How a 12-Ounce Layer of Foam Changed the NFL
Late in his team’s game against the Green Bay Packers on September 15, Indianapolis Colts tight end Kylen Granson caught a short pass over the middle of the field, charged …
brains
The Vagus Nerve’s Crucial Role in Creating the Human Sense of Mind
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. It is late at night. You are alone and wandering empty streets in search of your parked car when you …
An Ultrathin Graphene Brain Implant Was Just Tested in a Person
In 2004, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov at the University of Manchester in England achieved a breakthrough when they isolated graphene for the first time. A flat form of carbon …
Patients Are Turning to Vibrators to Relieve Their Migraines
My friend Jack suffers from the most terrible migraines. But he has an unusual solution. When his migraine starts, he lays down and gently straps a vibrator to the top …
I Tried These Brain-Tracking Headphones That Claim to Improve Focus
One afternoon I was using the device for a little over an hour when I heard a voice in the headset: “You’ve earned a brain break.” Alcaide says the device …
Strange Visual Auras Could Hold the Key to Better Migraine Treatments
Exactly why CSD starts, nobody knows. Similarly, plenty of mysteries remain about what activates the pain of migraines. Past studies have proposed that migraine headaches occur when something in the …
This Is the Most Detailed Map of Human Brain Connections Ever Made
This image could be hung in a gallery, but it started life as a tiny chunk of a woman’s brain. In 2014, a woman undergoing surgery for epilepsy had a …
Elon Musk’s Neuralink Is Ready to Implant a Second Volunteer
A second person will soon receive Neuralink’s experimental brain implant, according to Elon Musk, the company’s cofounder. In a video update on Wednesday, Musk said the surgery is planned to …
How the Brain Decides What to Remember
“There has to be some kind of triage to remember what is relevant and forget the rest,” Zugaro said. “Understanding how specific memories were selected for storage was still lacking …
How Not to Get Brain-Eating Worms and Mercury Poisoning
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, almost all of us have at least trace amounts of methylmercury—the form of mercury we tend to encounter most—in our bodies due to …