Knight Initiative News

What the science of visual illusions can teach us about our polarized world.

Jamil Zaki

For 25 days, protesters around the world have marched to demand racial justice, sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of police. Anti-black violence is not new, nor are protests against it, but this time the movement caught fire.

There may be an unintended effect, mental health and communications experts warn: "Zoom fatigue," or the feeling of tiredness, anxiousness or worry with yet another video call.

The World Health Organization and other health experts would prefer if we stopped calling the practice "social distancing."

Massaging key parts of the brain with a pulsating magnetic field can do wonders for some living with chronic depression. For others, it falls well short of promising a life without a debilitating mood disorder.

The curious ability of the African turquoise killifish to press pause on its development could have intriguing implications for human ageing, say researchers.

People with epilepsy are contributing in surprising ways to research into the brain

NIH-funded research used machine learning algorithm to predict individual treatment response.

Making changes to the molecular messengers that create proteins might offer flexible therapies for cancer, pain or high cholesterol, in addition to genetic disorders.

The online world can be isolating — and it can even contribute to rage, depression and extremism. But technology and the web can also be used to foster community, understanding and even spirituality.

From a painful pinch to a soft caress, scientists are zooming in on the pressure-sensitive proteins that allow cells to detect tension and pressure.

As long as it took you to read that headline. Or shorter. Or it might not exist at all.

Exercise, including Qigong and Tai Chi, can produce impressive results.

A pair of advances in brain imaging technology will help neuroscientists track electrical activity in neurons with a new level of clarity.

What’s really behind the sleepiness after a hearty Thanksgiving meal.

When drugs fail, another option is deep brain stimulation, or DBS, where electrodes are placed in a specific brain region that helps control muscle activity.

We humans spend a third of our lives asleep, oblivious to our surroundings and temporarily paralyzed.

In 2014, U.S. regulators approved a futuristic treatment for blindness. The device, called Argus II, sends signals from a glasses-mounted camera to a roughly 3-by-5-millimeter grid of electrodes at the back of eye.

Advances in precision molecular imaging promise to transform our ability to detect, diagnose and treat disease.

Addiction specialist Sally Marlow examines the science behind addiction to find out why so many people in Britain are hooked on drugs and alcohol.