Brains

The nervous systems of foraging and predatory animals may prompt them to move along a special kind of random path called a Lévy walk to find food efficiently when no clues are available.

Neuroscientists could use brain waves to spur immune cells into action against the disease — but the process is almost too fantastic to believe.

How does experience alter our perceptions? This adapted book excerpt from We Know It When We See It describes how the brain’s visual system rewires itself to make the best use of its neural resources.

Faced with a decision, the brain weighs its options by bundling them into rapidly alternating cycles of brain waves.

Collaborations in progress between ethicists and biologists seek to head off challenges raised by lab-grown “organoids” as they become increasingly similar to human brain tissue.

The dendritic arms of some human neurons can perform logic operations that once seemed to require whole neural networks.

An organized tide of brain waves, blood and spinal fluid pulsing through a sleeping brain may flush away neural toxins that cause Alzheimer’s and other diseases.

New studies help to explain how microbes in the gut can shape a host’s fear responses.

While we sleep, one kind of slow brain wave helps to reinforce memories, but a competing wave weakens them.