A groundbreaking new study from NYU Langone Health has illuminated the complex ways in which the brain manages to store multiple memories without blending or erasing vital pieces of past information. This discovery centers on an intriguing subset of neurons within the hippocampus, an area known for its role in memory formation. Researchers found that approximately 25% of these hippocampal CA1 neurons act as hubs that facilitate the seamless transmission of information from one region of the brain to another, effectively functioning like a biological switchboard managing countless memory signals.

For decades, neuroscientists have grappled with the paradox of how the brain maintains a delicate balance between adaptability and stability—retaining established memories while accommodating new information. This study provides fresh insights into this dilemma by exploring the neural interplay along pathways between the hippocampus and the neocortex. Specifically, the focus was on the CA3 and CA1 regions of the hippocampus and their communication with the retrosplenial cortex, a crucial site involved in navigation and spatial memory recall.

The CA3 region is known to send rapid and fluid streams of information, and, remarkably, the research demonstrated that most of these incoming signals converge on a small cohort of CA1 neurons. These same neurons then process and relay information to the retrosplenial cortex, but in a distinctly different firing pattern, which creates an independent outgoing communication channel. This dual functionality allows the neurons to multiplex incoming and outgoing signals without blending them, preserving the clarity of each memory trace.

This complex system can be likened to an advanced electronic switchboard that directs multiple phone calls without their lines crossing, ensuring that new experiences are integrated into the brain’s map without disrupting existing knowledge. The retrosplenial cortex benefits from this arrangement by maintaining a stable representation of the environment—essential for spatial navigation—while the hippocampal regions continue adapting and learning from the ongoing stream of experiences.

Dr. Joaquín Gonzalez, a postdoctoral fellow and co-lead author of the study, emphasized the significance of this firing pattern adjustment: “Instead of recruiting new neurons for every novel experience, the brain modifies the firing patterns of a stable cellular core, thereby organiz-ing information effectively and safeguarding previously encoded memories.” This mechanism highlights the brain’s remarkable ability to adapt dynamically while retaining long-term memory integrity.

Interestingly, the study also uncovered that these pivotal CA1 neurons are not confined to processing information during active waking hours—they remain engaged during sleep, participating in sharp-wave ripple events that are critical for memory consolidation. This nocturnal activity is believed to involve the replay and reinforcement of memory traces, further stabilizing learning while the brain rests.

The persistence of activity in these core neurons during sleep suggests a continuous information relay between the hippocampus and cortex, facilitating the integration of memories into long-term storage. By employing the same neural architecture for both daytime encoding and nighttime replay, the brain ensures that its memory network remains both flexible and coherent.

Dr. Mihály Vöröslakos, another postdoctoral researcher on the team, highlighted the methodological breakthrough that made this discovery possible: “Our ability to simultaneously record hundreds of individual neurons across multiple connected brain regions in freely moving mice was instrumental. This approach revealed the nuanced patterns of communication that traditional recording methods could not detect.”

Moreover, the study’s findings carry potential implications beyond basic neuroscience. The analogy between neural switchboards and artificial intelligence systems underlines a key challenge in AI—catastrophic forgetting—where machines lose previously learned information upon training on new tasks. By understanding how the mammalian brain protects old memories while learning new ones, scientists hope to inspire the development of next-generation AI technologies that can continuously learn without forgetting.

Dr. György Buzsáki, co-senior author and a renowned neuroscience expert, suggested that this research might shed light on neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, where memory circuits deteriorate. “Our discovery of a ‘memory switchboard’ within the hippocampus could provide vital clues about the early mechanisms of memory failure in such diseases,” Dr. Buzsáki remarked.

The experiment involved training six mice to traverse a linear track rewarded at both ends with water. As the animals moved, high-density electrode arrays captured the simultaneous neural activity across hippocampal and cortical regions, while behavioral tracking allowed researchers to correlate precise brain signals with physical navigation and exploration.

Further analysis during sleep revealed that while the original patterns of activity were replayed, they mutat-ed dynamically within and between the hippocampus and neocortex, underscoring a sophisticated neural choreography that supports memory consolidation and flexibility concurrently.

Despite the advances, the authors caution that extrapolation to human brain function requires further research. The controlled environment of the study and differences between species mean that confirming the presence of similar switchboard mechanisms in humans remains an open question.

