brain science

Kids are showing reading gains in dual-language classrooms. There may be underlying brain advantages at work.

Molecular biologist Monica Dus is studying fruit flies to understand how a high sugar diet affects the brain and leads to overeating and obesity. And she just won a big grant to dig deeper.

The smartest pigeon learned to recognize about 60 four-letter words. It's the first time an orthographic brain has been recorded in a nonprimate.

Studies suggest that smoking heavily in adolescence may affect brain function in adulthood, but there's a dearth of hard evidence for voters contemplating pot's long-term effects.

When humans talk to dogs, the canine brains seem to separate the meaning of the words from the intonation used and to analyze each aspect independently.

A test that can flag struggling readers before they're old enough to read and the power of music to help a child hear language. A literacy two-fer from the NPR Ed Team.

Brain maps constructed by MRI show that language meaning is distributed throughout the brain's outer layer. And it turns out that different people organize language in similar ways.

This week, the Hidden Brain podcast explores the science of fear — traveling to a haunted house curated by a scientist to investigate what scares us, and why some people enjoy feeling fear.

Seattle scientists have zeroed in on a part of the brain that seems to have an interesting job: motivating the brain’s owner to exercise. The findings…

Here’s a thought experiment: You’re a scientist researching a treatment for depression, and you’ve become profoundly depressed. Your work is slow and…