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Tag: brains

  • Boston University researchers say CTE is a cause of dementia

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    Boston University researchers in a groundbreaking study found that those with CTE have a much higher chance of being diagnosed with dementia.

    The largest study of its kind from the Boston University CTE Center reveals that the progressive brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy should be recognized as a new cause of dementia.

    The BU researchers discovered that those with advanced CTE — who had been exposed to repetitive head impacts — had four times higher odds of having dementia.

    “This study provides evidence of a robust association between CTE and dementia as well as cognitive symptoms, supporting our suspicions of CTE being a possible cause of dementia,” said Michael Alosco, associate professor of neurology at Boston University Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine.

    “Establishing that cognitive symptoms and dementia are outcomes of CTE moves us closer to being able to accurately detect and diagnose CTE during life, which is urgently needed,” added Alosco, who’s the co-director of clinical research at the BU CTE Center.

    The researchers studied 614 brain donors who had been exposed to repetitive head impacts, primarily contact sport athletes.

    By isolating 366 brain donors who had CTE alone, compared to 248 donors without CTE, researchers found that those with the most advanced form of CTE had four times increased odds of having dementia.

    The four times odds are similar to the strength of the relationship between dementia and advanced Alzheimer’s disease pathology, which is the leading cause of dementia.

    Dementia is a clinical syndrome that refers to impairments in thinking and memory, in addition to trouble with performing tasks of daily living like driving and managing finances. Alzheimer’s disease is the leading cause, but there are several other progressive brain diseases listed as causes of dementia that are collectively referred to as Alzheimer’s disease related dementias (ADRD).

    With this new study, the authors argue that CTE should now also be formally considered an ADRD.

    The study also reveals that dementia due to CTE is often misdiagnosed during life as Alzheimer’s disease, or not diagnosed at all. Among those who received a dementia diagnosis during life, 40% were told they had Alzheimer’s disease despite showing no evidence of Alzheimer’s disease at autopsy. An additional 38% were told the causes of their loved one’s dementia was “unknown” or could not be specified.

    In addition, this study addressed the controversial viewpoint expressed by some clinicians and researchers that CTE has no clinical symptoms. As recently as 2022, clinicians and researchers affiliated with the Concussion in Sport Group meeting, which was underwritten by international professional sports organizations, claimed, “It is not known whether CTE causes specific neurological or psychiatric problems.”

    Alosco said, “There is a viewpoint out there that CTE is a benign brain disease; this is the opposite of the experience of most patients and families. Evidence from this study shows CTE has a significant impact on people’s lives, and now we need to accelerate efforts to distinguish CTE from Alzheimer’s disease and other causes of dementia during life.”

    As expected, the study did not find associations with dementia or cognition for low-stage CTE.

    The BU CTE Center is an independent academic research center at the Boston University Avedisian and Chobanian School of Medicine. It conducts pathological, clinical and molecular research on CTE and other long-term consequences of repetitive brain trauma in athletes and military personnel.

     

     

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    Rick Sobey

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  • These States Have the Highest Rates of Epilepsy, and Scientists Think They Know Why

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    Epilepsy isn’t something we usually associate with specific geographic regions, but new research suggests that’s an oversight—at least in the United States.

    New research finds that certain parts of the U.S. have much higher rates of epilepsy than others. Researchers examined the Medicare data of Americans over 65 from across the country. Older adults were significantly more likely to be diagnosed with a new case of epilepsy if they lived in the southeastern U.S., they found. The findings suggest that this region might have unique risk factors that contribute to the neurological condition, such as hotter weather or larger health care disparities, the researchers say.

    “Modifiable social and environmental conditions at the local level may contribute to epilepsy incidence among older adults and could help guide targeted prevention efforts,” the authors wrote in their paper, published this month in JAMA Neurology.

    The epilepsy belt

    Epilepsy is a disorder characterized by surges of unusual electrical activity in the brain, which then causes recurring seizures. There are many different causes and forms of epilepsy, but it’s known that certain groups of people are more likely to develop it, including older adults.

    While previous research has shown that the prevalence of diagnosed epilepsy can differ between various regions of the world and the U.S., the scientists behind the new study say theirs is the first to map how often epilepsy affects older Americans at a national level.

    The researchers are from the Houston Methodist Research Institute in Texas and Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. They analyzed Medicare claims data from 2016 to 2019, focusing on epilepsy cases newly diagnosed in 2019. All told, there were about 20,000 cases diagnosed that year. And the incidence rate of epilepsy varied significantly between regions of the U.S.

    The highest rates were found in southeastern states like Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. The researchers also identified various factors that seemed to be correlated with epilepsy in the states along this “epilepsy belt”—as the researchers have dubbed it. Rates of insufficient sleep were higher in Louisiana, Alabama, and Georgia, for instance; southern states also had more days of extreme heat during the year (a heat index above 95 degrees); and states like Texas and Florida had higher uninsurance rates (younger people without insurance are less likely to see a doctor, which could then delay a timely diagnosis).

