Do we really have free will when it comes to eating? It’s a vexing question that is at the heart of why so many people find it so difficult to stick to a diet. To get answers, one neuroscientist, Harvey J. Grill of the University of Pennsylvania, turned to rats and asked what would happen […]
Read More
In the early 1990s, James Swanson was working as a research psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, where he specialized in the study of attention disorders. It was a touchy time for the field. The Church of Scientology had organized a nationwide protest campaign against the psychiatric profession, and Ritalin, then the leading medication […]
Read More
Tune in, and tell us what you think at theheadlines@nytimes.com. For corrections, email nytnews@nytimes.com. For more audio journalism and storytelling, download the New York Times Audio app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. Special thanks to Theodore Tae.
Read More
If you sit close enough to the front of the theater for “A Streetcar Named Desire” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, you can see Paul Mescal spit and sweat as he stalks the stage as Stanley Kowalski, an artist doing his work in real time and space. It had been a while since I’d […]
Read More
For the millions of Americans who retire each year, stopping work might seem like a well-deserved break. But it can also precipitate big changes in brain health, including an increased risk of cognitive decline and depression. Before retiring, you’re getting up in the morning, socializing with co-workers and dealing with the mental challenges of your […]
Read MoreFive years — and hundreds of millions of cases — after the World Health Organization declared the Covid-19 pandemic, scientists are getting a clearer picture of how the virus can affect the body long after an infection seems to pass. Some of Covid’s effects became apparent soon after the virus began spreading. We quickly understood […]
Read More
Over the last decade or so, research has revealed a clear pattern: People tend to overeat ultraprocessed foods. This could be one reason they’re linked with weight gain and obesity. What isn’t clear is why we are so prone to overeating them. Dr. Robert Califf, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, offered […]
Read More
For many people, aging feels like it happens in stops and starts. After a period of smooth sailing, one day, seemingly out of the blue, you have achy knees. “You wake up in the morning and you suddenly feel old,” said Dr. Steve Hoffmann, a computational biology professor at the Leibniz Institute on Aging in […]
Read More
Women’s brains are superior to men’s in at least in one respect — they age more slowly. And now, a group of researchers reports that they have found a gene in mice that rejuvenates female brains. Humans have the same gene. The discovery suggests a possible way to help both women and men avoid cognitive […]
Read More
Scientists have long struggled to understand how human language evolved. Words and sentences don’t leave fossils behind for paleontologists to dig up. A genetic study published on Tuesday offers an important new clue. Researchers found that, between 250,000 and 500,000 years ago, a gene known as NOVA1 underwent a profound evolutionary change in our ancestors. […]
Read More
Eleanor Maguire, a cognitive neuroscientist whose research on the human hippocampus — especially those belonging to London taxi drivers — transformed the understanding of memory, revealing that a key structure in the brain can be strengthened like a muscle, died on Jan. 4 in London. She was 54. Her death, at a hospice facility, was […]
Read More
The Food and Drug Administration approved a new medication Thursday to treat pain from an injury or surgery. It is expensive, with a list price of $15.50 per pill. But unlike opioid pain medicines, it cannot become addictive. That is because the drug, suzetrigine, made by Vertex Pharmaceuticals and to be sold as Journavx, works […]
Read More
Medical advances have beaten back many relentless assassins in recent decades, such as cancer and heart disease. A wide range of treatments share credit: surgery, medicines, radiation, genetic therapies and healthful habits. Mortality rates for those two diseases, the top causes of death in the United States, have fallen sharply. But in an aging population, […]
Read More
Here’s a strange story: One day two summers ago, I woke up because my arms — both of them — hurt. Not the way they do when you’ve slept in a funny position, but as if the tendons in my forearms and hands were moving through mud. What felt like sharp electric shocks kept sparking […]
Read More
The fourth floor of the long-term-care hospital where I sometimes work houses patients with severe brain injuries. When I am called there to consult, I always hesitate before entering the room. Of all the ways that our bodies can fail, brain injuries are some of the most devastating to witness. Some patients moan involuntarily. Others […]
Read More
White House officials said on Friday that the truth behind the mysterious ailments known as Havana Syndrome was still unknown, contradicting a new intelligence assessment about what had befallen spies and diplomats for the last nine years. On Friday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released an updated assessment about the ailments, one […]
Read More
Alicia Arritt spent years as an Army nurse working with combat veterans with brain injuries. And when she started a relationship Matthew Livelsberger in 2018, long before he shot himself and blew up a Cybertruck in Las Vegas this week, she recognized many of the symptoms in her new boyfriend that she had seen in […]
Read More