So here's a fun fact that researchers apparently just figured out: methamphetamine, one of the most devastatingly addictive substances on the planet, has been moonlighting at a second receptor this whole time. Scientists have been so focused on one molecular target that they missed the other one...
Have you ever wondered if mice have musical preferences? Probably not. Most people have more pressing concerns. But some researchers asked exactly this question, and their answer came with a twist that nobody expected. A study in Cell Reports reveals that not only do mice develop sound preferences...
Neuroscientists have been spoiled by the motor cortex. Want to know how excitable that part of the brain is right now? Easy: zap it with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), watch the thumb twitch, measure the twitch size. The bigger the twitch for a given stimulation intensity, the more...
Back in 2000, researchers discovered something that shouldn't have worked: ketamine, the anesthetic that college students take at raves, could lift severe depression in hours instead of weeks. Traditional antidepressants take forever to kick in. Ketamine just shows up and starts rearranging the...
Your brain has two hemispheres connected by a massive cable called the corpus callosum. Cut it, and you get split-brain syndrome, where the left hand literally doesn't know what the right hand is doing. Except, according to a study in PNAS, that's not quite how it works. Leave just a tiny fragment...
Science is inherently messy. Studies contradict each other. Results that look definitive turn out to be flukes. Effects that seem small end up mattering, while effects that seem huge evaporate on closer inspection. Researchers argue with each other in journal pages, conferences, and increasingly on...
Your body has an internal clock. You probably knew that. It tells you when to sleep, when to wake up, and when to suddenly crave a burrito at 2 AM. But here's something you might not have considered: your pain might have its own schedule too. And according to a study in the Journal of Clinical...
Developing organs must maintain their shape even as individual cells change dramatically. A study in Cell Reports reveals how the fruit fly retina accomplishes this - through a tissue-wide network of mechanical tension.
When protein A regulates protein B, we usually assume it's because A binds to B. But biology is rarely that simple. A study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation shows that FGF13, known to regulate sodium channels in the heart, works primarily through an unexpected mechanism: altering local...
