Brain research

Since ancient times, philosophers and scientists have viewed emotions as innate. In the latest Invisibilia, a psychologist argues that emotions spring from the sum of our experiences, not just wiring.

In 1848, a railroad worker survived an accident that drove a 13-pound iron bar through his head. The injury changed his personality, and our understanding of the brain.

Experiments with small clusters of networked brain cells are helping scientists see how real brains develop normally, and what goes awry when cells have trouble making connections.

Emergency room doctors are just beginning to study a new kind of casualty in the opioid epidemic — patients who survive an overdose, but walk away with brain damage, kidney failure or dead muscle.

After six weeks of training, people could memorize twice as much. Areas of the brain had begun communicating in new ways — a lot like what happens inside the heads of world memory champions.

Santiago Ramón y Cajal's drawings of nerve cells changed scientists' understanding of the brain. Now, 80 of those drawings are going on display at an art museum in Minnesota.

If your mom had to run through the name of everyone in the family, including the dog, before hitting yours, it's probably because you're all in a mental folder labeled "loved ones."

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine sorted through 10,000 studies to determine the good and bad health effects of marijuana. Tight drug restrictions impede research, they say.

From birth through age 30 or so, our ability to recognize faces keeps improving, research shows. At first, kids discern adult faces better than other kids' mugs. Not so after adolescence.

A magnetic pulse to a certain spot in the brain of healthy volunteers restored recently "forgotten" thoughts, researchers found. The study is shifting the understanding of short-term recall.

Each lab-grown cluster of human cells fits on a pin's head, but contains some of the cell types and circuitry of a real brain. The structures already are offering insights into how Zika attacks.

A mind-controlled robotic arm has pressure sensors in each fingertip that send signals directly to a paralyzed man's brain. It's still experimental, but could eventually help thousands, engineers say.