The minimal microbe

There are approximately one trillion quintillion microbial cells on this planet. That's more than the number of stars in the known universe! 

Language use is simpler than previously thought

(Phys.org)—For more than 50 years, language scientists have assumed that sentence structure is fundamentally hierarchical, made up of small parts in turn made of smaller parts, like Russian nesting dolls.

Noise down, neuron signals up

Biomedical engineer Muhammet Uzuntarla from Bulent Ecevit University, Turkey, and his colleagues present a biologically accurate model of the underlying noise which is present in the nervous system. The article is about to ...

Making the worms turn

To biophysicist Aravinthan Samuel, the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans provides a pathway to understanding the brain and nervous system, first of the worm, then of higher animals, and even, perhaps, of humans.

Nanoparticles cause brain injury in fish

Scientists at the University of Plymouth have shown, for the first time in an animal, that nanoparticles have a detrimental effect on the brain and other parts of the central nervous system.

Bursting neurons follow the same beat, sometimes

A simplified mathematical model of the brain's neural circuitry shows that repetitious, overlapped firing of neurons can lead to the waves of overly synchronized brain activity that may cause the halting movements that are ...

page 19 from 21