Research Highlight |
Featured
-
-
News Feature |
How does ChatGPT ‘think’? Psychology and neuroscience crack open AI large language models
Researchers are striving to reverse-engineer artificial intelligence and scan the ‘brains’ of LLMs to see what they are doing, how and why.
- Matthew Hutson
-
News |
Brain-reading device is best yet at decoding ‘internal speech’
Technology that enables researchers to interpret brain signals could one day allow people to talk using only their thoughts.
- Miryam Naddaf
-
News |
Cubic millimetre of brain mapped in spectacular detail
Google scientists have modelled a fragment of the human brain at nanoscale resolution, revealing cells with previously undiscovered features.
- Carissa Wong
-
News |
Found: the dial in the brain that controls the immune system
Scientists identify the brain cells that regulate inflammation, and pinpoint how they keep tabs on the immune response.
- Giorgia Guglielmi
-
News |
Rat neurons repair mouse brains — and restore sense of smell
Scientists develop hybrid mice by filling in missing cells and structures in their brains with rat stem cells.
- Sara Reardon
-
News |
Mini-colon and brain ‘organoids’ shed light on cancer and other diseases
Tiny 3D structures made from human stem cells sometimes offer insights that animal models cannot.
- Sara Reardon
-
News |
How to freeze a memory: putting worms on ice stops them forgetting
The model organism Caenorhabditis elegans is quick to forget a notable odour — unless it is chilled or given lithium.
- Julian Nowogrodzki
-
News |
Your perception of time is skewed by what you see
Features of a scene such as size and clutter can affect the brain’s sense of how much time has passed while observing it.
- Lilly Tozer
-
News |
Do insects have an inner life? Animal consciousness needs a rethink
A declaration signed by dozens of scientists says there is ‘a realistic possibility’ for elements of consciousness in reptiles, insects and molluscs.
- Mariana Lenharo
-
News |
Why queasiness kills hunger: brain circuit identified
Feelings of hunger, nausea and fullness seem to be governed by separate brain circuits, finds a study in mice.
- Gillian Dohrn
-
News & Views |
Coupled neural activity controls working memory in humans
How does the human brain temporarily store information without losing track of it? Neuroscientists have discovered that neurons in the frontal and temporal lobes work together to hold information in working memory.
- Ziv Williams
-
Nature Podcast |
Keys, wallet, phone: the neuroscience behind working memory
Brain areas work in tandem to temporarily store important information, and an aurora on a cool brown dwarf.
- Benjamin Thompson
- & Noah Baker
-
Technology Feature |
A milestone map of mouse-brain connectivity reveals challenging new terrain for scientists
A pioneering ‘connectomics’ collaboration has successfully reconstructed one cubic millimetre of brain tissue, but researchers are still just scratching the surface of the complexity it contains.
- Michael Eisenstein
-
Research Highlight |
Bitter taste receptors are even older than scientists thought
Discovery in sharks suggests that these sensory receptors date back to some 450 million years ago.
-
News |
This fMRI technique promised to transform brain research — why can no one replicate it?
The DIANA technique sparked excitement from neuroscientists. But two new papers have cast doubt over the results.
- McKenzie Prillaman
-
Nature Video |
No sweat: Moisture-wicking device keeps wearable-tech dry
Breathable patch could allow for comfortable and multifunctional wearable electronics.
- Dan Fox
-
News & Views |
Innate immunity in neurons makes memories persist
A population of neurons that engages mechanisms of the innate immune system during memory formation has been uncovered in mice. Surprisingly, inflammatory signalling might pave the way for long-term memory.
- Benjamin A. Kelvington
- & Ted Abel
-
News |
Memories are made by breaking DNA — and fixing it
Nerve cells form long-term memories with the help of an inflammatory response, study in mice finds.
- Max Kozlov
-
News |
COVID’s toll on the brain: new clues emerge
A leaky blood–brain barrier and inflammation might account for some of the cognitive symptoms of COVID-19.
- Claudia López Lloreda
-
News Explainer |
Ketamine is in the spotlight thanks to Elon Musk — but is it the right treatment for depression?
The entrepreneur endorses the drug, but researchers caution that it’s not to be taken lightly.
- David Adam
-
News & Views |
Can lessons from infants solve the problems of data-greedy AI?
Words and images experienced by an infant wearing sensors during their daily life have led to efficient machine learning, pointing to the power of multimodal training signals and to the potentially exploitable statistics of real-life experience.
- Linda B. Smith
-
News & Views |
From the archive: Brain–body connection, and cuttlefish ink distracts predators
Snippets from Nature’s past.
-
Research Highlight |
How a light touch registers on the skin
Experiments suggest that the protein ELKIN1 helps sensory nerve cells to carry the signal of gentle contact to the brain.
-
Correspondence |
Why can’t researchers agree about consciousness? Because it’s all in the mind
- Jose Luis Perez Velazquez
-
News & Views |
Non-neuronal brain cells modulate behaviour
A single gene in astrocytes can constrain repetitive behaviours, indicating that these cells are regulators of behavioural disruption in conditions such as Huntington’s disease and obsessive–compulsive disorder.