    While some of these factors are thought to clearly increase epilepsy risk, like poor sleep, others have received less attention as potential causes.

    “This is the first study documenting such a strong association between extreme heat and incident epilepsy in older adults across the U.S., highlighting the importance of climate change in emergency preparedness, especially given the graying of the population,” said study researcher Siran Koroukian, professor in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, in a statement.

    Notably, this same region of the U.S. is also known to have higher rates of stroke, which has led researchers to call it the “stroke belt“. Since strokes are yet another major risk factor of epilepsy, that too is likely playing a part in causing new cases.

    Areas of improvement

    It’s estimated that about 3 million American adults are living with epilepsy. And while the condition isn’t currently curable in most cases, it can be effectively treated with medications, surgery, and managing potential triggers.

    The researchers hope their findings can help improve efforts on epilepsy prevention and mitigation through various public health interventions in the areas of the country where people’s risk is highest.

    “These may include improving sleep health, enhancing heat resilience, and reducing transportation and insurance-related barriers to care,” they wrote.

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    Ed Cara

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  • Why Former NFL All-Pros Are Turning to Psychedelics

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    Roam the wide-open halls and cavernous showrooms of the Colorado Convention Center during Psychedelic Science, the world’s largest psychedelics conference, and you’ll see exhibitors hawking everything from mushroom jewelry, to chewable gummies containing extracts of the psychoactive succulent plant kanna, to broad flat-brim baseball caps emblazoned with “MDMA” and “IBOGA.” Booths publicize organizations such as the Ketamine Taskforce and the Psychedelic Parenthood Community, and even The Faerie Rings, a live-action feature film looking to attract investors.

    It’s a motley, multifarious symposium where indigenous-plant-medicine healers mingle with lanyard-clad pharma-bros, legendary underground LSD chemists, and workaday stoners tottering around in massive red and white toadstool hats that make them look like that cute little mushroom guy from Mario. And yet, oddest among such oddities may be the sight of enormously burly NFL tough guys talking candidly about their feelings.

    Among Psychedelic Science 2025’s keynote talks was “Healing Behind the Highlights.” Hosted by the podcaster and nutritional supplement salesman Aubrey Marcus, the panel gathered three NFL stars—Buffalo Bills safety Jordan Poyer, retired Raiders guard Robert Gallery, and San Francisco 49ers guard Jon Feliciano—to discuss how psychedelic drugs have benefited their lives off the turf. They talked about their journeys to retreat centers where they imbibed the heady hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca, and how these drug experiences allowed them to reconcile their gladiatorial ideals of on-field toughness with the fact that they are, at the end of the day, mere mortals.

    The effects of psychedelics like ayahuasca (and its primary psychoactive chemical, N,N-Dimethyltryptamine, or DMT) are fairly well documented. It’s believed that such powerful hallucinogens can bring significant shifts in self-understanding, via a psychological mechanism sometimes labeled by researchers as the “mystical experience.” But Poyer and other athletes are pushing this idea even further. It’s not only that psychedelics can stimulate a psychological—or mystical, or spiritual, or otherwise metaphysical—change in a person’s mind, but that these drugs can offer physical, neurological benefits to a damaged brain. It’s an idea that is especially appealing to athletes competing in high-contact arenas, like professional football, hockey, and combat sports, where players are routinely exposed to concussions.

    Poyer says he “absolutely” buys into the idea that psychedelics can help heal the effects of repeated head trauma. “I’ve had many concussions,” he admits, with a shrug, speaking with WIRED after the panel. “But I’d like to think I overcame some of those brain injuries.”

    Poyer, second from the right, on stage at Psychedelic Science 2025.

    Courtesy of MAPS

    On January 22, 2023, the Buffalo Bills squared off against the rival Cincinnati Bengals in the AFC Divisional matchup of the NFL playoffs. With about 12:54 remaining in the fourth quarter, and the Bills lagging by two scores, Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow dropped back and fired a deep pass to wide receiver Tee Higgins. Attempting to stop Higgins, Poyer and Buffalo cornerback Tre’Davious White collided on the edge of the end zone. It was a case of “friendly fire” that produced the loud crack of head-to-head, helmet-to-helmet contact familiar to any football fan. “You could hear that hit up here,” play-by-play announcer Tony Romo said from the broadcast booth, as Buffalo’s medical staff shuffled onto the snow-covered field. “That was as wicked a sound as I’ve heard.”

    Poyer was knocked to the ground, rising to his knees before sinking back down into the turf, and after a head injury evaluation, he was forced to exit the game. But his issues with concussion predate that especially brutal hit. Before that game, he recalls bouts of extreme anger and irritability, and cluster headaches: all symptoms of repeated trauma to the head. While improved safety equipment and key rule changes have decreased the incidence of concussion in the NFL, neurotrauma remains an unavoidable fact—or, for fans, players, owners, and league executives, more of an inconvenient truth—of such a fast, crunchy, extremely physical sport. NFL injury records reported some 692 concussions over a five-season period between 2019 and 2023.

