43 clumps together in nerve cells, and kills them.

The immune system doesn’t stay neatly separate from the brain.

Whether something tastes sweet depends not just on what you eat, but on how much energy your body has.

Teenagers copy the behaviour of their friends: we've known that for a long time. But how quickly does that influence wear off,…

Scientists have grown human brain tissue in a laboratory that spontaneously organises into the layered structure of the…

A large language model performed at physician level on clinical reasoning tasks, according to a new study in Science. The…

For years, researchers blamed a specific type of nerve damage in the inner ear for age-related hearing struggles. A new study…

Researchers are growing human brain tissue in a laboratory that spontaneously organizes itself into the layered structure of…

Age-related hearing loss has long been linked to damaged nerve connections in the ear. But new research turns that assumption…

Drug development for epilepsy has always faced a frustrating bottleneck: waiting for a seizure to happen.

Millions of people are already experimenting with senolytic treatments to slow aging.

By the time someone forgets a name or gets lost on a familiar route, Alzheimer’s disease may have been quietly progressing in…

The weight can come off. But according to a new study in mice, the immune system may hold onto a memory of obesity long after…

Why does one person develop severe Alzheimer’s while another with equally damaged brain tissue stays sharp into their eighties?

Your brain has a built-in system for clearing out damaged proteins.

A new fluorescent sensor can track the release of GABA, the brain’s main braking signal, in freely moving animals for the…

A worm barely a millimeter long can sniff out bacteria enriched with a specific amino acid it cannot make itself.

Dasatinib and quercetin, the most widely used senolytic combination in longevity circles, causes damage to specific brain…

The most advanced Alzheimer’s treatments ever developed can now demonstrably remove the protein clumps long blamed for the…

Astrocytes make up roughly half the cells in the human brain and do far more than support neurons.

Down syndrome is caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21. That has been known for decades. What happens next in the body, and…

The brain’s outer layer is built like a six-story building, and each floor has different jobs.

Every cell in your body carries nearly identical DNA, yet a liver cell and a brain cell look and behave completely differently.

Two studies in Science have produced the most detailed picture yet of how individual brain cells develop differently in Down…

Your brain produces constant rhythmic electrical pulses. One of those rhythms, the alpha wave, turns out to be a key…

Surviving malaria is not the same as escaping it unharmed. New research shows the infection can leave measurable cognitive…

Which genes a cell switches on and which it keeps locked away is determined by more than DNA sequence alone.

Your brain constantly produces rhythmic electrical waves. One of those rhythms, the so-called alpha wave, turns out to govern…

For the first time, researchers have mapped in high resolution how individual brain cells develop differently in Down syndrome.

A small molecule that blocks a key inflammation trigger in the brain has cleared its first human trial without serious side…

Periodic fasting has been promoted for years as a powerful way to improve metabolism. But how the body actually responds…

Arterial stiffening, high blood pressure, a leaking blood-brain barrier, many of the health problems that come with age begin…

Male and female brains look largely the same. But at the level of individual cell types, a new study finds striking…

Every cell in your body is constantly building proteins, the molecules that do nearly everything. But exactly how that…

The human brain is bad at quantities, and that appears to be a feature, not a bug.

When mice are trained to fear a specific odor, the structure of their offspring’s smell system changes, even though those…

The big folds of the human brain have been mapped for over a century.

Anxiety isn’t spread diffusely across the brain. Researchers pinpointed a specific population of neurons in a rarely discussed…

After decades of research focused on amyloid plaques and tau tangles, a study points to a neglected signalling molecule in the…

Tau protein is present in almost every brain over the age of eighty, yet most people never develop dementia.

The same technique that has transformed cancer treatment, reprogramming immune cells to hunt down disease, is now being aimed…

When chronic pain persists long after an injury has healed, many assume the problem lies in the brain.

The blood-brain barrier keeps harmful substances out of the brain. For decades it was treated as a near-impenetrable wall.

When you picture an apple in your mind, your brain activates many of the same neurons as when you actually see one.

Older adults who received a high-dose flu vaccine showed a greater reduction in dementia risk than those who got the standard…

The blood-brain barrier keeps harmful substances out of the brain, but exactly how it works has largely remained a mystery.

Chronic pain often lingers long after the original injury has healed. Scientists have discovered that the spinal cord develops…

When you picture an apple in your mind, your brain uses largely the same regions as when you actually see one.

Older adults who received a high-dose flu shot were more likely to avoid dementia than those who got a standard dose.

Newborns sleep sixteen hours a day. Adults need seven or eight. Everyone knows this changes, but almost no one knows why.

APOE4 is the most powerful known genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. But what does it actually do in the brain, long…

Instead of targeting amyloid or tau, the usual suspects in Alzheimer’s research, scientists focused on a neuropeptide that had…

A quarter of older patients become confused after surgery. It sounds temporary. But the brain damage often isn’t. Now…

To eventually grow replacement organs, or even whole bodies, scientists first need to understand how an embryo does it.

