April 28, 2026
(Wired) – Nicotine pouches are revered among tech workers, who tout them as the perfect brain-boosting, productivity-jacking stimulants. Tech workers are increasingly attacking their marathon workdays like “racehorses” dosed with significant quantities of purportedly performance-maximizing nicotine, with each 6-mg pouch … Read More
April 27, 2026
(New York Times) – Before the rise of GLP-1s, obesity experts didn’t study the internal buzz that compels people to eat. Now that food noise is being switched off, they want to understand it. Before the new obesity drugs came … Read More
April 24, 2026
(WSJ) – Cognitive exercises offered by a bot named Sunny, paired with telehealth visits, can be ‘physical therapy for the brain’ NewDays requires patients to have telehealth visits, usually every two weeks, with its staff of doctors, then talk to … Read More
April 21, 2026
(The Conversation) – The first time the placebo effect really got under my skin was when I read that roughly one-third of people with irritable bowel syndrome improve on placebo treatments alone. Usually this statistic is presented as a fascinating … Read More
April 21, 2026
(Wired) – A longitudinal study found that loneliness is closely linked to lapses in immediate and delayed recall. Neuroscientists know that there is a link between loneliness and cognitive decline in older adults, although it is still difficult to understand … Read More
April 20, 2026
(Compact Magazine) – Marijuana remains the most misunderstood vice in America. Our large and growing marijuana industry depends on obscuring the well-documented connection the drug has to a wide variety of severe physical and mental health issues, as well as … Read More
April 20, 2026
(Futurism) – It just takes two sprays into the nasal cavity to make a difference. A team of scientists at Texas A&M University say they’ve developed a nasal spray that improves the working memory of older lab mice. They believe … Read More
April 17, 2026
(WSJ) – While many ER visits for dizziness result in expensive CT scans and sedatives, researchers are finding there are more-effective options Of the many age-related problems that pose a risk to adults in midlife and beyond, so-called vestibular and … Read More
April 16, 2026
(Wired) – California-based startup Sabi is developing a thought-to-text wearable that could usher in the cyborg future. Speech-to-text capability is now baked into all modern computers. But what if you didn’t have to dictate to your computer? What if you … Read More
April 16, 2026
(New Scientist) – Monkeys with around 300 electrodes implanted in their brain were able to steer avatars around different virtual environments Monkeys fitted with a brain-computer interface (BCI) successfully navigated a variety of virtual worlds using only their thoughts. Researchers … Read More
April 16, 2026
(NYT) – The review said a certain class of drugs had little clinical benefit, but many Alzheimer’s experts criticized the analysis, saying it unfairly lumped failed drugs with two recently approved treatments. Since the approval of new Alzheimer’s drugs in … Read More
April 15, 2026
(IEEE Spectrum) – Early BCI users reveal what the technology gives—and takes More people have gone to space than have received advanced brain-computer interfaces (BCI) like his. But a growing number of companies are now attempting to move the devices … Read More
April 14, 2026
(Washington Post via MSN) – Older adults — those 60 and older — are the fastest-growing group of cannabis users in the country. According to a 2022 study, adults over 60 who started using did so for medical reasons, including … Read More
April 13, 2026
(BBC) – A ballerina with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) says she was able to dance again after her brainwaves were used to power an avatar live on-stage in Amsterdam. Breanna Olson, a mother of three, found out two and a … Read More
April 9, 2026
(New York Times) – New research is upending what we thought about the consciousness of patients, leaving families with agonizing choices. The vegetative state, as it turned out, was not fixed — though, practically, the label tended to stick. Tabitha … Read More
April 8, 2026
(Washington Post via MSN) – The data remains sparse: An analysis published last year found that just a tiny fraction of the more than 40,000 autism papers published between 1980 and 2021 included people over 50. But the number of … Read More
April 8, 2026
(NYT) – An analysis of hundreds of images from several studies shows how hallucinogenic drugs drive activity in various regions of the brain. Their findings, published on Monday in the journal Nature Medicine, suggest that psychedelics prompt a welter of … Read More
April 1, 2026
(NYT) – Cohen Miles-Rath heard voices telling him to kill his father. After they passed, he spent years retracing the path of his delusions. His memoir, “Mending Reality: An Advocate’s Existential Journey With Mental Health,” was published last summer by … Read More
March 31, 2026
(Wired) – Galen Buckwalter says brain-computer interfaces will have to be enjoyable to use if the technology is going to be successful. Buckwalter has been a quadriplegic since a diving accident at age 16 left him paralyzed from the chest … Read More
March 26, 2026
(Nature) – The comprehensive guide draws on brain scans from almost 3,600 people, ranging from infants to centenarians. It maps a property called functional connectivity, which describes the level of coordination between separate brain regions. The data suggest that in … Read More
March 25, 2026
(Bloomberg) – Doctors call it Ondine’s curse—a catastrophic failure of the brain stem in which breathing no longer happens automatically, especially during sleep. It’s extremely rare, typically seen only in infants with genetic mutations or adults after severe trauma, and … Read More
March 24, 2026
(MIT Technology Review) – Coles, a gerontologist who spent the latter part of his career studying human longevity, opted to have his brain cryogenically preserved when he died of pancreatic cancer. After he was declared dead, Coles’s body was kept … Read More
March 24, 2026
(Wired) – R3 Bio has a bold idea for replacing lab animals: genetically-engineered whole organ systems that lack a brain. The long-term goal, says a cofounder, is to make human versions. As the Trump administration phases out the use of … Read More
March 23, 2026
(MIT Technology Review) – Placebo and “knowcebo” effects are a problem. But they can also help people feel better. Over the last decade, we’ve seen scientific interest in these drugs explode. But most clinical trials of psychedelics have been small … Read More
March 20, 2026
(The Atlantic) – When I set out to report on the sports-betting industry—its explosive growth, its sudden cultural ubiquity, and what it’s doing to America—my editors thought I should experience the phenomenon firsthand. Mindful of my religious constraints, they proposed … Read More