    Concussions are a form of traumatic brain injury—the broad medical term for damage caused to the brain by an external force—that can result in the loss of neurons in the brain as well as other neurological disorders and cognitive deficits. Concussions have been linked to both short- and long-term impairment, the most severe of which is chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease believed to be caused by repeated head trauma. CTE affects memory, judgment, and executive function, and it occurs at an alarmingly high rate among former NFL players.

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    John Semley

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  • How a 12-Ounce Layer of Foam Changed the NFL

    How a 12-Ounce Layer of Foam Changed the NFL

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    Late in his team’s game against the Green Bay Packers on September 15, Indianapolis Colts tight end Kylen Granson caught a short pass over the middle of the field, charged forward, and lowered his body to brace for contact. The side of his helmet smacked the face mask of linebacker Quay Walker, and the back of it whacked the ground as Walker wrestled him down. Rising to his feet after the 9-yard gain, Granson tossed the football to an official and returned to the line of scrimmage for the next snap.

    Aside from it being his first reception of the 2024 National Football League season, this otherwise ordinary play was only noteworthy because of what Granson was wearing at the time of the hit: a 12-ounce, foam-padded, protective helmet covering called a Guardian Cap.

    Already mandatory for most positions at all NFL preseason practices, as well as regular-season and postseason practices with contact, these soft shells received another vote of confidence this year when the league greenlit them for optional game use, citing a roughly 50 percent drop in training camp concussions since their official 2022 debut. Through six weeks of action this fall, only 10 NFL players had actually taken the field with one on, according to a league spokesperson. But the decision was easy for Granson, who tried out his gameday Guardian Cap—itself covered by a 1-ounce pinnie with the Colts logo to simulate the design of the helmet underneath—in preseason games before committing to wear it for real.

    “I was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t affect anything for me,” the 26-year-old told WIRED a few days before facing the Packers in week two. “I thought, even if it looks kind of silly, it’s worth it.”

    There is no ignoring the goofy aesthetics of the puffy, blobby Guardian Caps. The product’s parent company, Guardian Sports, even has staff T-shirts that declare, LOOK GOOD, FEEL GOOD, PLAY GOOD—with LOOK GOOD crossed out. “Condom caps, mushroom heads—we’ve heard them all,” says Erin Hanson, cofounder of Guardian Sports alongside her husband, Lee Hanson. “We just laugh, because we agree.”

    It can be tough to square the reality that the apparent future of football headgear resembles something out of a ’60s-era sci-fi movie. But the fact that Guardian Caps are now allowed at all in games in the NFL—a league known for policing every inch of player equipment to protect its image—doesn’t just speak to their lab-tested utility (even if published, peer-reviewed on-field data remains lacking). It also reflects the urgency of the moment for football at large.

    The dangers of strapping on a helmet have never been clearer, given the link between repeated blows to the head—whether concussion-causing or not—and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (otherwise known as CTE, a brain disorder associated with cognitive issues like depression and progressive dementia that can only be diagnosed posthumously). Not coincidentally, the race to find answers has become faster and more lucrative than ever, between the NFL’s funding of private research efforts and a rapidly innovating football headgear industry.

    And at the center of it all, on the sport’s biggest stage, is a literal mom-and-pop shop that, less than a decade and a half ago, was struggling to find a foothold in football as anything but a joke.

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    Alex Prewitt

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  • The Vagus Nerve’s Crucial Role in Creating the Human Sense of Mind

    The Vagus Nerve’s Crucial Role in Creating the Human Sense of Mind

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    The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine.

    It is late at night. You are alone and wandering empty streets in search of your parked car when you hear footsteps creeping up from behind. Your heart pounds, your blood pressure skyrockets. Goose bumps appear on your arms, sweat on your palms. Your stomach knots and your muscles coil, ready to sprint or fight.

    Now imagine the same scene, but without any of the body’s innate responses to an external threat. Would you still feel afraid?

    Experiences like this reveal the tight integration between brain and body in the creation of mind—the collage of thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and personality unique to each of us. The capabilities of the brain alone are astonishing. The supreme organ gives most people a vivid sensory perception of the world. It can preserve memories, enable us to learn and speak, generate emotions and consciousness. But those who might attempt to preserve their mind by uploading its data into a computer miss a critical point: The body is essential to the mind.

    How is this crucial brain-body connection orchestrated? The answer involves the very unusual vagus nerve. The longest nerve in the body, it wends its way from the brain throughout the head and trunk, issuing commands to our organs and receiving sensations from them. Much of the bewildering range of functions it regulates, such as mood, learning, sexual arousal, and fear, are automatic and operate without conscious control. These complex responses engage a constellation of cerebral circuits that link brain and body. The vagus nerve is, in one way of thinking, the conduit of the mind.

