You’re walking somewhere you’ve never been before and suddenly feel as though you’ve strolled down the same road already. You’re experiencing the well-known phenomenon déjà vu — but what is déjà vu, really, and why does the strange feeling happen? Déjà vu is a French expression meaning “already seen,” which was first used in 1876 … Read more
A man in his 80s gradually started feeling that he was witnessing the same events again and again. This disturbing symptom, somewhat reminiscent of the 1993 movie “Groundhog Day,” likely emerged as a rare complication of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new report of the case. According to the report, published May 16 in the … Read more
After decades of debate, scientists believe they have identified the most recent ancestor of the sister to all animals via the novel use of an analytical technique. The finding settles a central question about the evolution of the entire tree of animal life. All animal life is descended from a single common ancestor — a … Read more
Sure, not everyone has pipes like Adele. But we all know people who truly struggle to match and comprehend musical pitch, and they’re usually labeled “tone deaf.” But is tone deafness a real condition? And if so, why are some people tone deaf? In short, yes, tone deafness is a genuine neurological disorder. It’s called … Read more
Our “biological age,” which reflects signs of age-related decline in our cells and tissues, doesn’t steadily increase along with our chronological age. Instead, new research suggests that biological aging can accelerate during stressful events and then reverse after those events. In other words, there are measurable biological markers linked to age-related changes in cell function, … Read more
The spread of drug-resistant “superbugs” — including bacteria that have evolved to thwart even the most potent antibiotics — represents an ever-growing threat to public health. Now, scientists have invented a new type of antibiotic that can take down these germs by rapidly rearranging its atoms and thus changing its shape. The researchers described the … Read more
Scientists have discovered never-before-seen viruses that thrive in sunlit oceans from pole to pole and infect plankton. They dubbed the newfound microbes “mirusviruses” — “mirus” meaning “strange” in Latin. The researchers concluded that mirusviruses belong to a large group of viruses called Duplodnaviria, which includes the herpesviruses that infect animals and humans, based on shared … Read more
Human beings can generate false memories of events mere seconds after they have occurred, a new study has found. The phenomenon, which researchers have dubbed “short-term memory illusions,” shows how easily and rapidly humans reimagine experiences to fit our preconceptions, rather than accurately recording what takes place. The researchers published their findings April 5 in … Read more
Scientists have long debated the greatest possible age of a person, with previous studies placing the limit at up to 150 years. But in the past 25 years, no one has surpassed the record for the world’s oldest person, held by Jean Louise Calment, who died at age 122 in 1997. “This has led people … Read more
A person’s native language may shape how their brain builds connections between different hubs of information processing, a new brain scan study reveals. The observed differences in these language network structures were related to linguistic characteristics in the native languages of the study participants: German and Arabic. “So the difference we find there shouldn’t be … Read more
