Elizabeth Landau – Quanta Magazine https://www.quantamagazine.org Illuminating science Mon, 16 Sep 2024 14:10:47 -0400 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2 Brain’s ‘Background Noise’ May Explain Value of Shock Therapy https://www.quantamagazine.org/brains-background-noise-may-explain-value-of-shock-therapy-20240318/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/brains-background-noise-may-explain-value-of-shock-therapy-20240318/#respond Mon, 18 Mar 2024 13:52:49 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=136325 The post Brain’s ‘Background Noise’ May Explain Value of Shock Therapy first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Electroconvulsive therapy has a public relations problem. The treatment, which sends electric currents through the brain to induce a brief seizure, has barbaric, inhumane connotations — for example, it was portrayed as a sadistic punishment in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. But for patients with depression that does not improve with medications, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) can be...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/brains-background-noise-may-explain-value-of-shock-therapy-20240318/feed/ 0 Brain’s ‘Background Noise’ May Hold Clues to Persistent Mysteries https://www.quantamagazine.org/brains-background-noise-may-hold-clues-to-persistent-mysteries-20210208/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/brains-background-noise-may-hold-clues-to-persistent-mysteries-20210208/#respond Mon, 08 Feb 2021 17:23:44 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=99926 The post Brain’s ‘Background Noise’ May Hold Clues to Persistent Mysteries first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> At a sleep research symposium in January 2020, Janna Lendner presented findings that hint at a way to look at people’s brain activity for signs of the boundary between wakefulness and unconsciousness. For patients who are comatose or under anesthesia, it can be all-important that physicians make that distinction correctly. Doing so is trickier than it might sound, however, because when someone is...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/brains-background-noise-may-hold-clues-to-persistent-mysteries-20210208/feed/ 0 Mitochondria May Hold Keys to Anxiety and Mental Health https://www.quantamagazine.org/mitochondria-may-hold-keys-to-anxiety-and-mental-health-20200810/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/mitochondria-may-hold-keys-to-anxiety-and-mental-health-20200810/#respond Mon, 10 Aug 2020 14:06:47 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=90568 The post Mitochondria May Hold Keys to Anxiety and Mental Health first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Carmen Sandi recalls the skepticism she faced at first. A behavioral neuroscientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, she had followed a hunch that something going on inside critical neural circuits could explain anxious behavior, something beyond brain cells and the synaptic connections between them. The experiments she began in 2013 showed that neurons involved in anxiety...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/mitochondria-may-hold-keys-to-anxiety-and-mental-health-20200810/feed/ 0 Virginia Trimble Has Seen the Stars https://www.quantamagazine.org/virginia-trimble-has-seen-the-stars-20191111/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/virginia-trimble-has-seen-the-stars-20191111/#respond Mon, 11 Nov 2019 17:26:53 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=78213 The post Virginia Trimble Has Seen the Stars first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Beginning in 1991, Virginia Trimble read every single astronomy article published in 23 different journals. She would then write an annual “year in review” article, which astronomers everywhere used as a window into the rest of the field at large. Her characteristic dry humor came through even in the first installment: “Science, notoriously, progresses amoeba-like, thrusting out pseudopods in...

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