Before a single memory slips, something has already gone wrong deep in the brain.

Long before you start forgetting things, something has already gone wrong in your brain.

For decades, a particular pattern of brain activity called theta oscillations was thought to govern both how we store and how…

Millions of people carry the APOE4 gene, the strongest known genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s.

For years, researchers assumed that brain waves called theta oscillations drive both the storing and the retrieval of…

Around a quarter of older people become acutely confused after surgery. Most recover, but the episode leaves a mark: it…

A blood test that can detect Alzheimer’s disease years before symptoms appear sounds like unambiguous progress.

Researchers have developed a way to control nerve cells using light pulses, without the genetic modifications that have made…

We’ve known for years that gum disease is bad for your heart.

Adolescents have long been known to cooperate less than adults.

Teenagers have long been known to be less cooperative than adults.

Surviving a severe infection doesn't mean you're in the clear. New epidemiological data show that such an infection…

Two of the most well-known genetic risk factors for Parkinson’s disease both disrupt the same cellular process: waste disposal.

The importance of gut bacteria in early life is well established.

Parkinson’s disease begins in the power plants of cells. Researchers have now found a way to deliver healthy versions of those…

Two of the best-known genetic risk factors for Parkinson's disease both appear to disrupt the same molecular link: the cell's…

We already know that gut bacteria matter in newborns. But exactly how they help drive gut motility early in life is a question…

Parkinson's disease starts in the power plants of your cells. Scientists have now found a way to deliver healthy versions of…

Viruses have spent millions of years evolving ways to hijack cells and sidestep stress responses.

The brain has its own immune cells, called microglia, and it turns out they age very differently from what scientists assumed.

The gut microbiome sends a constant stream of chemical signals to the brain.

LDL cholesterol has long been flagged as a cardiovascular risk factor.

LDL cholesterol has been recognized as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease for decades.

Your gut microbiome sends messages directly to your brain through metabolites and inflammatory signals.

Psilocin, the active compound your body produces from psychedelic psilocybin, makes human neurons grow in a measurably…

They are not neurons and they rarely get the attention, but astrocytes are everywhere in the brain and they do almost…

Why does one vaccine protect you for life, while another barely lasts a year?

The immune system has a memory. Everyone already knew that from vaccines.

A new inhibitor of the enzyme G9a reduces Alzheimer's symptoms in mice.

As longevity research races ahead, one organ keeps getting left behind when it comes to treatment options: the brain.

Stress is the most reliable trigger for alcohol relapse. A new study in mice and rats maps the specific neural circuit…

Why do people who have quit drinking so often relapse when they're under stress?

Transplanting mitochondria into living cells sounds like science fiction, but in mice with Parkinson's it worked surprisingly…

Mice never need to have smelled a predator to instinctively flee from it. And they never need to have met another mouse to…

In many neurodegenerative diseases, axons, the long projections neurons use to transmit signals, die off before the cell…

Misfolded proteins are among the leading drivers of age-related diseases, from Alzheimer's to Parkinson's. We know more and…

Mitochondria, the powerhouses of the cell, have been a promising but stubbornly hard-to-reach therapeutic target for decades.

Until recently, the evidence for psilocybin's restorative effects came almost exclusively from animal studies.

The way you sleep changes measurably as you age. Researchers have used those changes to build a biological clock: an algorithm…

Your sense of smell fades as you get older, something anyone with an elderly grandparent will recognise, yet something science…

The two best-known hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease, amyloid-β plaques and tau tangles, never appear at the same time. Amyloid…

Imagine a cell that keeps its own log of which genes were active and when: an internal record that remains readable long after…

An AI that always agrees and never pushes back sounds appealing.

Transplanting mitochondria into living cells has long seemed more fantasy than medicine.

A large-scale study in Science has for the first time mapped in detail the spatial and morphological organization of…

A fascinating study in Science reveals how chronic pain opens a direct biological pathway to depression, through newly formed…

The same technology behind mRNA vaccines is now being aimed at one of the world's most devastating diseases.

For the first time, the Aging Initiative is hosting the Neuroscience of Vitality and Aging (NOVA) Conference in Boston, an…

Scientists have discovered a direct biological circuit linking stress to skin inflammation.

Researchers have discovered that in the hippocampus of mice, the brain's memory center, RNA molecules are chemically modified…

People who carry the APOE ε4 gene, the single biggest genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, may actually benefit from…

Stress is the most reliable trigger for alcohol relapse. A new study in mice and rats maps the specific neural circuit…

Alzheimer's and Parkinson's are not single diseases; they are collections of subtypes, each with its own progression, risk…

Millions of people live with chronic neuropathic pain for years on end: a debilitating condition in which the nervous system…

Your brain has its own immune system. The cells that make it up are called microglia, and they do far more than fight infections.