Some cephalopod researchers have another job title: Octopus anesthesiologist.
It sounds far-fetched, but it's an important task. Octopuses, and cephalopods in general, are the smartest invertebrates, and their complex, unique central nervous systems are studied by researchers interested in everything from motor control to visual processing to cognition itself. But that kind of research often involves invasive techniques that could cause the creatures significant pain.
Can You Feel It?
A ...read more
Science isn’t all about curing cancer and traveling to black holes. The big questions are important, but the scientific method is also useful for figuring out the best way to approach, and even solve, specific problems.
Sometimes those specific issues involve engineering the perfect material for the job, or finding out which paint absorbs radar waves the best. Sometimes it’s a bout making better ads.
As you can imagine, a lot of money rides on knowing the answers, so it’s a v ...read more
Neurons in the brain. (Credit: Andrii Vodolazhskyi/Shutterstock)
One of the most basic things our bodies do is make new cells. It’s what allows tissues to grow and heal, and allows our bodies to continually rejuvenate themselves.
When it comes to cellular replenishment, one of the places researchers are most interested in is the brain. The formation of new brain cells is of critical interest to researchers studying everything from brain injuries to aging to mental illnesses like dep ...read more
Which one is correct? (Credit: Johns Hopkins University)
Most of us learn the ABCs in our youth. We see and say the letters so many times they eventually become etched in our minds.
But researchers from Johns Hopkins University discovered that many people don’t know what the most common lowercase print version of the sixth letter of the alphabet really is. Heck, some didn’t even know there were two types.
Can You Guess the Correct Version?
There are two ways people write t ...read more
Probes that can transmit electricity inside the skull raise questions about personal autonomy and responsibility. (Credit: Hellerhoff, CC BY-SA)
Mr. B loves Johnny Cash, except when he doesn’t. Mr. X has watched his doctors morph into Italian chefs right before his eyes.
The link between the two? Both Mr. B and Mr. X received deep brain stimulation (DBS), a procedure involving an implant that sends electric impulses to specific targets in the brain to alter neural activity. While brain im ...read more
(Credit: Vadim Sadovski/Shutterstock)
Legions of metal nuggets swirl about our solar system. Metallic asteroids number in the millions, but they’re relatively quite rare—bits and pieces of lonely matter that never became planets.
Occasionally, they find a home. A tiny fraction of these dull, misshapen hunks of metal have rained onto our planet for millennia, sparking briefly alight as they kiss the atmosphere before biting deep into the planet’s surface—if the ...read more
Regular readers will know of my interest in the theory that ketamine is a rapid-acting antidepressant. I’ve blogged about developments in ketamine-depression research for several years now, my interest being spurred partly by my own struggles with depression.
As I’ve said previously, the research on ketamine as an antidepressant is promising, but I do not think it is possible to say yet how ketamine works in depression. I think it is possible that ketamine’s apparently powerfu ...read more
This set of images shows the gravitationally lensed galaxy clusters where astronomers discovered the most distant star ever seen. The star, nicknamed Icarus, is marked by the white arrow in the bottom inset image. (Credit: NASA/ESA/P. Kelly (University of California, Berkeley))
In a study published today in Nature Astronomy, an international team of researchers announced the discovery of the most distant star ever observed. The team detected the blue supergiant star — whic ...read more
