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When danger lurks, instinct keeps us safe. It compels us to run from a burning building or wrestle a knife-wielding attacker to the ground. It also adjusts our body physiology to support these behaviors.

Our memories of past events are typically not isolated, but they are linked to other related memories. This ability to establish connections between related memories is highly advantageous, as it helps us to recognize familiar ...

For many people who smoke, quitting is not just a matter of willpower. It is a tug-of-war in the brain—between the pull of reward and the ability to resist.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a noninvasive, FDA-approved therapy that uses brief magnetic pulses to treat depression, particularly in patients who do not respond to medication. Yet scientists have long struggled ...

While some of us enjoy curling up with a good book, others prefer watching a series or playing video games. But from the perspective of neuroscience, reading is much more than just entertainment. This is especially true for ...

In a new JNeurosci paper, a Boston College research team led by John Christianson explored how a pathway between two areas of the brain—the insular cortex and prefrontal cortex—supports social decisions in male rats. Why ...

Weill Cornell Medicine investigators have "reverse engineered" ketamine's antidepressant effects to identify potential new strategies for treating depression. While there are many effective treatments available for depression, ...

As we go through life, our brains run different processing modes. Some—the attention and sensory systems—result in very similar experiences of the world: what color the sky is, how warm the day feels.

What if the strong sense of immersion you feel in virtual worlds engages the very brain processes that create your everyday reality? The distinction between "being there" in VR and "being real" may be a lot more fragile than ...

When a writer comes up with a striking metaphor, when an engineer solves a tricky problem by combining seemingly unrelated tools, or when a child invents the rules of a new game, what happens in the brain? In cognitive neuroscience, ...

Depression is a debilitating mental health disorder characterized by persistent low mood, a loss of interest in everyday activities, repetitive negative thinking and possible changes in appetite and/or sleeping patterns. ...

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that leads to progressive memory loss and a decline in mental functions. Several past studies have linked this disease to the accumulation of the protein amyloid-β ...