Stories by Gary Stix

Moths and other insects aren’t drawn to nighttime illumination for the reasons we think they are

This year the explosion of interest in AI had a profound impact on how experts in the fields of neuroscience and psychology think about biological intelligence and learning

A new technology called AntiFake prevents the theft of the sound of your voice by making it more difficult for AI tools to analyze vocal recordings

Early research presented at the leading brain conference suggests that the pandemic changed the brains of teenagers

A sleep researcher who studies what dreams can tell us about the possible onset of some mental disorders believes lucid dreamers might hold a lot of answers in their head.

A huge Danish study shows that up to 30 percent of psychosis diagnoses in young men could have been prevented if these individuals hadn’t used marijuana heavily

Venture capitalists and start-ups don’t mind losing money, but dealing with a bank run is a whole different story

What a patient and family members can expect from the recently approved drug lecanemab—and what more is needed to help stop Alzheimer’s dementia

Neural circuits that label experiences as “good” or “bad” and the emotional meaninglessness of facial expressions are some standouts among 2022’s mind and brain breakthroughs

Diminished risk-taking behaviors and other benefits may explain why many people with bipolar disorder keep consuming cannabis despite some dire downsides

The freaky physics phenomenon of quantum tunneling may mutate genes

Teaching simple basics in school about masks, handwashing and ethics can stave off misconceptions in adulthood

Canceling Roe means that other parents with high-risk pregnancies will not have the options that we had

SARS-CoV-2 appears to travel widely across the cerebral cortex

Our physical safety perimeters have widened, a study suggests

In hindsight, 2020 witnessed a disproportionate mental health burden on women and young people

Symptoms subsided for one woman after a carefully targeted neural circuit was stimulated

Recent findings have implications for the design of prostheses. Care for a third thumb, anyone?

Persistent rumination may be an attribute that lets us think our way out of despair—a process enhanced through talk therapy

This winter the novel coronavirus may kill more people than heart disease, cancer, stroke, Alzheimer’s or diabetes

It has been a tough year, but science still brought us some weird, cool and quirky findings

I’m not certain the antibodies it contains are any more therapeutic than Trump’s favorite unproven drug, hydroxychloroquine

It kills more people than the flu, contrary to Trump’s claims, and also surpasses stroke, Alzheimer’s and diabetes

Artificial intelligence still needs to bridge the “sim-to-real” gap. Deep-learning techniques that are all the rage in AI log superlative performances in mastering cerebral games, including chess and Go, both of which can be played on a computer. But translating simulations to the physical world remains a bigger challenge.

A robot named Curly that uses “deep reinforcement learning”—making improvements as it corrects its own errors—came out on top in three of four games against top-ranked human opponents from South Korean teams thatincluded a women’s team and a reserve squad for the national wheelchair team. (No brooms were used).

One crucial finding was that the AI system demonstrated its ability to adapt to changing ice conditions. “These results indicate that the gap between physics-based simulators and the real world can be narrowed,” the joint South Korean-German research team wrote in Science Robotics on September 23.