Mind, features and articles | Educational Science

Jan 31, 2018

Arizona Woman Wakes Up with British Accent

An Arizona woman woke up speaking with a British accent, even though she's lived in the U.S. all her life, according to news reports. The woman, Michelle Myers, said that in 2015, she went to bed with a blinding headache and woke up sounding British, according to ABC affiliate KNXV....

Jan 31, 2018

The Brutal Neuroscience of Figure Skating: How Spinning Athletes Overcome Dizziness

As I write this, I'm sitting in a desk chair — the kind that turns. If I kick my legs hard against the floor, again and again, it will spin fast — not figure-skater fast, but fast enough that when I stop and try to stand, the whole world careens...

May 31, 2019

Why So Many Bacteria Live on the Surface of Your Eye

You may be familiar with the idea that your gut and skin are home to a collection of microbes — fungi, bacteria and viruses — that are vital for keeping you healthy. But did you know that your eyes also host a unique menagerie of microbes? Together, they're called the...

Apr 30, 2019

Three Cases of Brain-Infecting Parasite Recently Confirmed in Hawaii

Last December, a tourist in Hawaii ate a slug on a dare — not realizing, of course, a wiggly brain-loving parasite was along for the ride. After accidentally ingesting the larvae of the parasitic rat lungworm (Angiostrongylus cantonensis) that was hiding inside the slug, the person contracted angiostrongyliasis, or rat...

Mar 31, 2019

Here's Why This Man Had a Giant White Mass on His Eyeball

It looks like a Hollywood special effect: An eye with a bulging white mass where the pupil and iris should be. But this odd eye problem is the result of a rare lesion on a man's eyeball, according to a new report of the case. The 74-year-old man arrived at...

Mar 31, 2019

An Odd Eye Injury Caused a Man's Iris to 'Collapse'

The man's eye looks like a cloudy fishbowl, or perhaps a terrarium: A dark orb with a layer of a brown, sandy-looking substance at the bottom. But this isn't some kind of special contact lens. It's the result of a painful eye injury that caused the man's iris to tear...

Feb 28, 2019

Why Does Time Fly When You're Having Fun?

The world's most precise clocks run at a steady pace, messing up by only about 1 second every 300 million years. But the brain takes those rhythmic seconds and makes its own sense of time — stretching the ticks and scrunching the tocks. But why can't the brain keep time...

Dec 31, 2018

How Did 'Miracle' Man Come Back from Dangerous Brain Swelling?

A man in Nebraska who doctors believed had experienced a devastating stroke actually had a different condition — fortunately, one that allowed him to come back from the brink of death. After his children accepted that their father was likely to die and decided to have him removed from his...

Aug 31, 2020

13-year-old dies of rare 'brain-eating' amoeba after swimming in Florida lake

A teen has died from a rare brain-eating amoeba infection after a family vacation in Florida, according to news reports. The 13-year-old, Tanner Wall, and his family had recently stayed at a campground in North Florida, which has a water park and lake where the boy went swimming, according to...

Dec 31, 2019

What is the amygdala?

The amygdala is often referred to as the fear center of the brain, but this description hardly does justice to the amygdala's complexity. Located deep in the brain's left and right temporal lobes, our two amygdalae are important for numerous aspects of thought, emotion and behavior, and are implicated in...

Apr 30, 2021

Human brain: Facts, functions & anatomy

The human brain is the command center for the human nervous system. It receives signals from the body's sensory organs and outputs information to the muscles. The human brain has the same basic structure as other mammal brains but is larger in relation to body size than the brains of...

Mar 31, 2022

Brain differences tied to autism can be detected in the womb

Brain scans of babies in the womb may reveal whether a child is at risk for developing autism later in life, early research suggests. A small study of 39 fetuses found that, by 25 weeks of gestation, certain brain regions looked different in the unborn babies who went on to...

Dec 31, 2022

Newfound 'protective shield' in the brain is like a watchtower for immune cells

A newfound protective shield in the brain helps clear waste from the organ and serves as a sentry tower for watchful immune cells that monitor for signs of infection, scientists reported in a study of mouse and human brains. The study, published Thursday (Jan. 5) in the journal Science, describes...

Dec 31, 2022

Humans' big-brain genes may have come from 'junk DNA'

Scientists once considered much of the human genome junk because large stretches of its genetic code don't give rise to any proteins, the complex molecules tasked with keeping cells running. However, it's since been discovered that this so-called junk DNA plays important roles in cells, and in a new study,...

Dec 31, 2022

How does grief affect the brain?

Grief is something nearly everyone will experience at some point in their lives. It can be overwhelming and confusing, and it can make the death of a loved one difficult to navigate. But when someone is experiencing grief, what exactly is happening to their brain? According to Dr. Lisa M....