Topic description and stories

Neuroscience has transformed our understanding of the brain and promises treatments for devastating disorders that affect millions.

Charts map rapid growth and slow decline of brains

06 April 2022

An international team of researchers has created a series of brain charts spanning our entire lifespan – from a 15 week old fetus to 100 year old adult – that show how our brains expand rapidly in early life and slowly shrink as we age. 

Read more
La felicità nella luce della sera

Does nature make you happy? Crowdsourcing app looks at relationship between the outdoors and wellbeing

26 Apr 2016

A new app will crowdsource data to help scientists understand the relationship between biodiversity and wellbeing. ̽»¨Ö±²¥app, developed at the...

Read more

Opinion: How LSD helped us probe what the ‘sense of self’ looks like in the brain

14 Apr 2016

Ed Bullmore (Department of Psychiatry) and Nicolas Crossley (King's College London) discuss their work trying to find out how sense of self is...

Read more
DSC02863 (cropped)

Overweight individuals more likely to make unhealthier choices when faced with real food

14 Apr 2016

Overweight people make unhealthier food choices than lean people when presented with real food, even though both make similar selections when...

Read more

Living with adversity: What Tupac and Eminem can tell us about risk factors for mental health

12 Apr 2016

Hip-hop artists Tupac and Eminem are among the most iconic music artists of the past two decades, and as Dr Akeem Sule and Dr Becky Inkster, co-...

Read more

Researchers identify when Parkinson’s proteins become toxic to brain cells

14 Mar 2016

Observation of the point at which proteins associated with Parkinson’s disease become toxic to brain cells could help identify how and why people...

Read more
Too many croissants yesterday... (cropped)

Being overweight linked to poorer memory

25 Feb 2016

Overweight young adults may have poorer episodic memory – the ability to recall past events – than their peers, suggests new research from the...

Read more

Highway to addiction: how drugs and alcohol can hijack your brain

25 Feb 2016

̽»¨Ö±²¥discovery of a brain circuit ‘shortcut’ could explain why some addicts unintentionally relapse, and suggests that a shift in focus for therapies...

Read more
Electrical brain 'signatures'. ̽»¨Ö±²¥patient to the left is in a vegetative state; the patient in the middle is also in a vegetative state but their brain appears as conscious as the brain of the healthy individual at the right.

Brain, body and mind: understanding consciousness

23 Feb 2016

A bedside device that measures ‘brain signatures’ could help diagnose patients who have consciousness disorders – such as a vegetative state – to...

Read more

Schizophrenia and the teenage brain: how can imaging help?

17 Feb 2016

Adolescence is a dangerous time for the onset of mental health problems. Advances in brain imaging are helping to picture how neural changes in these...

Read more
Wheelchair

Spinal injury and ‘biorobotic control’ of the bladder

16 Feb 2016

There are many challenges facing people with spinal cord injury – and walking again is often the least of their problems. Cambridge research could...

Read more
Fibrils of amyloid-beta

Researchers identify ‘neurostatin’ that may reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease

12 Feb 2016

An approved anti-cancer drug successfully targets the first step in the toxic chain reaction that leads to Alzheimer’s disease, suggesting that...

Read more
Frontal lobe

Education and the brain: what happens when children learn?

10 Feb 2016

Have you lost your house keys recently? If so, you probably applied a spot of logical thinking. You looked first in the most obvious places – bags...

Read more

Pages