Health headlines are published every day, sometimes making opposite claims from each other. There can be a disconnect between broad, attention-grabbing headlines and the often specific, incremental results of the medical research they...

Through treating everything from strokes to car accident traumas, neurosurgeon Jocelyne Bloch knows the brain's inability to repair itself all too well. But now, she suggests, she and her colleagues may have found the key to neural...

To address the problem of counterfeit goods, African entrepreneurs like Bright Simons have come up with innovative and effective ways to confirm products are genuine. Now he asks: Why aren't these solutions everywhere? From...

Explore the theories of human consciousness and the science of how your brain works to create a conscious experience. -- Patient P.S. suffered a stroke that damaged the right side of her brain, leaving her unaware of everything on her...

Pawan Sinha details his groundbreaking research into how the brain's visual system develops. Sinha and his team provide free vision-restoring treatment to children born blind, and then study how their brains learn to interpret visual...

Modern medicine is in danger of losing a powerful, old-fashioned tool: human touch. Physician and writer Abraham Verghese describes our strange new world where patients are merely data points, and calls for a return to the traditional...

In a war, it turns out that violence isn't the biggest killer of civilians. What is? Illness, hunger, poverty -- because war destroys the institutions that keep society running, like utilities, banks, food systems and hospitals....

Learn about the latest advances in the war against cancer from Stanford researcher Adam de la Zerda, who's working on some cutting-edge techniques of his own. using a remarkable imaging technology that illuminates cancer-seeking gold...

You might have heard that one year in a dog’s life is equivalent to seven in a human’s. But it turns out that the real ratio is both higher AND lower—depending on your dog’s current age.

Cancer is a very clever, adaptable disease. To defeat it, says medical researcher and educator Paula Hammond, we need a new and powerful mode of attack. With her colleagues at MIT, Hammond engineered a nanoparticle one-hundredth the size...

Since the widespread use of antibiotics began in the 1940s, we've tried to develop new drugs faster than bacteria can evolve -- but this strategy isn't working. Drug-resistant bacteria known as superbugs killed nearly 700,000 people last...

From MMR boosters to tetanus, you'll probably get a lot of shots in your life. And one thing you might notice is that some of them don't feel like much, but some of them can make your arm reallllly sore! Why is that?

There's a vaccine being developed now that would protect you against every strain of the flu— even ones that don't exist yet. But influenza is constantly mutating, so is a universal vaccine even possible? And how do you design a vaccine...

Mosquitos have been dangerous for, well... forever. So what's new about Zika?

In 1984, Dr. Barry Marshall had a theory about ulcers that he couldn't convince the science community of. So, he took matters into his own hands... or stomach, and infected himself with a potentially deadly bacterium.

Masks do wonders to stop the spread of infection and inhalation of harmful particles, and some new technology can make them both more effective and easier to clean.

How do vaccines prevent disease -- even among people too young to get vaccinated? It's a concept called "herd immunity," and it relies on a critical mass of people getting their shots to break the chain of infection. Health researcher...

Neuroscientist and inventor Christopher deCharms demonstrates a new way to use fMRI to show brain activity -- thoughts, emotions, pain -- while it is happening. In other words, you can actually see how you feel.

Vaccine-autism claims, "Frankenfood" bans, the herbal cure craze: All point to the public's growing fear (and, often, outright denial) of science and reason, says Michael Specter. He warns the trend spells disaster for human progress.

The medical industry has developed countless methods and tools for diagnosing the myriad of illnesses that can befall us. This, as you might guess, includes cancer. But it took a research team five months to diagnose this specific cancer...

Our bodies get Vitamin D from the sun, but as dermatologist Richard Weller suggests, sunlight may confer another surprising benefit too. New research by his team shows that nitric oxide, a chemical transmitter stored in huge reserves in...

In a dark cave, bats can't see much. But even with their eyes shut, they can navigate rocky topography at incredible speeds. This is because bats aren't just guided by their eyes, but rather, by their ears. It may seem impossible to see...

The cells in your body are like computer software: they're "programmed" to carry out specific functions at specific times. If we can better understand this process, we could unlock the ability to reprogram cells ourselves, says...

A complete microbiome lives inside us, and believe it or not, that's a good thing.