- Anna Kruyer
-
News & Views |
Synchronized neuronal activity drives waste fluid flow
Active neurons can stimulate the clearance of their own metabolic waste by driving changes to ion gradients in the surrounding fluid and by promoting the pulsation of nearby blood vessels.
- Lauren Hablitz
- & Maiken Nedergaard
-
Article
| Open Access
Compartmentalized ocular lymphatic system mediates eye–brain immunity
A study provides evidence for a shared lymphatic circuit that connects the posterior eye and the brain, allowing the generation of immune responses to protect the CNS against pathogens and tumours following intravitreal immunization.
- Xiangyun Yin
- , Sophia Zhang
- & Eric Song
-
News Feature |
Mind-reading devices are revealing the brain’s secrets
Implants and other technologies that decode neural activity can restore people’s abilities to move and speak — and help researchers to understand how the brain works.
- Miryam Naddaf
-
News |
Early dementia diagnosis: blood proteins reveal at-risk people
The results of a large-scale screening study could be used to develop blood tests to diagnose diseases such as Alzheimer’s before symptoms take hold.
- Miryam Naddaf
-
News & Views |
A neural circuit for navigation keeps flies on target
Studies reveal how neuronal populations in the fruit fly brain work together to compare the direction of a goal with the direction that the fly is facing, and convert this into a signal that steers the fly towards its target.
- Katherine Nagel
-
News Explainer |
Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain chip: what scientists think of first human trial
Some researchers are concerned about a lack of transparency surrounding the implant, which aims to allow people to control devices through thought alone.
- Liam Drew
-
News & Views |
How speech is produced and perceived in the human cortex
A neural probe has been used to capture the activity of large populations of single neurons as people are speaking or listening, providing detailed insights into how the brain encodes specific features of speech.
- Yves Boubenec
-
News |
Obesity drugs have another superpower: taming inflammation
The blockbuster medications that reduce body weight also reduce inflammation in organs such as the brain, raising hopes that they can treat Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases.
- Mariana Lenharo
-
Correspondence |
Funders must get behind brain project data sharing
- Helena Ledmyr
- , Mathew Abrams
- & Randy McIntosh
-
News Feature |
The consciousness wars: can scientists ever agree on how the mind works?
There are dozens of theories of how the brain produces conscious experience, and a new type of study is testing some of them head-to-head.
- Mariana Lenharo
-
Article
| Open Access
Nasopharyngeal lymphatic plexus is a hub for cerebrospinal fluid drainage
The nasopharyngeal lymphatic plexus is a major hub for cerebrospinal fluid outflow to deep cervical lymph nodes.
- Jin-Hui Yoon
- , Hokyung Jin
- & Gou Young Koh
-
News |
Potent psychedelic drug banishes PTSD, small study finds
Military veterans with cognitive and psychological problems saw drastic improvements after a dose of ibogaine.
- Max Kozlov
-
News |
Reindeer can activate sleep mode while eating
Putting the brain into sleep mode helps to maximize food intake during bountiful Arctic summers.
-
News & Views |
Mysterious ultraslow and ordered activity observed in the cortex
Neurons with a role in navigation fire sequentially in mice, forming patterns that repeat every minute or so — but which are neither spatially organized, nor related to any visible behaviour.
- Gilles Laurent
-
Editorial |
Why mega brain project teams need to be talking to each other
As large-scale neuroscience projects start to yield results, sharing data standards will become increasingly important.
-
News & Views Forum |
Cellular atlases of the entire mouse brain
In a huge collaborative effort, millions of cells in the mouse brain have been mapped in detail. Two scientists examine the resulting wealth of insights into gene regulation in brain cells, neuronal connections and how our own brains evolved.
- Maria Antonietta Tosches
- & Heather J. Lee
-
News |
How our brains decode speech: special neurons process certain sounds
Wire-thin probes inserted into the brains of living people show the parts played by individual neurons.
- Saima Sidik
-
News |
Neurons responsible for poor sleep and stress found in mice
Frightened mice sleep poorly. Researchers have identified at least some of the neurons responsible.
- Jude Coleman
-
News |
‘Biocomputer’ combines lab-grown brain tissue with electronic hardware
A system that integrates brain cells into a hybrid machine can recognize voices.
- Lilly Tozer
-
News |
How CRISPR gene editing could help treat Alzheimer’s
Some researchers hoping that gene-editing technology can conquer forms of Alzheimer’s caused by genetic mutations.
- Tosin Thompson
-
News |
Brain implants help people to recover after severe head injury
Electrodes placed inside the brains of five people with traumatic injuries improved recipients’ performance in attention and memory tests.
- Miryam Naddaf
-
News |
This penguin survives on 4-second microsleeps — thousands of times a day
The power naps of the chinstrap penguin are even briefer and more frequent when it is tending eggs.
- Mariana Lenharo
-
News |
These brain cells could influence how fast you eat — and when you stop
Scientists found the cells in mice — and say they could lead to a better understanding of human appetite.
- Carissa Wong
-
World View |
Only 0.5% of neuroscience studies look at women’s health. Here’s how to change that
A new initiative challenges the severe neglect of women’s brain health from puberty through to pregnancy and menopause.
- Emily G. Jacobs
Organoids merge to model the blood–brain barrier