As they look to the future, the research team plans to explore whether comparable subspace communication channels exist in other areas of the brain responsible for diverse types of memory processing. Such investigations could lead to a more comprehensive neural map of memory architecture, with profound impact for both neuroscience and artificial intelligence.

This research was supported by several grants from the National Institutes of Health, highlighting the critical role of federal funding in fostering cutting-edge brain science. The collaborative effort included leading neuroscientists and scholars from NYU Langone Health and NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

By unlocking new dimensions of how individual neurons coordinate complex memory signals, this study offers unprecedented insights into one of biology’s most enduring mysteries—how the brain manages to be both ever-changing and enduring, preserving the richness of past experience while embracing the potential of new learning.

Subject of Research: Animals
Article Title: Subspace communication in the hippocampal–retrosplenial axis
News Publication Date: 13-May-2026
Web References: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10481-z
References: Nature, May 13, 2026; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10481-z

Keywords

Memory, Long term memory, Memory formation, Memory processes, Spatial memory, Sleep, Hippocampal neurons, CA1 cells, CA3 cells, Hippocampus, Hippocampal circuits, Artificial intelligence

The question of whether artificial intelligence can be conscious has moved well beyond science fiction. It now sits at the center of scientific debate and is increasingly shaping discussions about a range of contentious issues, from AI ethics to animal welfare, fetal development, and laboratory-grown brain tissue.

However, according to a new analysis published in Neuron, the science used to answer that question may not actually be measuring what researchers think it is. A research team led by Hakwan Lau at the Institute for Basic Science in South Korea, with collaborators from the Université de Montréal and New York University, argues that many common experimental methods in consciousness research do not separate subjective experience from general information processing.

In the paper, The Ethical Impasse of Current Consciousness Science, the researchers argue that current scientific tools may not be capable of reliably detecting consciousness.

The Measurement Problem

Consciousness research relies heavily on methods such as visual masking, binocular rivalry, and the detection of perceptual limits. These methods usually compare brain responses when a person is aware of something versus when they are not. The idea is that the difference between these two cases shows whether conscious experience is present or not.

Lau and his team challenge this assumption. When experiments make a stimulus invisible, they often reduce both conscious awareness and the brain’s ability to process information about that stimulus. This means that what appears to be a marker of consciousness in the brain may actually reflect general cognitive activity.

“Many current theories of consciousness appear to be supported by a range of experimental findings,” Lau said. “But those findings may actually reflect general information processing rather than consciousness itself — so it remains difficult to conclude that these theories truly explain consciousness.”

A Historical Warning

The authors compare the current situation to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when strong claims about consciousness led to a crisis in psychology. The resulting backlash led to the rise of behaviorism, which focused only on observable behavior and halted consciousness research for many years.

Researchers caution that a similar situation could occur again. As AI systems become more advanced and public interest in machine consciousness increases, scientists are under pressure to provide answers. If researchers make strong claims about consciousness in AI, organoids, or fetuses that lack robust methods to support them, scientific credibility could be undermined.

Better Science Required

The authors suggest a different approach. Conditions like blindsight, in which people with brain damage can respond to stimuli they do not report seeing, offer a more controlled way to study consciousness. Another example is hemispatial neglect, where patients fail to notice one side of their visual field while still having basic perception. For researchers, these conditions provide a rare opportunity to separate awareness from information processing and investigate each process on its own.

These conditions show that subjective experience and information processing are distinct from one another. The team says that building experiments around this difference is needed to make reliable scientific claims about consciousness.

The implications of this study extend far beyond the academic world. Deciding whether non-human entities are conscious has direct legal and ethical concerns. The researchers say that the science behind these decisions must meet high standards.

“Questions about consciousness increasingly carry ethical and societal implications,” Lau said. “If scientific claims about consciousness are going to influence discussions about animal welfare, AI ethics, or bioethics, then the scientific foundations supporting those claims must be especially rigorous.”

The researchers conclude that the most urgent challenge is not deciding whether AI, animals, or organoids are conscious, but developing better tools to identify consciousness if it emerges.

Austin Burgess is a writer and researcher with a background in sales, marketing, and data analytics. He holds an MBA, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, and a data analytics certification. His work focuses on breaking scientific developments, with an emphasis on emerging biology, cognitive neuroscience, and archaeological discoveries.

