Featured
News Feature |
ADHD diagnoses are growing. What’s going on?More children and adults are being diagnosed with ADHD in some countries. Science is helping to understand why — and how best to provide support.
- Helen Pearson
News |
Synthetic tongue rates chillies’ heat — and spares human tastersGel-based device inspired by the cooling powers of milk assesses peppers whose burn ranges from mild to dangerous.
- Jenna Ahart
News |
Has birds’ mysterious ‘compass’ organ been found at last?Multiple lines of evidence suggest that pigeons sense magnetic fields by detecting electric currents in their inner ears.
- Davide Castelvecchi
News |
A brain implant that could rival Neuralink’s enters clinical trialsNeurotechnology company Paradromics will test its device in a trial aimed at safely restoring speech for people with severe motor impairments.
- Liam Drew
News Feature |
Mind-reading devices can now predict preconscious thoughts: is it time to worry?Ethicists say AI-powered advances will threaten the privacy and autonomy of people who use neurotechnology.
- Liam Drew
News |
How obesity drugs quiet ‘food noise’ in the brainResearchers have identified a neural biomarker of compulsive food cravings, and showed that it is suppressed by the weight-loss drug Mounjaro.
- Mariana Lenharo
News |
Tiny robots swim through blood, deliver drugs — and then dissolveA tiny bead filled with a drug is guided by magnets to specific parts of the body, a trial in animals has shown.
- Elizabeth Gibney
Nature Index |
Could humans live to 150? Why some researchers think we’re on the cusp of a major longevity breakthroughOther scientists believe extending lifespan might be difficult but are pursuing therapies that aim to make us feel younger for longer.
- James Mitchell Crow
News |
Want a younger brain? Learn another languageA vast study suggests that being multilingual can slow down cognitive ageing.
- Katie Kavanagh
News |
First-ever atlas of brain development shows how stem cells turn into neuronsA collection of studies that chart how mammalian brain cells grow and differentiate is a ‘very valuable’ tool for neuroscientists.
- Miryam Naddaf
News & Views |
Developmental maps of the brain trace when cell types emergeA large consortium of researchers has mapped how brain cells establish diverse identities throughout neurodevelopment and across species.
- Emily Sylwestrak
News |
‘Mind-captioning’ AI decodes brain activity to turn thoughts into textA non-invasive imaging technique can translate scenes in your head into sentences. It could help to reveal how the brain interprets the world.
- Max Kozlov
News |
People with blindness can read again after retinal implantAn electronic eye implant has restored vision in people with blindness caused by age-related macular degeneration.
- Liam Drew
News |
Disconnecting part of the brain sends it into a deep sleepStudy on the effects of surgical epilepsy treatment adds to researchers’ understanding of unconsciousness.
- Rachel Fieldhouse
News |
Blood tests are now approved for Alzheimer’s: how accurate are they?A second blood test has been been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to assist in diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease. Will these tests change how cognitive decline is measured?
- Katie Kavanagh
News |
This gene causes obesity — and shields against heart diseasePeople with certain forms of theMC4R gene have lower cholesterol levels than do other individuals with a high body-mass index.
- Heidi Ledford
News |
How emotional memories are engraved on the brain, with surprising helper cellsAstrocytes have a more active role in stabilizing memories than once thought.
- Katie Kavanagh
News |
Men’s brains shrink faster than women’s: what that means for Alzheimer’sWomen’s brains age more slowly, but that doesn’t seem to protect them from a common form of dementia.
- Rachel Fieldhouse
News |
Brain area linked to chronic pain discovered — offering hope for treatmentsThe newfound ensemble of neurons could lead to therapies to treat persistent pain, which affects roughly one in five people globally.
- Lynne Peeples
News |
Creative hobbies could slow brain ageing at the molecular levelTo keep the mind young, dance the tango.
- Gemma Conroy
Nature Podcast |
Audio long read: Autism is on the rise — what’s really behind the increase?Claims about what is responsible are ignoring answers from decades of research, scientists say.
- Helen Pearson
- & Benjamin Thompson
News |
US autism research gets $50-million funding boost — amid row over TylenolAn injection of funding into genetic and environmental factors underlying autism was eclipsed by Trump’s controversial claims about acetaminophen.
- Helen Pearson
News |
What happens if pregnant women stop taking Tylenol?Untreated fevers during pregnancy can cause more harm than taking paracetamol will, scientists say.
- Rachel Fieldhouse
News |
Swapping old immune cells in the brain with fresh ones could treat diseaseReplacing immune cells called microglia holds promise for addressing brain conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.
- Heidi Ledford
News |
Huntington’s disease treated for first time using gene therapyPreliminary results from a small trial offer the clearest evidence yet that the brain disease’s progression can be slowed.
- Elie Dolgin
Research Briefing |
Arousal reframed as an organism‑wide dynamic systemThe temporal evolution of a hidden, low-dimensional and organism-wide process, inferred from measuring the pupil of an eye, has been shown to account for complex spatio-temporal patterns of brain activity over timescales of seconds. This points to an underlying dynamic that continuously structures the unfolding of brain, body and behavioural variables.
News |
Tylenol is more than 130 years old — why is it still the gold-standard painkiller?Acetaminophen is one of the safest drugs around, but scientists still don’t know how it reduces pain and fever.