    Nerves are typically named for the specific functions they perform. Optic nerves carry signals from the eyes to the brain for vision. Auditory nerves conduct acoustic information for hearing. The best that early anatomists could do with this nerve, however, was to call it the “vagus,” from the Latin for “wandering.” The wandering nerve was apparent to the first anatomists, notably Galen, the Greek polymath who lived until around the year 216. But centuries of study were required to grasp its complex anatomy and function. This effort is ongoing: Research on the vagus nerve is at the forefront of neuroscience today.

    The most vigorous current research involves stimulating this nerve with electricity to enhance cognition and memory, and for a smorgasbord of therapies for neurological and psychological disorders, including migraine, tinnitus, obesity, pain, drug addiction, and more. But how could stimulating a single nerve potentially have such wide-ranging psychological and cognitive benefits? To understand this, we must understand the vagus nerve itself.

    The vagus nerve originates from four clusters of neurons in the brain’s medulla, where the brainstem attaches to the spinal cord. Most nerves in our body branch directly from the spinal cord: They are threaded between the vertebrae in our backbone in a series of lateral bands to carry information into and out of the brain. But not the vagus. The vagus nerve is one of 13 nerves that leave the brain directly through special holes in the skull. From there it sprouts thickets of branches that reach almost everywhere in the head and trunk. The vagus also radiates from two major clusters of outpost neurons, called ganglia, stationed in critical spots in the body. For example, a large cluster of vagal neurons clings like a vine to the carotid artery in your neck. Its nerve fibers follow this network of blood vessels throughout your body to reach vital organs, from the heart and lungs to the gut.

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    R Douglas Fields

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  • An Ultrathin Graphene Brain Implant Was Just Tested in a Person

    An Ultrathin Graphene Brain Implant Was Just Tested in a Person

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    In 2004, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov at the University of Manchester in England achieved a breakthrough when they isolated graphene for the first time. A flat form of carbon made up of a single layer of atoms, graphene is the thinnest known material—and one of the strongest. Hailed as a wonder material, it won Geim and Novoselov a Nobel Prize in physics in 2010.

    Twenty years later, graphene is finally making its way into batteries, sensors, semiconductors, air conditioners, and even headphones. And now, it’s being tested on people’s brains.

    This morning, surgeons at the University of Manchester temporarily placed a thin, Scotch-tape-like implant made of graphene on the patient’s cortex—the outermost layer of the brain. Made by Spanish company InBrain Neuroelectronics, the technology is a type of brain-computer interface, a device that collects and decodes brain signals. InBrain is among several companies, including Elon Musk’s Neuralink, developing BCIs.

    “We are aiming to have a commercial product that can do brain decoding and brain mapping and could be used in a variety of disorders,” says Carolina Aguilar, InBrain’s CEO and cofounder.

    Brain mapping is a technique used to help plan brain surgeries. When taking out a brain tumor, for instance, surgeons place electrodes on the brain to determine the location of motor and speech function in the brain so that they can safely remove the tumor without affecting the patient’s ability to move or speak.

    During today’s surgery, the implant was installed for 79 minutes. The patient was already undergoing brain surgery to have a tumor removed and consented to the experiment. In that time, researchers observed that the InBrain device was able to differentiate between healthy and cancerous brain tissue with micrometer-scale precision.

    The University of Manchester is the site of InBrain’s first-in-human study, which will test the graphene device in up to 10 patients who are already undergoing brain surgery for other reasons. The goal of the study, which is funded by the European Commission’s Graphene Flagship project, is to demonstrate the safety of graphene in direct contact with the human brain.

    David Coope, the neurosurgeon who performed the procedure, says the InBrain device is more flexible than a conventional electrode, allowing it to better conform to the surface of the brain. “From a surgical perspective, it means we can probably put it in places where we would find it difficult to put an electrode,” he says. The mainstay electrodes used for brain mapping are disks of platinum iridium set in silicon. “So they’re reasonably stiff,” Coope says.

    By contrast, the InBrain device is a transparent sheet that sits on the brain’s surface. Half the thickness of a human hair, it contains 48 tiny decoding graphene electrodes measuring just 25 micrometers each. The company is developing a second type of implant that penetrates the brain tissue and can deliver precise electrical stimulation.

    The surface device alone can be used for brain mapping, but Aguilar says the company is also integrating the two devices and plans to eventually test them together as a treatment for neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease.

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    Emily Mullin

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  • Strange Visual Auras Could Hold the Key to Better Migraine Treatments

    Strange Visual Auras Could Hold the Key to Better Migraine Treatments

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    Exactly why CSD starts, nobody knows. Similarly, plenty of mysteries remain about what activates the pain of migraines. Past studies have proposed that migraine headaches occur when something in the cerebrospinal fluid indirectly activates nerves in the nearby meninges, the layers of membrane between the brain and the skull. Rasmussen’s experiment, led by neuroscientist Maiken Nedergaard, initially set out to find evidence to support this—but they came away empty-handed. “We didn’t get anything,” he says.