In a groundbreaking study emerging from Stockholm University, researchers have unveiled compelling evidence that the nature of social interaction plays a critical role in brain development in young guppies. The investigation, recently published in the prestigious journal Biology Letters, reveals that guppies raised with the ability to engage in live, reciprocal social exchanges develop significantly larger and more complex brains compared to their counterparts exposed only to passive visual stimuli, such as video images of other fish or minimal social contact. These findings not only deepen our understanding of neural plasticity in vertebrates but also raise profound questions about the impact of digital and passive screen-based social exposure on the developing brains of higher organisms, including humans.

The researchers designed an experimental setup that meticulously controlled the social environment of juvenile guppies over a 20-day developmental window. The three distinct groups comprised fish that interacted in real time with live conspecifics, fish that were exposed only to video recordings of other fish—thus lacking any actual reciprocal interaction—and fish with severely limited social contact. Through this careful stratification, the study sought to disentangle the effects of passive social observation from active social engagement on neural architecture.

Remarkably, guppies participating in live social exchanges demonstrated brains nearly six percent larger than those merely exposed to screens displaying other fish. Particularly notable was the enlargement of the olfactory bulbs, crucial neural regions associated with processing social olfactory cues, which suggests that real-time interaction enhances not only general brain growth but also the development of areas pivotal for complex social processing. In contrast, guppies restricted to video exposure exhibited brain sizes akin to socially deprived counterparts, underscoring that passive visual stimuli alone are insufficient to foster typical neural maturation.

The implications of these results resonate far beyond ichthyology. By employing guppies—a species whose brains continue to grow and adapt throughout life—the study leverages an exemplary vertebrate model to rigorously probe the causative links between social experience and brain plasticity. This methodological rigor circumvents the ethical and experimental limitations of human research, allowing precise manipulation of social environments unfeasible in clinical or epidemiological studies on child development.

Senior author Professor Niclas Kolm emphasizes that while the neurodevelopmental dynamics of fish and humans diverge considerably, the fundamental biological principle that brain development is sensitive to quality and mode of social interaction appears deeply conserved across vertebrates. This conservation implies that insights from guppies may shed light on the nuanced ways that social deprivation or altered social stimuli, such as those presented through screens, might influence neural trajectories in human children.

Interestingly, despite clear differences in brain morphology, the study reports no detectable variation in cognitive performance among the groups when subjected to object permanence tasks—an assessment of the ability to track objects through temporary occlusion. This finding suggests that not all cognitive domains or neural functions are equally susceptible to social modulation during early life stages, highlighting the complexity of disentangling which aspects of brain development are most vulnerable to environmental influences.

Lead author Olivia Carmstedt stresses that these results should not be misconstrued as a blanket indictment of screen time usage. Instead, they accentuate the irreplaceable role of interactive social experiences in normal neurodevelopment. Unlike passive observation, real-time engagement involves reciprocal feedback mechanisms, sensory integration, and dynamic neural stimulation, all crucial for shaping the synaptic connectivity underpinning cognitive and social capabilities.

The study also arrived amid burgeoning public discourse about the effects of burgeoning screen use in early childhood, a phenomenon marked by extensive exposure to video and digital media often lacking interactive features. Current human studies indicate associative, though not causative, links between media consumption and brain development metrics. By isolating and experimentally manipulating social interactivity, the guppy model offers an innovative approach to dissecting these relationships with unprecedented precision.

Technically, the methods employed included volumetric brain analyses using advanced imaging techniques to quantify differential growth patterns across treatment groups. Specialized interest was directed toward the olfactory bulbs due to their integral function in fish social communication, mediated through chemical signaling—a modality analogously significant in mammalian social interactions. The study’s rigorous experimental design enhances its validity, controlling for confounding variables and permitting robust conclusions about causality.

Beyond the immediate results, this research prompts urgent inquiries into how evolving social environments and technology-mediated interactions may impact brain development trajectories in a range of species. It beckons neurobiologists, psychologists, and educators to rethink the qualitative aspects of social exposure critical for nurturing cognitive and emotional well-being, especially in developmental stages characterized by rapid neuroplasticity.

In conclusion, this pioneering study illustrates with remarkable clarity that social interaction is a dynamic, reciprocal, and biologically essential catalyst for brain development. By demonstrating that live social contact promotes substantial neuroanatomical growth beyond what passive screen exposure can achieve, it underscores the evolutionary importance of interactive social experiences and offers a crucial foundational model for interpreting analogous processes in humans.

