MIT scientists find that motor neuron growth increased significantly over 5 days in response to biochemical (left) and mechanical (right) signals related to exercise. The green ball represents cluster ...

Dopamine neurons—the cells that drive reward and motivation while we're awake—become surprisingly active during nonrapid eye movement sleep right after we learn something new. The findings challenge ...

A team of neurologists, bioengineers and radiologists has found that two neurons in the human brain that code for dopamine production have to work harder than similar cells in primate relatives. The ...

Novel artificial neurons learn independently and are more strongly modeled on their biological counterparts. A team of researchers has programmed these infomorphic neurons and constructed artificial ...

Neuroscientists have long dreamed of watching thoughts unfold as they happen, without disturbing the fragile tissue that produces them. That vision is suddenly closer to reality, as glowing neurons ...

Most people wouldn’t give Geobacter sulfurreducens a second look. The bacteria was first discovered in a ditch in rural Oklahoma. But the lowly microbe has a superpower. It grows protein nanotubes ...

For decades, neuroscientists have been trying to pinpoint the neural underpinnings of behavior and decision-making. Past studies suggest that specialized groups of neurons in the mammalian brain, ...

This article predates Brown Brothers Media’s ownership of Science Blog and has not been reviewed under our current editorial process. It is preserved as part of the publication’s archive. Somewhere in ...

Being able to understand speech is essential to our evolution as humans. Hearing lets us perceive the same word even when spoken at different speeds or pitches, and also gives us extra sensitivity to ...

A tiny stack of printed nanomaterials, thinner than a human hair and flexible enough to bend with living tissue, just did something no fabricated device has done before: it fired electrical spikes so ...

There’s no doubt that exercise does a body good. Regular activity not only strengthens muscles but can bolster our bones, blood vessels, and immune system. Now, MIT engineers have found that exercise ...

Surprisingly, the researchers also found that neurons respond not only to the biochemical signals of exercise but also to its physical impacts. The team observed that when neurons are repeatedly ...