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A comparison of skulls from a human (left) and a Neanderthal (right). (Credit: Wikimedia Commons) Did Neanderthals have language? Before trying to answer that, I should admit my bias: I’m team Neanderthal. As an anthropologist who studies our evolutionary cousins, I’ve seen plenty of evidence suggesting Neanderthals were competent, complex, social creatures. In light of their apparent cognitive abilities, I’m inclined to believe they had language. But I can’t ...read more

A color image of the Hellas Planitia region of Mars. (Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS) Today, water on mars is locked into ice deposits or held in deep underground lakes. But, water once flowed across the planet’s surface, and researchers have found further evidence of its presence on the Red Planet. A new study, reveals that the Hellas impact basin on Mars once contained a number of ephemeral lakes, or lakes that are usually dry but fill up with water for brief periods of time. Wat ...read more

Earlier this year, I posted on how Sergio Della Salla, the editor of Cortex, criticized a headline-grabbing JAMA paper that had reported neuropsychological abnormalities in US embassy staff exposed to the mysterious Havana ‘sonic attack’. According to Della Salla, the evidence presented didn’t suggest enduring cognitive deficits in the victims. Now, Della Salla is back (along with co-authors) for round two with a new paper, called Cognitive symptoms in US government personnel ...read more

Southern Norway’s Hardangerjøkulen Ice Cap, as seen during a commercial flight on Oct. 28, 2018. (Photo: ©Tom Yulsman) Shortly after taking off from Norway’s lovely city of Bergen during a recent work trip, I spotted something out the window that really surprised me. Amidst the rugged, snow-covered corrugations of the high country east of the coastal fjords was the serenely smooth patch seen in my iPhone photo above. The crevassed streams of glacial ice p ...read more

Scientists think they’ve found brain cells that explain how animals strike a pose. (Credit: Djomas/shutterstock) Even though you probably don’t notice, your brain is constantly keeping tabs on where your body is in the space around you and where different body parts are in relation to each other. Researchers have been trying to better understand that phenomenon, called body schema, for a while. So far, they don’t really think there’s a specific region dedicated to this ...read more

National Members of the IAU vote at the 2018 General Assembly (not related to the Hubble–Lemaître law). (Credit: IAU/M. Zamani) The Hubble law has a new suggested name, as members of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) have voted to recommend that the law now be known as the Hubble-Lemaître law. The Hubble law, as it is typically known, describes the effect in which objects move away from each other with a velocity proportional to their distance in an expandi ...read more

Despite decades of high-quality observations, many details about our sun are still unknown. Credit: NASA SVS The fact that the sun is hot should not be news to a single person. The sun’s surface is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which seems toasty enough. But surrounding the sun is an atmosphere of sorts called the corona. This envelope of superheated gas — plasma, actually — measures more than 3 million degrees. And scientists are still trying to figure out how this o ...read more

Carol Howard, 69, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease six years ago. (Credit: Joel Shurkin) (Inside Science) — The second movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony begins with a minor-key rhythm in the cellos. It sounds like a background rhythm, which it becomes when the violins introduce a second, soaring and entirely different melody. One half the Baltimore Symphony is on stage playing one thing; the other half, another. Next to me, my wife, Carol, le ...read more

Brain organoids in a petri dish. (Credit: UCSD) Alysson Muotri and his team have been toiling away in the lab for the last year and a half or so, obsessing over bland-looking, pea-sized lumps of cells. Despite their unassuming appearance, lumps like these have taken neuroscience by storm. They’re lab-grown “brains.” Scientists call them brain organoids, and they offer rudimentary 3-D models of the brain’s cortex — the outer layer where complex functions like memor ...read more