Quanta
Podcast: Evolution of altruism — If evolution favors the survival of the fittest, how did humans gain compassion and empathy?
Altruism Evolution: If evolution favors the survival of the fittest, where did the impulse to help others come from? ...
Viewpoint: Can AI chatbots understand the words they’re processing?
Far from being “stochastic parrots,” the biggest large language models seem to learn enough skills to understand the words ...
Human brain cells grown in rats offer ‘more ethical option’ to study neurological diseases
Letting human brain organoids grow in animal brains could be an ethical new option for experimental studies of neurological disorders ...
Can you recall an emotionally charged moment? This single molecule drives whether that memory is good or bad
As Salk Institute postdoctoral researcher Hao Li and his team reported recently in Nature, the difference between memories that conjure ...
How does memory form? See what a fearful recollection looks like in the brain of a zebrafish
In a new study published in January in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team at the ...
Finding genetic disorders in patients during studies presents prickly ethical questions
Back in 2020, Cristen Willer, a professor of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, was leading ...
Maps of the neural ‘wiring’ in our brains could unravel secrets of behavior
Last summer a group of Harvard University neuroscientists and Google engineers released the first wiring diagram of a piece of ...
What does it mean for AI to ‘understand’? What are the limits of artificial intelligence?
How can we determine in practice whether a machine can understand? In 1950, the computing pioneer Alan Turing tried to ...
Just like in humans, allowing artificial intelligence (AI) programs to ‘sleep’ in between tasks reduces mistakes
What our brains do when our eyes are closed and our visual cortex isn’t processing the outside world may be ...
Why brains are excellent ‘prediction machines’
How our brain, a three-pound mass of tissue encased within a bony skull, creates perceptions from sensations is a long-standing ...
How COVID affects us long after the virus is gone
There are myriad ways that infectious agents — viruses, bacteria, parasites, fungi and prions — can do long-term damage to ...
‘Junk DNA’: The 98% of the human genome that does not encode proteins is often called useless — but the reality is more complicated
The human genome has three billion base pairs in its DNA, but only about 2% of them encode proteins. The ...
To learn, our brain cells routinely break and rebuild DNA. That insight is sparking a rethink of disease and aging
Faced with a threat, the brain has to act fast, its neurons making new connections to learn what might spell ...
‘Scientists have searched fruitlessly for brain boundaries between thinking, feeling, deciding, remembering, moving and other experiences’ — but that’s not how it works
Not only do researchers often depict the brain and its functions much as mapmakers might draw nations on continents, but ...
Infographic: Gene transfer mystery — How ‘antifreeze’ genes jumped from one species to another without sex
It isn’t surprising... that herrings and smelts, two groups of fish that commonly roam the northernmost reaches of the Atlantic ...
Brainless hydras can tell us a lot about the significance of sleep
It does not have a brain, or even much of a nervous system. And yet, new research shows, it sleeps ...
Is machine-based mind control on the near horizon?
Laser beams, ultrasound, electromagnetic pulses, mild alternating and direct current stimulation and other methods now allow access to, and manipulation ...
How our brain balances and blends past experiences with current perceptions
Our ability to make sense of our surroundings, to learn, to act and to think all depend on constant, nimble ...
If we ever encounter extraterrestrial life, here’s why they might not seem so alien
[University of Cambridge Professor Arik Kershenbaum] argues that evolution is a universal law of nature, like gravity — and that ...
Exploring the boundary between consciousness and slumber
What was once seen as the neurological equivalent of annoying television static may have profound implications for how scientists study ...
Neuroscientist Catherine Dulac challenges misperceptions about ‘male’ and ‘female’ instincts
Though she is trained as a developmental biologist, [Catherine] Dulac takes her research into territory usually explored by social scientists ...
How nature evolved blue tigers and other quirks of ‘neutral theory’
As late as the 1950s, hunters reported spotting their blue hairs alongside the traditional orange fur of other South China ...
Why does the brain have an area for recognizing objects in general but also for faces in particular? Neural networks could provide answers
[Neuroscientists James DiCarlo and Daniel Yamins] are part of a coterie of neuroscientists using deep neural networks to make sense ...
Epigenetics finding completely upends our understanding of drug addiction
I was taught to scoff at Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and his theory that traits acquired through life experience could be passed on to ...
CRISPR pioneers Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna awarded 2020 Nobel Prize for Chemistry
The 2020 selection for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to two scientists who share credit for identifying and developing ...
Our heartbeat shapes how we process fear and perceive the world
As the heart, lungs, gut and other organs transmit information to the brain, they affect how we perceive and interact ...
Infographic: COVID-19 herd immunity threshold likely varies from region to region
[A] lot of nuance is involved in calculating exactly how much of the population needs to be immune [to COVID-19] ...
Estrogen slows down adult bone growth, leading to generally taller men and shorter women
Human sexual size dimorphism, the difference in height between males and females, is often touted as a classic example of ...