Human Quirks News

June 8, 2025

Top Headlines

Dancing Brainwaves: How Sound Reshapes Your Brain Networks in Real Time

June 2, 2025 — What happens inside your brain when you hear a steady rhythm or musical tone? According to a new study, your brain doesn't just hear it -- it reorganizes itself in real ...

Could 'Pausing' Cell Death Be the Final Frontier in Medicine on Earth and Beyond?

May 29, 2025 — The process of necrosis, a form of cell death, may represent one of the most promising ways to change the course of human aging, disease and even space travel, according to a new ...

Five Things to Do in Virtual Reality -- And Five to Avoid

May 28, 2025 — A review of experimental research reveals how VR is best used and why it's struggled to become a megahit with ...

Electronic Tattoo Gauges Mental Strain

May 29, 2025 — Researchers gave participants face tattoos that can track when their brain is working too hard. The study introduces a non-permanent wireless forehead e-tattoo that decodes brainwaves to measure mental strain without bulky headgear. This technology ...

Overlooked Cells Might Explain the Human Brain's Huge Storage Capacity

May 27, 2025 — Researchers have a new hypothesis for how brain cells called astrocytes might contribute to memory storage in the brain. Their model, known as dense associative memory, would help explain the brain's massive storage ...

Nearly Five Million Seized Seahorses Just 'Tip of the Iceberg' in Global Wildlife Smuggling

May 28, 2025 — Close to five million smuggled seahorses worth an estimated CAD$29 million were seized by authorities over a 10-year span, according to a new study that warns the scale of the trade is far larger ...

An Artificial Protein That Moves Like Something Found in Nature

May 22, 2025 — Proteins catalyze life by changing shape when they interact with other molecules. The result is a muscle twitching, the perception of light, or a bit of energy extracted from food. The ability to engineer shapeshifting proteins opens new avenues for ...

Emotional Responses Crucial to Attitudes About Self-Driving Cars

May 27, 2025 — When it comes to public attitudes toward using self-driving cars, understanding how the vehicles work is important -- but so are less obvious characteristics like feelings of excitement or pleasure and a belief in technology's social ...

Why After 2000 Years We Still Don't Know How Tickling Works

May 27, 2025 — How come you can't tickle yourself? And why can some people handle tickling perfectly fine while others scream their heads off? Neuroscientists argue that we should take tickle research more ...

A Dental Floss That Can Measure Stress

May 23, 2025 — Scientists create a floss pick that samples cortisol within saliva as a marker of stress and quantifies it with a built-in electrode. The system uses a polymer casting technology that can be adapted to capture a wide a range of markers, such as ...

Toothache from Eating Something Cold? Blame These Ancient Fish

May 21, 2025 — New research shows that dentine, the inner layer of teeth that transmits sensory information to nerves inside the pulp, first evolved as sensory tissue in the armored exoskeletons of ancient ...

Hand2: Positional Code That Allows Axolotls to Regrow Limbs Found

May 21, 2025 — With its fascinating ability to regrow entire limbs and internal organs, the Mexican axolotl is the ideal model for studying regeneration. Scientists have now found a factor that tells cells which part of the arm to regenerate -- and used it to ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:11am EDT

Could AI Understand Emotions Better Than We Do?

May 22, 2025 — Is artificial intelligence (AI) capable of suggesting appropriate behavior in emotionally charged situations? A team put six generative AIs -- including ChatGPT -- to the test using emotional ...

A New Technology for Extending the Shelf Life of Produce

May 21, 2025 — Researchers developed a way to extend the shelf life of vegetables by injecting them with melatonin using biodegradable ...

Are Groovy Brains More Efficient?

May 21, 2025 — The smallest grooves on the brain's surface, unique to humans, have largely been ignored by anatomists, but recent studies show that they're related to cognitive performance, including face ...

AI Overconfidence Mirrors Human Brain Condition

May 15, 2025 — Agents, chatbots and other tools based on artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly used in everyday life by many. So-called large language model (LLM)-based agents, such as ChatGPT and Llama, ...

Wild Orangutans Show Communication Complexity Thought to Be Uniquely Human

May 16, 2025 — Researchers have found that wild orangutans vocalize with a layered complexity previously thought to be unique to human communication, suggesting a much older evolutionary ...

Your Fingers Wrinkle in the Same Pattern Every Time You're in the Water for Too Long

May 12, 2025 — Your fingers wrinkle in the same pattern every time you're in the water for too long, according to new ...

Is AI Truly Creative? Turns out Creativity Is in the Eye of the Beholder

May 8, 2025 — What makes people think an AI system is creative? New research shows that it depends on how much they see of the creative act. The findings have implications for how we research and design creative ...

3D Printing in Vivo Using Sound

May 8, 2025 — New technique for cell or drug delivery, localization of bioelectric materials, and wound healing uses ultrasound to activate printing within the ...

AI-Designed DNA Controls Genes in Healthy Mammalian Cells for First Time

May 8, 2025 — A recent study marks the first reported instance of generative AI designing synthetic molecules that can successfully control gene expression in healthy mammalian cells. As a proof-of-concept, the ...

