The jury’s still out on rock ’n’ roll. But the link between sex and at least one drug, marijuana, has been confirmed. According to the …
Author: Bruce Goldman
The “like” hormone? Scientists identify brain circuit tied to oxytocin’s connection to sociability
Question: What is it that makes some people the life of the party, others recluses and still others shoulder-shruggingly indifferent to the delights of social …
Seeing is believing (unfortunately): A project designed to study visually induced fear
Back in Wisconsin, where I grew up, there was a lot to be afraid of. We feared ice. Cow dung. Running out of cheese. Losing …
Average U.S. newborn’s dad is getting older (as is mom) — and it matters
The average age of a newborn's dad has crept steadily upwards in the United States, from 27.4 years old in 1972 to 30.9 in 2015. …
Hunter-gatherers’ seasonal gut-microbe diversity loss echoes our permanent one, study shows
The Hadza, a small group of hunter-gatherers inhabiting Tanzania’s Rift Valley, number just over 1,000 people, fewer than 200 of whom still adhere to the traditional …
Long-term, 3-D culture method lets slow-developing brain cells mature in a dish
In a new study in Neuron, Stanford researchers have used a revolutionary 3-D culture technique to nurse a very slowly developing set of brain cells known …
Correcting a forebrain signaling imbalance reverses autistic symptoms in mice
A new study, conducted by Stanford psychiatrist, neuroscientist and inventor Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, and colleagues and published in Science Translational Medicine, suggests that key features …
Blood test: Scientists crack code of chronic fatigue syndrome’s inflammatory underpinnings
A new study led by Stanford chronic fatigue syndrome expert Jose Montoya, MD, and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has linked …
The mouse that didn’t roar: Dormitory housing defuses hardwired male territorial aggression
Stanford neuroscientist Nirao Shah, PhD, has made a career out of focusing on behaviors (such as mating, aggression and nurturing offspring) that innately differ between …
Progress in search for vaccine providing broad immunity to scourge of developing-world infants
A vaccine is, in essence, a "virtual-reality mug shot" that spurs the immune system to (among other things) generate antibodies that gum up whatever pathogen …
Addiction policies should accord with neuroscience, Stanford researchers argue
In "Neuroscience of Need: Understanding the Addicted Mind," an article I wrote for Stanford Medicine magazine a few years ago, I tried to describe the hijacked brain …
The soul of a souped-up machine: Workhorse eye-scanning device can do virtual biopsies
A minor tweak to a major workhorse eye-scanning technology, described in a Nature Communications study, could lead to “virtual biopsies:" visualizing tissue in 3D at microscope-quality resolution, without having …
To debug your gut (and maybe your brain, too), make nice to the bugs that live inside it
Each of us is carrying about 100 trillion microbes in our gut. They're tiny and squirmy, but if you could line them all up end …
Meet the glucose-guzzling immune cells behind coronary heart disease and, it turns out, shingles
As if they didn't have enough to worry about, people with coronary artery disease -- the industrialized world's number-one killer -- are more vulnerable to …
Inside the heads of men and women: A look at sex-based cognitive differences
I first began ruminating on what would eventually become my just-published Stanford Medicine magazine article, "Two Minds: The Cognitive Differences between Men and Women," in 2013, when I attended an …
Karl Deisseroth wins 4-million-euro Fresenius Research Prize
Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, is an inquisitive neuroscientist, innovative bioengineer and practicing psychiatrist. In his push to determine which neural circuits are jamming up to …