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Subject of Research: Animals
Article Title: Streaming for fish? Screen-based social exposure disrupts brain development
News Publication Date: 3-Jun-2026
Web References: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2025.0830
References: Carmstedt, O., Kolm, N. (2026). Streaming for fish? Screen-based social exposure disrupts brain development. Biology Letters. DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2025.0830
Image Credits: Arezo Shamsgovara
Keywords: brain development, social interaction, guppies, neural plasticity, screen exposure, neuroanatomy, vertebrate biology, olfactory bulb, cognitive development, digital media, reciprocal interaction, developmental neurobiology

In a groundbreaking study published this June in Experimental & Molecular Medicine, researchers have unveiled pivotal insights into the hitherto elusive process by which iron traverses the abluminal membrane of the blood–brain barrier (BBB). This discovery not only deepens our molecular understanding of nutrient transport within the brain’s tightly regulated environment but also paves the way for innovative therapeutic approaches targeting neurodegenerative diseases linked to iron dysregulation. The blood–brain barrier, a highly selective and dynamic interface, controls the passage of essential molecules, with iron transport posing one of the most intricate biological challenges.

Iron, although vital for numerous cellular processes including oxygen transport, DNA synthesis, and energy metabolism, is a double-edged sword due to its potential to catalyze the formation of deleterious reactive oxygen species. Within the central nervous system (CNS), precise control of iron ingress is critical to both neuronal health and function. This new study elucidates how iron crosses the abluminal—or brain-facing—side of the endothelial cells lining the BBB, a process that had remained largely speculative until now.

Central to the findings is the identification of specialized molecular machineries that mediate the release of iron from endothelial cells into the brain’s extracellular milieu. The researchers demonstrate that beyond the well-characterized transferrin receptor (TfR) system facilitating iron uptake from the bloodstream, a complex network of iron exporters and chaperones on the abluminal membrane orchestrates iron efflux into the brain parenchyma. This multidimensional transport system integrates both canonical and noncanonical pathways, underscoring the sophisticated regulatory environment governing cerebral iron homeostasis.

At the molecular level, the study highlights ferroportin (FPN) as the primary iron exporter at the abluminal membrane, functioning in concert with hephaestin, a ferroxidase enzyme that converts ferrous iron (Fe2+) to its ferric form (Fe3+), thereby facilitating its safe release. Notably, the research uncovers previously unappreciated regulatory interactions between ferroportin and intracellular iron chaperones, such as poly rC-binding proteins (PCBPs), which escort iron within the endothelial cytoplasm, protecting it from catalyzing harmful oxidative reactions before export.

Additionally, researchers unravel the nuanced regulation of these iron transporters by systemic and local factors. Hepcidin, a liver-derived peptide hormone well-known as a master regulator of systemic iron balance, is shown to effectively modulate ferroportin activity at the BBB, leading to retention or release of iron depending on physiological demands. Intriguingly, this modulation occurs in a brain-region-specific manner, suggesting an adaptive mechanism tailored to distinct neuronal metabolic requirements.

The implications of this discovery resonate profoundly with pathologies such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders where iron mismanagement contributes to oxidative damage and neuronal death. The ability to delineate and potentially manipulate the molecular actors that govern iron’s journey across the BBB opens new frontiers for therapeutic intervention. Targeting ferroportin and its regulatory partners could serve as a viable strategy to restore iron equilibrium in diseased states.

Methodologically, the study employs a sophisticated blend of in vivo imaging, advanced molecular biology techniques, and high-resolution microscopy to visualize and quantify iron transport dynamics in real time. This multipronged approach enables an unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution of iron flux at the cellular and subcellular levels within the BBB’s microenvironment. Cutting-edge CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing also played a crucial role in selectively knocking down transporter genes, shedding light on their individual contributions to the iron egress cascade.

Beyond its immediate biomedical relevance, the study spotlights the blood–brain barrier as a site of remarkable functional complexity and adaptability. The elucidation of iron trafficking underscores the multifaceted roles endothelial cells perform, not just as passive barriers but as active regulators of brain homeostasis. This challenges traditional paradigms and prompts a reevaluation of transporter networks in other nutrient contexts.

Further research avenues are already emerging from these findings. Investigating how pathological states alter the expression and function of these iron transporters may reveal biomarkers for early diagnosis of neurodegeneration. Moreover, pharmacological modulation of ferroportin and associated proteins offers a tantalizing prospect for mitigating iron-associated oxidative stress without disrupting systemic iron homeostasis.