    So they tried a different approach, injecting fluorescent tracer substances into the cerebrospinal fluid and imaging the mice’s skulls. The tracers concentrated at the end of the trigeminal nerve, “these big nerve bundles that lie like two sausages on the base of the skull.” It was a big surprise, he says, to find substances were able to reach this part of the peripheral nervous system, where they could activate pain receptors. “So we got excited and also very puzzled—like, how does it even get there?” This led them to the opening—the end of the trigeminal nerve that was in open contact with the cerebrospinal fluid.

    The researchers also sampled the cerebrospinal fluid and found more than 100 proteins that rose or fell in the aftermath of CSD, suggesting potential involvement in the pain of migraine. A dozen of the proteins that increased are known to act as transmitter substances capable of activating sensory nerves, including one called calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP), a known target for migraine drugs. Rasmussen says it was a good sign to find it among the mix. “But for us, what is most interesting is really the 11 other proteins that have not been described before,” he says—as these could open the door for new treatments.

    There are still reasons to be cautious, says Turgay Dalkara, a professor of neurology at Hacettepe University in Turkey with an interest in auras. Mouse models are useful, but the size differences in rodent and human skulls are problematic—especially when it comes to the area where the opening was found. “From the mouse to the human, the surface-volume ratio is dramatically different,” he says. The idea that Rasmussen’s team initially investigated—that CSD releases substances that activate and sensitize nerves in the meninges—remains the best supported mechanism observed in humans, he adds. Rasmussen’s finding, of this previously undiscovered spot where cerebrospinal fluid could touch nerves, should be considered a possible addition to this picture, not a replacement for it.

    Hadjikhani agrees but is nevertheless excited to find a further pathway for investigation. For doctors, the lack of understanding about how migraines work means sleuthing for the right combinations of medicines to give sufferers some relief. “You try one. You try a combination. You take one off,” she says. “You have to be Sherlock Holmes, finding what triggers things.”

    The fact that migraines vary so much means there may never be a silver bullet solution. Rasmussen hopes that, in the long term, being able to observe changes in an individual’s cerebrospinal fluid could minimize this guesswork and lead to personalized solutions.

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    Matthew Ponsford

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  • Elon Musk’s Neuralink Is Ready to Implant a Second Volunteer

    Elon Musk’s Neuralink Is Ready to Implant a Second Volunteer

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    A second person will soon receive Neuralink’s experimental brain implant, according to Elon Musk, the company’s cofounder.

    In a video update on Wednesday, Musk said the surgery is planned to take place in “the next week or so.” The company is making changes to the surgical procedure and placement of the device to avoid problems that arose with its first participant, whose implant partially detached from the brain a few weeks after surgery.

    Neuralink is developing a brain-computer interface, or BCI, which uses a person’s brain signals to control an external device. Its first product, dubbed Telepathy, aims to help paralyzed people operate a computer using just their thoughts. Musk has said Neuralink is working on a second product, called Blindsight, to provide artificial vision to people who are blind.

    “A way to think about the Neuralink device is kind of like a Fitbit or an Apple Watch with tiny wires or electrodes,” Musk said in the video, which was livestreamed on his social media platform, X. In the short term, the Neuralink device is meant to help people with disabilities, but Musk said his long-term goal is to use BCI technology “to mitigate the civilizational risk of AI by having a closer symbiosis between human intelligence and digital intelligence.”

    For now, the company is running an early feasibility study to evaluate the safety and functionality of its device in people with paralysis. As part of the study, Noland Arbaugh became the first person to get Neuralink’s brain implant in January. Arbaugh is paralyzed from the shoulders down due to a swimming accident that occurred in 2016.

    Neuralink’s coin-sized implant sits in the skull and has 64 flexible wire threads thinner than a human hair that extend into the brain tissue. Each thread contains 16 electrodes that collect intended movement signals from neurons.

    At first, the device was functioning as it should. Arbaugh was able to use a cursor just by thinking about it, allowing him to play video games, email friends, and browse the Internet. But a few weeks after the surgery, the implant started to malfunction and Arbaugh lost control of the cursor.

    In a May blog post on its website, Neuralink said a number of threads had retracted from Arbaugh’s brain, resulting in a net decrease in the number of effective electrodes. In response, Neuralink modified its neural recording algorithm to be more sensitive and improved how it translates neural signals into cursor movements.

    Arbaugh is back to using a computer with his brain, although just 15 percent of the implant’s threads are still working, according to Neuralink executives. In an interview with WIRED, Arbaugh said the device has given him back a sense of independence.

    Still, Neuralink is trying to avoid the same issues with its second study participant. “We really want to make sure that we make as much progress as possible between each Neuralink patient,” Musk said Wednesday.

    During the video update, company executives acknowledged that air was trapped inside Arbaugh’s skull after surgery, which could have contributed to the threads coming out. Matthew MacDougall, Neuralink’s head of neurosurgery, said the company is taking steps to eliminate this air pocket in its second volunteer. It also plans to insert the threads deeper into the brain tissue and track the movement of those threads.

