In the first video in our two part series on HIV and AIDS, we explain how scientists figured out what HIV is, when the infection morphs into AIDS, and where they think the virus originated.

Botox is a prescription drug best known for its cosmetic use, but its active ingredient is one of the deadliest biological substances known to mankind.

Sometimes, studying uncommon maladies can reveal larger insights into how our bodies work!<br/>
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Why does your mouth hang open and cause you to make a silly face when you use eye drops or put on mascara?

Bacteria "talk" to each other, sending chemical information to coordinate attacks. What if we could listen to what they were saying? Nanophysicist Fatima AlZahra'a Alatraktchi invented a tool to spy on bacterial chatter and translate...

Humans may not hibernate, exactly, but that doesn't necessarily mean we're totally unaffected by the changing of seasons.

Even if you like your job, it’s not unusual to feel "burnout." But the idea of what that means has evolved over time.

Scientists have figured out that some birds come with built-in alarm calls in their wings

How can we get people to do more good: to go to the polls, give to charity, conserve resources or just generally act better towards others? MIT research scientist Erez Yoeli shares a simple checklist for harnessing the power of...

Your heart beats more than 100,000 times a day. In just a minute, it pumps over five liters of blood throughout your body. But unlike skin and bones, the heart has a limited ability to repair itself. So if this organ is severely damaged,...

Is personalized medicine for individual bodies in our future? Possibly -- with the use of stem cells, undifferentiated cells with the power to become any tissue in our bodies. Craig A. Kohn describes the role of these incredible,...

Today, artificial intelligence helps doctors diagnose patients, pilots fly commercial aircraft, and city planners predict traffic. These AIs are often self-taught, working off a simple set of instructions to create a unique array of...

"A record of our emotional life is written on our hearts," says cardiologist and author Sandeep Jauhar. In a stunning talk, he explores the mysterious ways our emotions impact the health of our hearts -- causing them to change shape in...

As 18th-century science and medicine brought properties of electricity to light, some Victorian doctors decided that putting sick people in a bathtub and shocking them might be a good idea.

This week the FDA approves the first ever blood test for diagnosing concussions, and a group of scientists develop a neural network that could save you a trip to the eye doctor.

This week we are exploring biodevices and the part they play in the healthcare world. We’ll look at the challenges of implantable biodevices, like biocompatibility, power and connectivity, packaging, structural design, delivery systems,...

Remote mental health services have been around for a while, long before the pandemic. So, we've had plenty of time to study how well they work, and there are some encouraging findings.

Working in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century, he began his career as a neurologist before pioneering the discipline of psychoanalysis, and his influence towers above that of all other psychologists in the public eye. But was Sigmund...

Everyone experiences pain -- but why do some people react to the same painful stimulus in different ways? And what exactly is pain, anyway? Karen D. Davis walks you through your brain on pain, illuminating why the "pain experience"...

We need an inside-out approach to how we diagnose disease, says immuno-engineer and TED Fellow Aaron Morris. Introducing cutting-edge medical research, he unveils implantable technology that gives real-time, continuous analysis of a...

It's 1843, and a debate is raging about one of the most common killers of women: childbed fever— no one knows what causes it. One physician has observed patients with inflammation go on to develop childbed fever, and therefore believes...

Spicy food is delicious, but how does it affect our health?

Many diseases are driven by metabolites -- small molecules in your body like fat, glucose and cholesterol -- but we don't know exactly what they are or how they work. Biotech entrepreneur and TED Fellow Leila Pirhaji shares her plan to...

Brain damage is usually a bad thing, but sometimes the best option is actually to damage the brain in very specific ways.