What if running a marathon didn’t just drain your muscles, but also quietly reshaped the very structure of your brain? At the heart of this transformation lies a subtle but essential player: myelin. This sheath, which insulates nerve fibers, isn’t just responsible for the speed of neural signals, it may also act as an emergency…
For decades, neuroscience has maintained a clear distinction between two categories of brain disorders. On one side are neurodevelopmental disorders, which emerge early in life and reflect disruptions in brain maturation. On the other are neurodegenerative diseases, typically associated with aging and characterized by the progressive breakdown of specific neural structures. This division has long…
Every year, thousands of individuals lose the use of their limbs due to stroke, spinal cord injury, or neurodegenerative disease. When both speech and movement fall silent, communication becomes a matter of survival. This raises a central question: can brain activity be harnessed to restore a voice to those who have lost theirs? Brain-computer interfaces…
One evening, in the waiting room of a hospital, a ten-year-old girl clutched her mother’s hand with unusual insistence. She stared at her mother’s face, then quickly looked away, as if something no longer made sense.“Your head is tiny… and I think my arms are getting longer,” she whispered, caught between fear and amazement. Her…
We’ve all experienced it, leaving a room feeling inexplicably lighter, simply because the atmosphere was cheerful. Or conversely, entering a space where something felt off, an invisible tension lingering in the air, and suddenly feeling uneasy without knowing why. What others feel, in a strange and almost magical way, ends up affecting us. But why…
Can we train the brain the way we train a muscle? For neuroscientists, the answer is yes, and classical music stands among the most powerful tools to achieve this. Thanks to advances in neuroimaging and behavioral research, we now understand that listening to or practicing music profoundly influences memory, attention, emotions, and even brain structure….
Mr. L., 56, lost his left leg in a motorcycle accident. Just days after the amputation, he began experiencing intense, localized pain in his left foot, a foot that no longer existed. He described it as a burning sensation, sometimes cramping, as though his toes were painfully curled. No topical treatment provided relief. When asked…
Professor M. lived surrounded by books, in a house lined with ancient volumes and dictionaries. Reading and teaching were his life, language was his home, as familiar to him as the walls he lived in. Until the day words began to slip away. One morning, while preparing a lecture, something gave way. The words hovered…
A stranger sits on a train, his gaze lost beyond the windowpane, a crumpled letter tucked into his jacket pocket. You don’t know him. And yet, within a few lines, the novel draws you into his mind, you begin to feel his dilemmas, anticipate his gestures. You accept the invitation. Effortlessly, you begin to grasp…
A child solving equations faster than an adult can read them, a teenager captivated by quantum physics before mastering algebra, or a musician able to improvise a Baroque fugue after a single listen, all seem cut from the same exceptional cloth. They all share one trait: an unusually high IQ. But should they all be…