    “You may think the most obvious mitigation for threads that pulled out of the brain is to insert them deeper. We think so too, and so we’re going to broaden the range of depths at which we insert threads,” MacDougall said.

    In addition, the company’s surgeons plan to “sculpt the surface of the skull” to minimize the gap under the implant so that it sits flush with the normal contour of the skull. This, MacDougall said, should “minimize the gap under the implant” and “put it closer to the brain and eliminate some of the tension on the threads.”

    Musk said he hopes to implant Neuralink’s device in the “high single digits” of study participants this year. (A listing by Neuralink on ClinicalTrials.gov says the company plans to enroll three participants in its current study.)

    He added that Neuralink is working on a next-generation implant that has 128 threads, each with eight electrodes per thread, a change that he says will “potentially double the bandwidth if we are accurate with the placement of the threads.” Musk didn’t provide a timeline on when that device will be ready to test in people.

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    Emily Mullin

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  • How the Brain Decides What to Remember

    How the Brain Decides What to Remember

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    “There has to be some kind of triage to remember what is relevant and forget the rest,” Zugaro said. “Understanding how specific memories were selected for storage was still lacking … Now we have a good clue.”

    Last December, a research team led by Bendor at University College London published related results in Nature Communications that anticipated those of Yang and Buzsáki. They too found that sharp wave ripples that fired when rats were awake and asleep seemed to tag experiences for memory. However, their analysis averaged a number of different trials together—an approach less precise than what Yang and Buzsáki accomplished.

    The NYU team’s key innovation was to bring the element of time, which distinguishes similar memories from one another, into their analysis. The mice were running around in the same maze patterns, and yet these researchers could distinguish between blocks of trials at the neuronal level—a resolution never reached before.

    The brain patterns are marking “something a little bit closer to an event, and a little bit less like a general knowledge,” said Loren Frank, a neuroscientist at UC San Francisco who was not involved in the research. “That strikes me as a really interesting finding.”

    “They’re showing that the brain is maybe creating some kind of temporal code to distinguish between different memories occurring in the same place,” said Freyja Ólafsdóttir, a neuroscientist at Radboud University who was not involved with the work.

    Shantanu Jadhav, a neuroscientist at Brandeis University, praised the study. “This is a good start,” he said. However, he hopes to see a follow-up experiment that includes a behavioral test. Demonstrating that an animal forgot or remembered particular trial blocks would be “the real proof that this is a tagging mechanism.”

    The research leaves a burning question unanswered: Why is one experience chosen over another? The new work suggests how the brain tags a certain experience to remember. But it can’t tell us how the brain decides what’s worth remembering.

    Sometimes the things we remember seem random or irrelevant, and surely different from what we’d select if given the choice. “There is a sense that the brain prioritizes based on ‘importance,’” Frank said. Because studies have suggested that emotional or novel experiences tend to be remembered better, it’s possible that internal fluctuations in arousal or the levels of neuromodulators such as dopamine or adrenaline and other chemicals that affect neurons end up selecting experiences, he suggested.

    Jadhav echoed that thought, saying, “The internal state of the organism can bias experiences to be encoded and stored more effectively.” But it’s not known what makes one experience more prone to being stored than others, he added. And in the case of Yang and Buzsáki’s study, it’s not clear why a mouse would remember one trial better than another.

    Buzsáki remains committed to exploring the roles that sharp wave ripples play in the hippocampus, although he and his team are also interested in potential applications that might arise from these observations. It’s possible, for example, that scientists could disrupt the ripples as part of a treatment for conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder, in which people remember certain experiences too vividly, he said. “The low-hanging fruit here is to erase sharp waves and forget what you experienced.”

    But for the time being, Buzsáki will continue to tune in to these powerful brain waves to uncover more about why we remember what we do.

    Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.

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    Yasemin Saplakoglu

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  • How Not to Get Brain-Eating Worms and Mercury Poisoning

    How Not to Get Brain-Eating Worms and Mercury Poisoning

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    According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, almost all of us have at least trace amounts of methylmercury—the form of mercury we tend to encounter most—in our bodies due to its sheer prevalence in the environment. However, most of the time these levels are too low to result in any health problems.

    While some of this can come from residing near power plants, as coal combustion releases a range of harmful pollutants including mercury, humans tend to ingest the chemical through consuming fish, says Awadhesh Jha, a toxicologist at the University of Plymouth. “A lot of industries are near the coastline, and most of their contaminants, including mercury, are discharged into the aquatic environment,” he says. “So fish accumulate more of them.”

    While there is little information on the number of cases of mercury toxicity in the US each year, studies have shown that excessive mercury exposure can cause neurodevelopmental problems in children and expose adults to a greater risk of cardiovascular disease. In various national surveys across the US, people with an income of less than $20,000 per year, low education, and those who consume fish more than three times a week have been found to have the most mercury exposure.

    Risks are highest when consuming larger fish, Jha says, because they accumulate greater concentrations of mercury in their bodies over time through eating smaller species. Because of this, both the EPA and the Food and Drug Administration advise pregnant women to avoid eating shark, swordfish, mackerel, or tilefish, as they may contain higher amounts of mercury, which could have an impact on the brain development of an unborn fetus.

