Tag Archives: Biology

10Mar/23

Why does music bring back memories? What the science says

Kelly Jakubowski, Durham University

You’re walking down a busy street on your way to work. You pass a busker playing a song you haven’t heard in years. Now suddenly, instead of noticing all the goings on in the city around you, you’re mentally reliving the first time you heard the song. Hearing that piece of music takes you right back to where you were, who you were with and the feelings associated with that memory.

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17Oct/22

Alzheimer’s disease: surprising new theory about what might cause it

Andrea Sturchio, Karolinska Institutet; Kariem Ezzat, Karolinska Institutet, and Samir EL Andaloussi, Karolinska Institutet

In 1906, Alois Alzheimer, a psychiatrist and neuroanatomist, reported “a peculiar severe disease process of the cerebral cortex” to a gathering of psychiatrists in Tübingen, Germany. The case was a 50-year-old woman who suffered from memory loss, delusions, hallucinations, aggression and confusion – all of which worsened until her untimely death five years later.

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04Oct/22

Nobel prize: Svante Pääbo’s ancient DNA discoveries offer clues as to what makes us human

Love Dalén, Stockholm University and Anders Götherström, Stockholm University

The Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for 2022 has been awarded to Svante Pääbo from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, “for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution”.

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24Jun/22

Evolutionary tree of life: modern science is showing how we got so much wrong

Matthew Wills, University of Bath

If you look different to your close relatives, you may have felt separate from your family. As a child, during particularly stormy fall outs you might have even hoped it was a sign that you were adopted.

As our new research shows, appearances can be deceptive when it comes to family. New DNA technology is shaking up the family trees of many plants and animals.

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