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Dense tangle of fine glowing fibers mapping the brain's wiring

Connectomics: Mapping the Brain's Wiring

Connectomics: Mapping the Brain's Wiring In 1986, scientists published the complete wiring diagram of a brain. It was the brain of a roundworm called Caenorhabditis elegans—302 neurons, about 7,000 synaptic connections. It took over a decade of painstaking work, slicing the worm into thousands of thin

Colorful fMRI-style brain scan with orange and blue activity patches

Every Neuroscience Headline Lies: Here's What We Actually Know

Every Neuroscience Headline Lies: Here's What We Actually Know "Scientists discover the brain region for love." "This is your brain on meditation—and it's incredible." "Neuroscience proves free will is an illusion." You've seen these headlines. They show

Brain emitting blue prediction waves that meet red error spikes

Predictive Processing: Your Brain Is a Prediction Machine

Predictive Processing: Your Brain Is a Prediction Machine Here's a claim that might ruin your week: you have never, in your entire life, experienced reality directly. Everything you've ever seen, heard, felt, tasted—all of it was your brain's guess about what was out

Glowing brain surrounded by faint sketched faces on a warm background

The Default Mode Network: What Your Brain Does When You're Not Doing Anything

The Default Mode Network: What Your Brain Does When You're Not Doing Anything In 2001, a neurologist at Washington University named Marcus Raichle was staring at brain scans and getting frustrated. His data had a problem. Certain brain regions kept lighting up when they weren't supposed

Brain split between a calm blue half and an inflamed red half

Neuroinflammation: When Your Brain's Immune System Attacks

Neuroinflammation: When Your Brain's Immune System Attacks Here's a question that would have seemed crazy twenty years ago: What if depression is an inflammatory disease? The classic explanation for depression is a neurotransmitter imbalance—not enough serotonin, not enough norepinephrine, circuits that aren't firing

Head silhouette with a white coin-shaped brain implant and trailing electrode threads

Neuralink: Elon Musk's Bet on the Brain

Neuralink: Elon Musk's Bet on the Brain On January 28, 2024, Elon Musk tweeted: "The first human received an implant from Neuralink yesterday and is recovering well." That's it. That's how we found out that the most ambitious brain-computer interface project

Human and robotic hands touching with a spark before a glowing brain

The Line Between Brain and Machine Is Already Blurring

The Line Between Brain and Machine Is Already Blurring In 2012, a woman named Jan Scheuermann fed herself chocolate for the first time in nine years. Jan has spinocerebellar degeneration—a progressive disease that had taken away her ability to move anything below her neck. She couldn't scratch