    For the rest of us, Jha says he advises a limit of no more than 170 grams per week of fish such as tuna or mackerel—approximately a single can of tuna—and in general no more than 350 grams per week of any fish or shellfish. Exceeding these limits on an occasional basis will likely have little impact, but doing so week-in, week-out will raise your risk of having higher mercury levels in your body.

    The issue remains contentious among scientists, as eating a lot of fish also has known health benefits such as increasing intake of omega-3 fatty acids, which are protective against cardiovascular disease.

    “Ultimately it depends on the person and how well they metabolize toxic substances,” Jha says. “It’s the genetic makeup of individuals which determines the toxicity of chemicals including mercury.”

    Research has previously shown that mercury can affect the body in various ways, which can have an impact on immune function. Common signs of mercury poisoning are joint and muscle pain, weakness, fatigue, insomnia, and excessive sweating.

    Anyone suffering from mercury poisoning can be treated through medicines called chelators, which remove mercury from the blood and keep it away from the brain and kidneys, but it’s a time-consuming process that can take weeks or months before symptoms improve.

    “It will gradually decompose and then be metabolized and excreted, but it still depends if the mercury is bound by certain proteins and other molecules in the body,” says Jha. “If that’s the case, it might take longer to be eliminated from the body.”

    RFK Jr. insists that he’s well past any ill effects from the dual maladies. “I offer to eat 5 more brain worms and still beat President Trump and President Biden in a debate,” the candidate tweeted Wednesday on X. “I feel confident of the result even with a six-worm handicap.”

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    David Cox

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  • The Brain Region That Controls Movement Also Guides Feelings

    The Brain Region That Controls Movement Also Guides Feelings

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    The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine.

    In recent decades, neuroscience has seen some stunning advances, and yet a critical part of the brain remains a mystery. I am referring to the cerebellum, so named for the Latin for “little brain,” which is situated like a bun at the back of the brain. This is no small oversight: The cerebellum contains three-quarters of all the brain’s neurons, which are organized in an almost crystalline arrangement, in contrast to the tangled thicket of neurons found elsewhere.

    Encyclopedia articles and textbooks underscore the fact that the cerebellum’s function is to control body movement. There is no question that the cerebellum has this function. But scientists now suspect that this long-standing view is myopic.

    Or so I learned in November in Washington, DC, while attending the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting, the largest meeting of neuroscientists in the world. There, a pair of neuroscientists organized a symposium on newly discovered functions of the cerebellum unrelated to motor control. New experimental techniques are showing that in addition to controlling movement, the cerebellum regulates complex behaviors, social interactions, aggression, working memory, learning, emotion, and more.

    A Crack in Dominant Wisdom

    The connection between the cerebellum and movement has been known since the 19th century. Patients suffering trauma to the brain region had obvious difficulties with balance and movement, leaving no doubt that it was critical for coordinating motion. Over the decades, neuroscientists developed a detailed understanding of how the cerebellum’s unique neural circuitry controls motor function. The explanation of how the cerebellum worked seemed watertight.

    Then, in 1998, in the journal Brain, neurologists reported on wide-ranging emotional and cognitive disabilities in patients with damage to the cerebellum. For example, in 1991, a 22-year-old female college student had fallen while ice skating; a CT scan revealed a tumor in her cerebellum. After it was removed surgically, she was a completely different person. The bright college student had lost her ability to write with proficiency, do mental arithmetic, name common objects, or copy a simple diagram. Her mood flattened. She hid under covers and behaved inappropriately, undressing in the corridors and speaking in baby talk. Her social interactions, including recognizing familiar faces, were also impaired.

    This and similar cases puzzled the authors. These high-level cognitive and emotional functions were understood to reside in the cerebral cortex and limbic system. “Precisely what that cerebellar role is, and how the cerebellum accomplishes it, is yet to be established,” they concluded.

    Despite these clues from clinical studies that conventional wisdom was on the wrong track, leading authorities still insisted that the function of the cerebellum was to control movement and nothing more. “It is kind of sad, because it has been 20 years” since these cases were reported, said Diasynou Fioravante, a neurophysiologist at the UC Davis, who co-organized the conference symposium.

    Other neurologists have noticed neuropsychiatric deficits in their patients all along, said the neuroscientist Stephanie Rudolph of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who co-organized the symposium with Fioravante. However, there was no hard anatomical evidence for how the cerebellum’s unique neural circuitry could possibly regulate the reported psychological and emotional functions, so the clinical reports were overlooked.

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    R Douglas Fields

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  • Rumination vs. Savoring: The Neural Dynamics Between Positive and Negative Thinking – The Emotion Machine

    Rumination vs. Savoring: The Neural Dynamics Between Positive and Negative Thinking – The Emotion Machine

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    Rumination is the cornerstone of depression and anxiety. It’s characterized by an excessive replaying of negative thoughts and memories. A new study finds rumination activates the same brain regions as savoring, or the replaying of positive thoughts. Can depressed people learn to use their brains’ natural abilities in a more constructive way?