Non-Inherited Genes Affect Children's Development

May 7, 2025 — Parents' genes -- even when not directly inherited by a child -- may play a role in their educational and mental health outcomes, finds a new ...

Study Suggests We Don't Just Hear Music, but 'Become It'

May 6, 2025 — Psychologists suggest our brains and bodies don't just understand music, they physically resonate with it. These discoveries, based on findings in neuroscience, music, and psychology, support ...

Ancient Andes Society Used Hallucinogens to Strengthen Social Order

May 5, 2025 — Snuff tubes uncovered at Chavin de Huantar in Peru reveal how leaders used mystical experiences to cement their ...

Children as Young as Five Can Navigate a 'Tiny Town'

May 5, 2025 — Neuroscientists are developing methods to map the brain systems that allow us to recognize and get around our ...

The Future of Brain Activity Monitoring May Look Like a Strand of Hair

May 2, 2025 — Researchers have created a hairlike device for long-term, non-invasive monitoring of the brain's electrical activity. The lightweight and flexible electrode attaches directly to the scalp and ...

The All-Female Korean Haenyeo Divers Show Genetic Adaptions to Cold Water Diving

May 2, 2025 — The Haenyeo, a group of all-female divers from the Korean island of Jeju, are renowned for their ability to dive in frigid waters without the aid of breathing equipment -- even while pregnant. A ...

Artificial Sense of Touch, Improved

May 1, 2025 — While exploring a digitally represented object through artificially created sense of touch, brain-computer interface users described the warm fur of a purring cat, the smooth rigid surface of a door ...

New Research Reveals How Physiology-Inspired Networks Could Improve Political Decision-Making

May 1, 2025 — A new study has unveiled a groundbreaking framework for rethinking political decision-making -- drawing inspiration from how the human body maintains stability and ...

Good Karma for Me, Bad Karma for You

May 1, 2025 — Many people around the world believe in karma -- that idea that divine justice will punish people who do bad deeds and reward those who good. But that belief plays out differently for oneself versus ...

Seasonal Changes Affect Alcohol Tolerance and Your Waistline

Apr. 30, 2025 — Researchers have found that drug effectiveness, alcohol tolerance, and carbohydrate metabolism change with the seasons. Their findings are based on a comprehensive seasonal gene expression map, which ...

Will the Vegetables of the Future Be Fortified Using Tiny Needles?

Apr. 29, 2025 — Researchers have shown they can inexpensively nanomanufacture silk microneedles to precisely fortify crops, monitor plant health, and detect soil ...

Advancing AI for Diverse Applications in Manufacturing, Business and Education

Apr. 28, 2025 — Large language models (LLMs) are at the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI) and have been widely used for conversational interactions. However, assessing the personality of a given LLM remains ...

A Neuro-Quantum Leap in Finding Optimal Solutions

Apr. 28, 2025 — Scientists have developed a problem-solving architecture modeled on neurobiology that leverages quantum mechanical behavior to guarantee optimal solutions to complex ...

What Happens in the Brain When Your Mind Blanks

Apr. 24, 2025 — Mind blanking is a common experience with a wide variety of definitions ranging from feeling 'drowsy' to 'a complete absence of conscious awareness.' Neuroscientists and ...

Scientists Trick the Eye Into Seeing New Color 'Olo'

Apr. 23, 2025 — Scientists have created a new platform called 'Oz' that uses laser light to control up to 1,000 photoreceptors in the eye at once. Using Oz, the researchers showed people images, videos and ...

Using ChatGPT, Students Might Pass a Course, but With a Cost

Apr. 22, 2025 — With the assumption that students are going to use artificial intelligence and large language models such as ChatGPT to do their homework, researchers set out to learn how well the free version of ...

More Americans Are Using Psilocybin -- Especially Those With Mental Health Conditions, Study Shows

Apr. 21, 2025 — Use of psilocybin, the hallucinogenic chemical found in what is known as 'magic mushrooms,' has increased significantly nationwide since 2019, according to a new ...

How Thoughts Influence What the Eyes See

Apr. 18, 2025 — A new study by biomedical engineers and neuroscientists shows that the brain's visual regions play an active role in making sense of ...

Soft Brainstem Implant Delivers High-Resolution Hearing

Apr. 18, 2025 — A team has developed a soft, thin-film ABI. The device uses micrometer-scale platinum electrodes embedded in silicone, forming a pliable array just a fraction of a millimeter thick. This novel ...

Our DNA Is at Risk of Hacking, Warn Scientists

Apr. 16, 2025 — According to new research next-generation DNA sequencing (NGS) -- the same technology which is powering the development of tailor-made medicines, cancer diagnostics, infectious disease tracking, and ...

Simulate Sound in 3D at a Finer Scale Than Humans Can Perceive

Apr. 15, 2025 — Ambisonic rendering is a way to simulate the precise locations of sounds in 3D, and an ambisonics algorithm has allowed researchers to create rich virtual 'soundscapes.'Researchers decided ...