Smell checks could help to
monitor the pandemic
Don´t wrinkle your nose at simple subjective tests.
Smell checks are the first indicators to show the effectiveness of restrictive measures.
How to retrain your sense of smell
COVID-19 takes a toll on our senses
Six out of ten people infected with Sars-CoV-2 lose their sense of smell. This loss often lasts for weeks to months. Sometimes it lasts forever. Smell training can help.
Tapping into the hidden reservoir of the brain
A women´s quest for renewable nerve cells
Magdalena Götz made a discovery that many of her colleagues found hard to accept. Time has proven her right, and now Götz plans to develop a therapy to replace lost brain cells.
„It’s important to think differently from others“
How Edvard Moser found the grid cells
Researchers have penetrated deep into the brain, and have found an orientation system there. Nobel Prize laureate Edvard Moser talks about the discovery of the grid cells.
“Neuroscience has been stuck”
Sebastian Seungs quest for the connectome
Alzheimer, autism, schizophrenia – the public expects neuroscience to explain these diseases. But brain researchers don´t even understand how neurons in a fly´s brain are activated by a moving stimulus. Sebastian Seung advocates a way out: connectomics.
The brain on sound
Jamie Tyler uses ultrasound to understand the brain
A new non-invasive technique to map and modulate the brain is gaining momentum: low frequency ultrasound. It works surprisingly well on bullfrogs, rats, and rabbits. What about humans?> more
The other in ourselves
Empathy: why do we feel for others?
Empathy has long been a riddle to philosophers. Now neuroscientists and psychologists search for an answer. They carry out sophisticated experiments that show how and why we empathise – or why we don’t.
Everybody is unequal
Health inequality: why the poor die earlier
The poor die ten years earlier than the rich. Social status is one of the strongest determinants of health quality – this is universally true. Public health researchers take a look at how inequality is leading to bad health, and what we could do about it.
A reform threatens psychiatric care
How to compensate psychiatric care?
Germany implements a new payment system for in-patient psychiatric care that psychiatrists fear will be detrimental to severely ill patients. > more
The Biology of Suicide
Why do people kill themselves?
“Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time.” So begins Virginia Woolf’s last note to her husband. A short time later she filled her overcoat pockets with stones and waded into the Ouse River near her house in Southern England.> more
