Once Thought To Support Neurons, Astrocytes Turn Out To Be in Charge
New experiments reveal how astrocytes tune neuronal activity to modulate our mental and emotional states. The results suggest that neuron-only brain models, such as connectomes, leave out a crucial layer of regulation.
January, 2026
How ‘Event Scripts’ Structure Our Personal Memories
By screening films in a brain scanner, neuroscientists discovered a rich library of neural scripts — from a trip through an airport to a marriage proposal — that form scaffolds for memories of our experiences.
February, 2025
The Poetry Fan Who Taught an LLM to Read and Write DNA
By treating DNA as a language, Brian Hie’s “ChatGPT for genomes” could pick up patterns that humans can’t see, accelerating biological design
February, 2025
Pleasure or Pain? He Maps the Neural Circuits That Decide.
The work of the neuroscientist Ishmail Abdus-Saboor has opened up a world of insights into precisely how much pleasure and pain animals experience during different forms of touch.
April 16, 2024
Epigenetic ‘Clocks’ Predict Animals’ True Biological Age A statistical analysis of chemical tags on DNA may help unify disparate theories of aging. August 17, 2022
Republished in Wired, September 18, 2022