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Brain Chemical Helps Signal to Neurons When to Start a Movement

March 22, 2022

Dopamine, a neurochemical often associated with reward behavior, also seems to help organize precisely when the brain initiates movements. It’s the latest revelation about the power of neuromodulators.

Deep Curiosity Inspires The Joy of Why Podcast

March 17, 2022

The noted mathematician and author Steven Strogatz explains how the conversations with experts in his new Quanta Magazine podcast address his lifelong fascination with timeless mysteries.

This Animal’s Behavior Is Mechanically Programmed

March 16, 2022

Biomechanical interactions, rather than neurons, control the movements of one of the simplest animals. The discovery offers a glimpse into how animal behavior worked before neurons evolved.

Peptides on Stardust May Have Provided a Shortcut to Life

March 8, 2022

The discovery that short peptides can form spontaneously on cosmic dust hints at more of a role for them in the earliest stages of life’s origin, on Earth or elsewhere.

Scientists Watch a Memory Form in a Living Brain

March 3, 2022

While watching a fearful memory take shape in the brain of a living fish, neuroscientists see an unexpected level of rewiring occur in the synaptic connections.

Most Complete Simulation of a Cell Probes Life’s Hidden Rules

February 24, 2022

A 3D digital model of a “minimal cell” leads scientists closer to understanding the barest requirements for life.

sex

A Billion Years Before Sex, Ancient Cells Were Equipped for It

February 16, 2022

Molecular detective work is zeroing in on the origins of sexual reproduction. The protein tools for cell mergers seem to have long predated sex — so what were they doing?

New Map of Meaning in the Brain Changes Ideas About Memory

February 8, 2022

Researchers have mapped hundreds of semantic categories to the tiny bits of the cortex that represent them in our thoughts and perceptions. What they discovered might change our view of memory.

Secrets of Early Animal Evolution Revealed by Chromosome ‘Tectonics’

February 2, 2022

Large blocks of genes conserved through hundreds of millions of years of evolution hint at how the first animal chromosomes came to be.

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