- David Adam
News |
Trump team backs an unproven drug for autism — but does it work?Leucovorin would be available to only a minority of autistic people, and has not been tested for safety or effectiveness in a large trial. Some researchers are worried.
- Heidi Ledford
News |
The ‘near-telepathic’ device that puts AI in your headAlterEgo’s neural-interface device is non-invasive and is being tested in people with multiple sclerosis and motor neuron disease.
- Chris Simms
News & Views |
Years of hits to the head prime the brain for declineRepetitive head impacts trigger neuronal loss and disrupt blood vessels and immune cells long before the accumulation of neurotoxic tau protein.
- Adam Bachstetter
- & Josh Morganti
News |
‘Brain dial’ turns food consumption on or off in miceMaster-control area integrates information about hunger, a food’s tastiness and more — and can even drive intake of plastic pellets.
- Amanda Heidt
News |
My blue is your blue: different people’s brains process colours in the same wayA machine-learning tool can predict what colour a person is looking at when trained on the brain activity of others.
- Katie Kavanagh
Research Briefing |
Cocaine-activated ion channels engineered to break the loop of addiction in ratsIon channels have been created that are selectively activated by cocaine and that act to either stimulate or inhibit the electrical activity of neuronal cells in the brain. These cocaine-activated ion channels are used to engineer neural circuits in rats to respond to cocaine in a manner that reduces cocaine seeking but not food seeking.
News & Views |
Depriving brain tumours of an amino acid could enhance chemotherapyGlioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer, depends on the amino acid serine as a fuel source. A serine-deficient diet has been shown to slow tumour growth in mice.
- Daniel Mobilio
- & Sheila Singh
Research Briefing |
How the brain’s amygdala reacts when making decisions to avoid lossesHumans explore unfamiliar options more when deciding how to avoid losses than when seeking gains. The firing rate of neuronal cells in the brain’s amygdala predicts decisions to explore in both learning strategies, but neuronal ‘noise’ predicts exploration decisions only when avoiding losses. Together, these signals explain the increased exploration when risking losses.
News |
Brain tumours in mice grow more slowly when starved of key amino acidSome glioblastomas steal serine from their environment — a weakness that opens the door to treatment.
- Traci Watson
Nature Podcast |
Audio long read: How to detect consciousness in people, animals and maybe even AIScientists are searching for awareness in all its possible forms — insights from human brains could inform that quest.
- Mariana Lenharo
- & Benjamin Thompson
News |
Beer lovers fall into two flavour camps — which one are you in?Research shows that beer drinkers are split depending on which types of flavour chemicals they prefer.
- Jenna Ahart
Outlook |
Explaining the mental-health burden of atopic dermatitisPeople with the inflammatory skin disease are at greater risk of neuropsychiatric conditions. Researchers are trying to find out why.
- Amanda Keener
Research Briefing |
How tree shrews see the worldIn primates, visual information is processed hierarchically, moving from early brain regions that respond to low-level features to later-stage areas that recognize complex features and objects. In the tree shrew, a non-primate mammal, this hierarchy is evolutionarily conserved but is compressed, using the equivalent of an early primate brain area to recognize objects.
News & Views |
Childhood eczema linked to mother’s stress during pregnancyThe causes of early-life eczema have been unclear, but evidence indicates that changes to fetal immune cells and sensory neurons during pregnancy play a key part.
- Abhay P. S. Rathore
- & Soman N. Abraham
News Feature |
Autism is on the rise: what’s really behind the increase?RFK Jr has vowed to find out what’s responsible, but scientists say he is ignoring answers from decades of research.
- Helen Pearson
News |
The brain’s map of the body is surprisingly stable — even after a limb is lostStudy challenges the textbook idea that the brain region that processes body sensations reorganizes itself after limb amputation.
- Katie Kavanagh
News |
A mind-reading brain implant that comes with password protectionA brain–computer interface decodes in near-real time the imagined speech of people who have difficulty enunciating words.
- Gemma Conroy
News |
Brain editing now ‘closer to reality’: the gene-altering tools tackling deadly disordersStunning results in mice herald gene-editing advances for neurological diseases.
- Heidi Ledford
Obituary |
George E. Smith obituary: co-inventor of the charge coupled device, which ushered in an era of digital imagesSmith’s invention enabled the precise capture of light in electronic form, and has transformed science, medicine and daily life.
- Simon Tulloch
News & Views |
Does lithium deficiency contribute to Alzheimer’s disease?Lithium in the brain has been found to protect against cognitive decline. Restoring lost lithium could be a new angle from which to tackle Alzheimer’s disease.
- Ashley I. Bush
News |
New hope for Alzheimer’s: lithium supplement reverses memory loss in miceStudies in rodents and humans suggest that low levels of the metal contribute to cognitive decline.
- Lynne Peeples
News |
The brain fires up immune cells when sick people are nearbyWhen people viewed virtual avatars with coughs or rashes, their brains triggered an immune response.
- Katie Kavanagh
News & Views |
Could machine learning help to build a unified theory of cognition?Two distinct computational approaches provide opportunities for bringing together different theories of cognition.
- Giosuè Baggio
