Teen born without half her brain has above average reading skills
12 February 2020
An 18-year-old who was born without the left half of her brain scores well on IQ tests and plans to attend university, revealing our brain's incredible adaptability
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Premium
Our astonishing brain is hard to figure out – and that's fantastic
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It can seem a Herculean task to establish even basic facts about the human brain, but without its mind-boggling complexity we wouldn't be nearly as amazing
Multiple sclerosis drug is first to dramatically cut brain shrinkage
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An experimental treatment can nearly halve the loss of brain tissue in people who have the worst forms of multiple sclerosis, for which there are few treatments
First evidence that gut bacteria help wire young brains
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Experiments in mice have shown for the first time that bacteria found in the gut of babies and children seem to play a role in brain development
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Chimp evolution was shaped by sex with their bonobo relatives
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Some chimpanzee populations gained useful DNA from interbreeding with bonobos, and one may even have become more gentle and “bonobo-like” in its brain structure and behaviour
We may have got the evolution of our big brains entirely wrong
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Many scientists think that our big brains evolved to help us cope with the complexities of social living, but a model suggests it was more to do with finding food and lighting fires
World's most-spoken languages may have arisen in ancient Iran
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About 3 billion people speak Indo-European languages like English and Hindustani, and it seems the first such tongue was spoken south of the Caucasus mountains
People adapted to the cold and got more migraines as a result
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A gene variant that helps humans cope with colder climates also seems to have put people living in northerly regions at a higher risk of migraine
Horses remember if you smiled or frowned when they last saw you
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Horses can remember the expressions on people’s faces and use them to make judgements about whether people are nice or unpleasant