Collaborative efforts integrating computational modeling with molecular neurobiology will likely accelerate translation of this newfound knowledge into clinical applications. Predictive models simulating iron kinetics through the BBB can identify optimal intervention points, while medicinal chemistry endeavors aim to design small molecules that fine-tune transporter activity.

Ethical and safety considerations will be paramount as future research explores therapeutic manipulation of the BBB iron transport machinery. Given the delicate balance required to maintain cerebral iron levels, unintended consequences of disrupting this equilibrium must be carefully assessed through rigorous preclinical and clinical trials.

Ultimately, this seminal study represents a landmark advance in neuroscience and vascular biology, shedding light on one of the most fundamental physiological processes underpinning brain health. By unlocking the secrets of iron’s passage across the abluminal membrane of the blood–brain barrier, researchers are charting a course toward novel treatments that may alleviate the burden of devastating neurological diseases worldwide.

Such strides underscore the ever-expanding frontiers of science whereby intricate cellular phenomena are dissected, understood, and harnessed to enhance human well-being. As this research ripples through the scientific community, it promises not only to deepen our grasp of brain physiology but also to kindle hope for millions affected by iron-related neuropathologies.

This stunning revelation exemplifies the power of interdisciplinary research — uniting vascular biology, molecular neuroscience, and clinical science — and heralds a new era in brain barrier biology, where the mechanisms of nutrient transport are no longer shrouded in mystery but laid bare with clarity and precision.

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Subject of Research: Iron transport mechanisms across the abluminal membrane of the blood–brain barrier

Article Title: How does iron cross the abluminal membrane of the blood–brain barrier

Article References:
Guo, Q., Wang, T., Qian, ZM. et al. How does iron cross the abluminal membrane of the blood–brain barrier. Exp Mol Med (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s12276-026-01734-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1038/s12276-026-01734-y

Brain scans suggest long COVID’s biggest clues may lie in the brain’s emotion centers, not widespread inflammation. A new brain imaging study suggests that persistent symptoms of long COVID may not be driven by ongoing brain inflammation, as many researchers have suspected. Scientists in Finland used advanced imaging techniques to examine the brains of people [...]

Some effects can be traced to chemical signals inside appetite neurons.

Engaging the fine motor system to produce letters by hand has positive effects on learning and memory

© FG Trade/Getty Images

A long-awaited study of people with ME/CFS revealed differences in their immune and nervous system. The findings may offer clues about long COVID

© Jorm Sangsorn/Getty Images

Virtual-reality could assist researchers in decoding how emotions spur a decision to commit a crime

© Maskot/Getty Images

A medical startup says it is using disembodied human brains in new drug development research targeting neurodegenerative diseases, a practice that may draw unsettling comparisons to the science fiction trope of a living brain in a jar. 

The brains of deceased donors are reportedly being used in the work by Bexorg, a Connecticut-based medical startup, building on successful attempts to restore limited function in pig brains.

A system dubbed BrainEx, a targeted life-support system for brains, is at the core of Bexorg’s work, restoring metabolic functions in donated organs and enabling extremely invasive research, albeit in a manner that has raised some ethical concerns.

Investigating the Human Brain

In their new process, Bexorg supplies recently deceased human brains with a blood substitute and other fluids that fuel metabolic processes, while anesthesia deadens their electrical activity. The artificially life-sustaining liquids, data, and drugs flow through four ports sutured into each brain, while apparatus mimicking the lungs and kidneys inject oxygen and remove waste. 

Bexborg says that the lack of neural firing in the brain, induced by the anesthetic drug propofol, means they do not experience consciousness. In a strange twilight state, the brain operates as though it were alive, allowing researchers to observe how it metabolizes experimental drugs, yet without the electrical activity that forms consciousness.

The shelf life of these brains is rather short; after only 24 hours, the researchers cut them into hundreds of pieces for a more detailed study. These investigations are targeting how ailments such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis may respond to new treatments, allowing detailed information on duration, targeting, and potential side effects.

According to Bexborg, the greatest advantage of their work is in the deep complexities of how the human brain develops over decades. The real-world effects of genetics, environmental exposures, and drug histories are difficult to capture in simulated computer models, petri dish cells, or whole-animal brains.

Bexborg Grows

While their work has only recently come to public attention, Bexborg has been working in this space for five years now. They say early results show a close match between the responses displayed by preserved examples and those of living brains.

So far, only the company’s work with pig brains has been published, with their first human brain paper forthcoming. However, according to Bexborg, recent efforts to curb animal testing may potentially be a boon to the company, offering what they see as an ethical alternative.

