1+ hour, 37+ min ago  (885+ words) Playing random, meaningless sounds during an afternoon nap made it harder for people to remember what they had just learned, a new study has found. The clicks did not shorten sleep at all, yet they roughly halved the amount of…...

8+ hour, 44+ min ago  (696+ words) Many children today reach for a tablet long before they reach for a pencil. A new experiment asks whether that swap matters for the very first steps of reading. Its answer reaches back through two decades of research and pins…...

1+ day, 20+ hour ago  (903+ words) People with depression get a bigger behavioral nudge from the likes they collect on social media than other users do, according to a new study of more than 7,700 Twitter accounts. The more likes they received in one day, the more…...

3+ day, 20+ hour ago  (988+ words) Learning another language has long been linked to better brain health, but scientists have struggled to show just how much of a difference it makes. New research suggests the benefits may be far greater than many expected. People who spoke…...

3+ day, 17+ hour ago  (924+ words) When American schools shut their doors in the spring of 2020, children’s use of mental health care fell by more than half. The drop did not last long. By 2022, the numbers had more than recovered. They sat higher than before the…...

3+ day, 18+ hour ago  (1023+ words) Two people, deep in conversation, often drift into a shared rhythm without trying. Their brainwaves rise and fall together, in a form of brain synchrony. That overlap tends to grow when they are engaged with each other. Researchers have been…...

4+ day, 2+ hour ago  (1045+ words) A new study has found that understanding language draws on far more of the brain than the small cluster of regions long treated as its language network. Analyzing brain scans from more than 700 people, researchers at MIT pinpointed 17 areas outside…...

4+ day, 19+ hour ago  (974+ words) Long before modern science, people were drawing mind-altering compounds from plants, fungi, and even animals for rituals, healing, and countless other purposes. Now a team of researchers has pulled off something nature never bothered to do: cramming five of these…...

4+ day, 22+ hour ago  (958+ words) Family meals have long been treated as a small daily anchor for households. They give parents and children a set moment to talk, share news, and reconnect. That shared moment now competes with something new at the table. A glowing…...

5+ day, 1+ hour ago  (965+ words) A woman in her 80s with advanced Alzheimer’s disease had spoken mostly in single syllables for five years. A day after she took psilocybin – the psychedelic compound found in certain mushrooms – she was conversing again. Within days she was walking on…...