Topic description and stories

Left: cricket on a trackball during experiment. Right: Auditory neuron in cricket brain.

Neural circuit in the cricket brain detects the rhythm of the right mating call

11 Sep 2015

Delay mechanism within elegant brain circuit consisting of just five neurons means female crickets can automatically detect chirps of males from same...

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Odaraia alata, an arthropod resembling a submarine from the middle Cambrian Burgess Shale.

Clues contained in 500 million-year-old brain point to the origin of heads in early animals

07 May 2015

The discovery of a 500 million-year-old fossilised brain has helped identify a point of crucial transformation in early animals, and answered some of...

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3D image of human neurons in a dish

Link between proteins points to possibilities for future Alzheimer’s treatments

23 Apr 2015

Researchers have identified how proteins that play a key role in Alzheimer’s disease are linked in a pathway that controls its progression, and that...

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Listen to your heart

Listen to your heart: why your brain may give away how well you know yourself

21 Apr 2015

“Listen to your heart,” sang Swedish pop group Roxette in the late Eighties. But not everyone is able to tune into their heartbeat, according to an...

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Transmission electron microscopy image showing a molecular chaperone (the black dots) binding to thread-like amyloid-beta (Aβ42)

Molecular inhibitor breaks cycle that leads to Alzheimer’s

16 Feb 2015

A molecular chaperone has been found to inhibit a key stage in the development of Alzheimer’s disease and break the toxic chain reaction that leads...

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Detail of an atomic force microscopy image which shows amyloid fibrils of alpha-synuclein grown out of synthetic lipid vesicles

Protein threshold linked to Parkinson’s Disease

02 Feb 2015

Excess quantities of a specific protein in the brain dramatically increase the chances of so-called “nucleation events” that could eventually result...

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Lifelong learning and the plastic brain

19 Nov 2014

Our brains are plastic. They continually remould neural connections as we learn, experience and adapt. Now researchers are asking if new...

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Neural Connections In the Human Brain

Presence or absence of early language delay alters anatomy of the brain in autism

23 Sep 2014

Individual differences in early language development, and in later language functioning, are associated with changes in the anatomy of the brain in...

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Inside

New headway in battle against neurodegenerative diseases

15 May 2014

Conditions which may accelerate the spread of Parkinson’s disease, and a potential means of enhancing naturally-occurring defences against...

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Kings Down

Scientists identify part of brain linked to gambling addiction

08 Apr 2014

New research reveals that brain damage affecting the insula – an area with a key role in emotions – disrupts errors of thinking linked to gambling...

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Dementia: what’s needed now?

17 Mar 2014

A remarkable new project that looks at brain donor’s involvement in brain research and the search for cures for dementia will be presented at this...

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Dunking a cookie into a cup of coffee

Just made coffee while chatting to a friend? Time to thank your ‘visuomotor binding’ mechanism…

14 Mar 2014

Experiments have identified a dedicated information highway that combines visual cues with body motion. This mechanism triggers responses to cues...

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