With a new genetic tool to study how flies detect scents, Stanford researchers take a step toward developing techniques to repair the faulty wiring behind human brain disorders.
Brain-machine interfaces now treat neurological disease and change the way people with paralysis interact with the world. Improving those devices depends on getting better at translating the language of the brain.
As scientists get better at interpreting the language of the brain, they get closer to not just treating disease, but also enhancing our senses and our intellects. Should they go there?
Researchers at the Stanford Center for Reproducible Neuroscience are championing a new way of organizing brain-imaging data that they hope will lead to more transparency, more collaboration and ultimately a better understand of the brain.
Legal and illegal drugs are killing more people than AIDS ever did, yet the nation’s drug policies are based on unproven assumptions about addiction. Neuroscience could help shape more effective policies and save lives.
Neuroscientists’ discovery of grid cells, popularly known as the brain’s GPS, was hailed as a major discovery. But new results suggest the system is more complicated than anyone had guessed.
By looking at groups of neurons in the emotional center of the brain, researchers now understand how neural networks in the brain form associations, like those made famous by Ivan Pavlov.
Researchers long believed that the cerebellum did little more than process our senses and control our muscles. New techniques to study the most densely packed neurons in our brains reveal that it may do much more.
Conventional computer chips aren’t up to the challenges posed by next-generation autonomous drones and medical implants. Now, Kwabena Boahen has laid out a way forward, using ideas built in to our brains.
Paving the way for flexible electronics, Stanford chemical engineers have developed a plastic electrode that stretches like rubber but carries electricity like wires.
Impulsive behavior in teens can go hand in hand with drug use, but the link is weak and doesn’t necessarily predict future behavior. A Stanford psychologist and colleagues think they can do better, using images of the brain.
The new technique probes the neural pathways that cause these tremors, and also provides a way to map and troubleshoot other circuits in the whole brain.
A central tenet in neuroscience has been that the amount of brain tissue goes in one direction throughout our lives – from too much to just enough. A new study finds that in some cases the brain can add tissue as well.
A biologist and a materials scientist have teamed up to unravel the biological forces at play within our bodies. The first phase: feeding nanoparticles to worms. Part of a series on tiny answers to biology's biggest questions.
When human drivers retake control of an autonomous car, the transition could be problematic, depending on how conditions have changed since they were last at the wheel.
New research finds that small regions of the brain cycle in and out of sleep, even when awake, reports Tatiana Engel, co-author of the study. The cycles shift toward “awake” when that part of the brain pays attention to a task.
Communication between different areas of our brain increases when we are faced with a difficult task. Understanding these fluctuating patterns could reveal why some people learn new tasks more quickly.
Technology for reading signals directly from the brain developed by Stanford Bio-X scientists could provide a way for people with movement disorders to communicate.
New tools for probing the inner workings of neurons developed through an initiative of the Stanford Neurosciences Institute will help scientists understand and heal the brain.
Depressing but true: people are less able to form new brain connections as they grow older. Undergraduate Richie Sapp was part of a team whose research could make it easier for adults to learn, and possibly heal after brain injuries.
