Talk about weird headlines. This story veers a bit outside my usual interests, but is enough of a headscratcher that I had to give it a double take.To set the scene: in what's probably the most evil-movie-scientist-wants-do-rewrite-life research field, scientists are trying to synthesize life from scratch. Yup, welcome to the field of synthetic biology, where international teams of brainiacs are hard at work trying to rewrite nature's software: DNA. Synthetic biologists operate on a basic…

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It's been a GREAT month for longevity research so far.(I *still* feel a little weird calling these studies "anti-aging" or even "longevity" studies because the two words just scream pseudoscience. In a way though it really shows you how fast the field's been progressing for the past bit. It's pretty fantastic that rejuvenation is no longer a fringe science. So...no snake oil here, these studies are legit.)Perhaps by this point the headline "old mice made…

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Image source: The Verge I have a new gig over at Nature Publishing Group's Science of Learning Community site! Woot woot woot! I'll be able to geek out over studies about how we learn, what happens in the brain when we learn and how to learn better. Below is a recent post for the site. Keep up with me here, and I will also be reposting on this site. Memorize 550 numbers in five minutes. Master…

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Image credits: Baycrest I have a new gig over at Nature Publishing Group's Science of Learning Community site! Woot woot woot! I'll be able to geek out over studies about how we learn, what happens in the brain when we learn and how to learn better. Below is a recent post for the site. Keep up with me here, and I will also be reposting on this site. â€œPlastic” seems like a strange word to describe…

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Giant neurons branching across the hemispheres of a mouse brain. Image Credit: Allen Institute for Brain Science Last week I caught wind of a new discovery, made by Dr. Christof Koch of the Allen Brain Institute for Brain Science. For those not in the know, Koch has worked extensively on a neurobiological basis for consciousness. Together with the late Dr. Francis Crick of the DNA double helix fame, the dynamic duo zeroed in on a thin…

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Source: Science News I'm a brain person. For the most part, I'm content with just writing about the brain.But a conservation story caught my eye a few weeks ago and I haven't been able to let go.Here it goes: by 2050, New Zealand wants to rid itself of all vertebrate invasive species. We're talking all the mice, possums, rats, weasels and other rodents. The reason is that they've been wrecking havoc on New Zealand's delicate…

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Source: Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Ever since I stumbled across the nootropics community a few years ago, I've been pretty intrigued by the idea of cognitive enhancement. I mean, who doesn't want to make themselves smarter?Right off the bat, I want to lay it out there that there are...

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Image credit: Fibromyalgia News Today I've written A LOT about brain implants. They still never cease to amaze me. You take an electrode, stick into the ball of goop that is the brain, connect it to wires running out of the skull, and voila - if all goes well, the brain's now got a straight line...

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Let's face it, medicine is expensive. Sometimes whether you have the money to afford a diagnostic test could mean life or death.That's why I've been smitten with the whole "frugal science" trend that's blown up over the past few years. Stanford engineer and all-around genius Manu Prakash is leading the way: thanks to him, we...

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Wyss Center www.wysscenter.ch I suffered from sleep paralysis for a while back in middle school. If you've never heard of it, sleep paralysis is basically a nightmare come to life: your mind's awake, but your body's still paralyzed in a stage of sleep called REM, so you can't move. Oftentimes these episodes come with unpleasant...

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