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How your brain stays focused on conversations in a noisy room

6 June 2023

The brain processes voices differently depending on the volume of the speaker and if the listener is focused on them

Babies can identify people's faces from just 4 months old

29 May 2023

Infants may pick up on people's faces before anything else, which could explain why they can be scared of strangers at a young age

Image of blood vessels in a mouse brain with an the inset picture showing fluorescent microbubbles that have been directed with ultrasound

Microbots tracked while navigating through a living mouse’s brain

15 February 2023

Ultrasound has been used to direct microbots made from bubbles through the brain of a mouse as they are tracked, and the technology might one day help unblock clots that can cause stroke

The hippocampus (orange) is a structure in the brain that plays a key role in memory. Less extensive damage to the hippocampus has been linked to worse amnesia than more severe injuries

Mild brain damage may affect memory more than severe injuries

6 February 2023

In a small study, memory recall was better in people with more severe damage to a brain region involved with memory, compared with those with milder damage. With severe damage, other parts of the brain may take on the damaged region's function

Neuron connection speeds can increase or decrease with age

Some regions of your brain can communicate faster as you age

9 January 2023

Signals between some regions of the brain may be fastest at age 34, while transmission in other areas gets steadily faster with age. Understanding this may improve our knowledge of neurodevelopmental conditions such as schizophrenia

International rugby union players face higher risk of dementia

4 October 2022

Men who played rugby union for Scotland are much more likely to develop dementia, Parkinson’s disease and motor neurone disease than the rest of the population

Group of friends having fun time at music festival

We may use distinct parts of our brain to think about close friends

22 August 2022

Brain scans show that different areas are active when we contemplate our five most intimate relationships compared with other friends

Having the left or right hemisphere of the brain removed as a child to treat epileptic seizures may not affect their ability to recognise words or faces as an adult

People with half a brain removed do well at face and word recognition

15 August 2022

Adults who had the left or right hemisphere of their brain removed as children to treat epileptic seizures had accuracy scores of over 80 per cent on word and face recognition tasks