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    Steven Handel

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  • So You Want to Rewire Brains

    So You Want to Rewire Brains

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    There’s a lot to like about brain-computer interfaces, those sci-fi-sounding devices that jack into your skull and turn neural signals into software commands. Experimental BCIs help paralyzed people communicate, use the internet, and move prosthetic limbs. In recent years, the devices have even gone wireless. If mind-reading computers become part of everyday life, we’ll need doctors to install the tiny electrodes and transmitters that make them work. So if you have steady hands and don’t mind a little blood, being a BCI surgeon might be a job for you.

    Shahram Majidi, a neurosurgeon at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, began operating in clinical trials for a BCI called the Stentrode in 2022. (That’s “stent” as in a tube that often sits inside a vein or artery.) Here he talks about a not-too-distant future where he’s performing hundreds of similar procedures a year.

    Brain-computer interfaces have been around for a few decades, and there are different kinds of implants now. Some have electrodes attached to your brain with wires sticking out of your head and connecting to a computer. I think that’s great as a proof of concept, but it requires an engineer sitting there and a big computer next to you all the time. You can’t just use it in your bedroom. The beauty of a BCI like the Stentrode, which is what I’ve worked with, is that nothing is sticking out of your brain. The electrodes are in blood vessels next to the brain, and you get there by going through the patient’s jugular. The receiver is underneath the skin in their chest and connected to a device that decodes the brain signals via Bluetooth. I think that’s the future.

    It’s a minimally invasive surgery. You don’t have to open the skull. You don’t have to violate the anatomy of the brain. Deploying a stent into a blood vessel in the brain is something I’ve done thousands of times for other procedures, but this time I’m deploying a device that will record specific signals coming from a very specific location of the brain. For it to work correctly, I’ll have to make the most precise delivery of an implant I’ve ever learned to do. From the time we enter the room to when we have finished surgery and checked the device, it’s usually less than three hours.

    The patients we enroll in these trials are severely disabled. They’re paralyzed from diseases like ALS. They’re bedbound; even bringing them to the hospital could be a monumental task. So I’ve been able to visit all my BCI patients in their homes to talk about the device and how it works. It’s an exciting moment for the patients and their families, but you also have to set expectations.

    The surgical planning that goes into a BCI implant is very sophisticated compared to other daily procedures that I do as a neurosurgeon. Before the surgery, my team and I practice on a model to make sure we understand all the steps and protocols. Literally, the room for mistakes is very, very narrow. (Neuralink is building robots to install their BCIs, but I’m not worried about robots coming for my job. You’re always going to need human surgeons and scientists to advance the field and do precise procedures.)

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    Caitlin Kelly

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  • The Smithsonian has amassed remains of around 30,000 people. Now it’s ramping up efforts to return them – WTOP News

    The Smithsonian has amassed remains of around 30,000 people. Now it’s ramping up efforts to return them – WTOP News

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    The Smithsonian Institution said it’s moving as quickly as it can to repatriate the remains of about 30,000 people acquired for scientific research during the 19th century and early years of the 20th century.

    The Smithsonian Institution said it’s moving as quickly as it can to repatriate the remains of about 30,000 people acquired for scientific research during the 19th century and early years of the 20th century.

    The remains came from sources such as archaeological digs, donations from museums, universities, hospitals and individuals. The Smithsonian acknowledges the remains were obtained without informed consent and in ways incompatible with modern standards.

    About half the remains are those of Native Americans and the Smithsonian has been working to return those remains since 1989.

    The institution’s Human Remains Task Force said the remains came from dozens of countries and span time periods of thousands of years. The remains include whole or partial skeletons, teeth and bone fragments, fetal remains and tissues, including about 250 brains.

    “One scientist at the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History collected human brains. So we do not want these in the collection, they’re not valuable for research, they really never were. So we’re looking to find names for these so that we can look for descendants and return them,” said Linda St. Thomas, chief spokesperson for the Smithsonian Institution.

    While a team has been overseeing the repatriation of Native American remains, the Smithsonian is now forming a new team responsible for the return of non-Native human remains.

    While Native remains can be returned to the 252 federally recognized tribes and communities, it’s not always easy to identify and repatriate remains of non-Native Americans because the labeling process has been inconsistent over the years.

    “It varies because the way museums kept track of things in 1910 is very different than the way we do it today. So we’re talking about cards with … things written in fountain pen. So it is quite a process to identify, and then to find, descendants,” St. Thomas said.

    The Smithsonian is also streamlining the process to request returns and is shaping policy for the memorialization of unidentified remains that may go unclaimed.

    “The secretary has spoken out about this and said this is really, really important for us. This is not just scientific things. These are human beings and we will handle it respectfully, and try to move as quickly as we can to get all the human remains back to where they belong,” St. Thomas said.

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    Dick Uliano

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