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New research shows the musically unexpected activates the reward center of our brains, and makes us learn about the music as we listen - the first evidence that musically elicited reward prediction errors cause musical pleasure. It is also the first time an aesthetic reward such as music has been shown to create such a response.

A new study from Carnegie Mellon University suggests that greed, and not the willingness to return the favor, is the main reason people give in to bribery. But the research also finds there are times when the almighty buck can be ignored and effects of a bribe can be lessened.

What makes us human, and where does this mysterious property of “humanness” come from? Humans are genetically similar to chimpanzees and bonobos, yet there exist obvious behavioral and cognitive differences. Now, researchers have developed a strategy to more easily study the early development of human neurons compared with the neurons of nonhuman primates.

Neurons have distinct regions. There’s the cell body, home to the nucleus. Then come the axons and dendrites, the signal-carrying and signal-receiving parts of the neuron that send long, spindly arms to form connections, called synapses, with other neurons. New research suggests that parts of the neuron are far more complex than once thought.

A team of researchers set out to establish a scalable iPSC-derived neuron model to help improve autism research.

For some of us, they carry the bright blue of our grandfather's eyes. For others they result in the characteristic cleft chin or the familial tendency toward color blindness. In some families, the genetic mutations handed down from generation to generation aren't as benign. And for one family in particular, the mutation results in early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

Before the age of GPS, humans had to orient themselves without on-screen arrows, but instead by memorizing landmarks and using learned relationships among time, speed and distance. A new Johns Hopkins study found that rats’ ability to recalibrate these learned relationships is ever-evolving, moment-by-moment.

A new study shows that the pathology of fragile x syndrome, the leading cause of inherited intellectual disability, may be linked to dysfunction in mitochondria inside developing neurons.

A team of investigators from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Regenerative Medicine has identified a population of brain cells that appears to play a role in calibrating behavioral responses to potentially threatening situations.

Neutrophils that adhere to brain capillaries are responsible for the reduction of cerebral blood flow in mouse models of Alzheimer's disease. The finding may provide a strategy for improving cognition in people with Alzheimer's disease.