Prion diseases are a group of severe conditions that affect the nervous system of many animals, including humans. Although their causes were highly controversial, there is a widespread agreement nowadays that they are originated and transmitted by prions, infectious agents with a normal and an abnormal structure. The abnormal prion protein infects the host animal […]
Stammering, stuttering or alalia literalis is a speech disorder characterized by involuntary repetition and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words or phrases and involuntary silent pauses or blocks where the affected person is unable to produce sounds. Around 1-in-20 children aged 2 to 5 years old will stammer at some moment, but most grow out of […]
Neurogenesis is the process by which neurons are generated from neural stem cells and progenitor cells. It is a crucial part of neural development and is most active during pre-natal life, being responsible for populating the growing brain with neurons. Zika virus is an emerging mosquito-borne and sexually-transmitted flavivirus that was first identified in Uganda […]
He was a man of insatiable curiosity and a hallmark of modern multidisciplinarity. Yet he was born on an April day six centuries ago. He never attended university, and still he authored masterpieces in the history of art and cultivated a broad range of interests and skills. Distant domains such as painting, sculpture, technology and […]
The blood-brain barrier is one of the defenses of the central nervous system. It is made of a thin layer of endothelial cells closely fitted together by tight junctions, being a mandatory pass between the blood and the neural cells. Thus, this barrier, considered the last great biochemical barricade in the organism, separates the blood […]
New York, Madrid, London, Susa, Dikwa, Kuwait, Paris, Ankara, among many others…, and now Brussels. A disturbingly long list of cities that have suffered the appalling hit of terrorist attacks in recent years. And while passing over the shock, we can hardly avoid asking ourselves about what are the causes of such destructive behaviours. Beyond […]
Suicide is one of the worst health and social problems in the modern world. Hundreds of millions of persons experience suicidal thoughts every year and between 10 and 20 millions went on to attempt suicide. In Spain, although the average risk is lower than in Northern countries, almost 4.000 persons die every year by their […]
Chimera was a monster from the Greek mythology, a hybrid creature usually depicted as a lion, with the head of a goat arising from its back and a tail ending in a snake. In biology, the term «chimera» is used for a single organism with genetically distinct cells from two different zygotes, also a hybrid […]
More than a hundred years have passed since the German physicist Alois Alzheimer associated the traits of dementia of one of her patients with morphological changes in her brain after her death. While we know a great deal about what today is known as Alzheimer’s disease, we still need to answer two fundamental questions: what […]
We got it wrong. Media have outlined a rosy picture of Oxytocin as the “love hormone” that floods our brain when we interact with toddlers, puppies and beloved ones. However, scientific evidence portrays a dark side of Oxytocin, which better matches the ambivalences of human nature. In addition, Oxytocin has a long time ignored sibling […]