As part of Bexborg’s upscaling, the company says it is developing new laboratory space where a robotic arm will automatically dissect more than 1,600 preserved brains per year.

Their public relations arm was working at full steam on a public presentation this week, aimed at assuaging those who feared that the brains might still possess some form of consciousness. Bexborg did not respond to inquiries from The Debrief about exactly where the brains used in the company’s research originate. However, the company has claimed that family members are informed about how the brains will be used.

Bringing Bexborg Results to Market

The first real-world application of Bexborg’s work is coming to fruition as their collaborator, Biohaven, begins clinical trials of a drug developed using Bexborg data. Bexborg claims that their work will enable safer clinical trials, as the results will be much closer to a treatment’s effect on actual human brains than those from animal testing or simulated models.

Biohaven praised the results from testing on 130 preserved brains, noting that a dose of their drugs 20 times lower than expected yielded optimal results in human brains, thereby minimizing the time required for clinical trials and potentially alleviating major side effects that could have occurred at the higher dose.

While the company is now focused on drug testing, they say expansion into more robust disease research could be on the horizon. They also note that, since electrical activity is not a major component of neurodegenerative diseases, the BrainEx could be the ideal platform for studying these maladies.

Still, some issues exist with BrainEx, limiting it from being a perfect representation of the human body. These artificial fluids, lungs, and kidneys are not exactly he same as the human originals, and the lack of electrical activity means that potential seizure risks would go unrecognized.

In the future, Bexorg is looking to expand in two directions. The first is exploring ways to extend the longevity of their preserved brains from 24 hours to two weeks, enabling more in-depth research. The second—and perhaps at odds with the company’s focus on the human brain—is NeuroLens, a machine-learning model for simulated drug testing.

Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.

A former Harvard chemistry professor convicted in the United States for concealing ties to a Chinese talent program is now leading a state-backed brain-computer interface laboratory in Shenzhen, raising fresh concerns about the geopolitical race for emerging technologies.

Former Harvard scientist Charles Lieber, 67, has rebuilt his research career in China, where he currently directs the Institute for Brain Research, Advanced Interfaces and Neurotechnologies (i-BRAIN). In 2021, he was convicted in the United States for lying to federal investigators about his financial ties to a Chinese talent recruitment program, as well as for tax-related offenses. He was sentenced to prison and later placed under home confinement before relocating to Shenzhen in 2025.

Considered a leading authority in BCI research and development, Lieber now serves as director of i-BRAIN, a laboratory operating under the Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation (SMART), a government-backed institution. The laboratory’s primary focus includes primate research and BCI chip development.

Lieber said during a Shenzhen government news conference in December, “I arrived on April 28, 2025, with a dream and not much more, maybe a couple bags of clothes.” He added, “Personally, my own goals are to make Shenzhen a world leader.”

According to Reuters, the lab provides Lieber with resources beyond what he had access to in the United States, including dedicated nanofabrication equipment and extensive primate research facilities.

Experts have previously warned U.S. officials and Congress about the privacy implications of BCI technologies, as well as potential military applications that enhance cognitive performance on and off the battlefield. Lieber’s return to cutting-edge research has renewed debate in the United States over technology security and scientific cooperation with China.

“China has weaponized against us our own openness and our own efforts for innovation,” Glenn Gerstell, an advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former general counsel for the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), told Reuters on  May 1. “They’ve flipped that and turned it around against us, and they’re ​taking advantage of it.”

China’s policy of “military-civil fusion,” which encourages collaboration between civilian research institutions and the military, has increased those concerns in the United States. In July 2025, the Chinese government announced its goal of becoming the “gold standard” for BCI competitors worldwide. 

At i-BRAIN, Lieber’s team is reportedly currently hiring international researchers to conduct experiments involving rhesus monkeys, which have been used for BCI testing at many other companies, such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink.

In recent years, Neuralink employees have reported ongoing mistreatment and deaths of rhesus monkeys, where death certificates are openly available to see. But Musk took to the popular social media outlet X, stating that “No monkey has died as a result of a Neuralink implant. First, our early implants, to minimize risk to healthy monkeys, we chose terminal monkeys (close to death already).”

The i-BRAIN lab also offers chip-manufacturing tools, including ultraviolet lithography systems used to create tiny electronic circuits. 

Washington and Wall Street Brace for the BCI Era

In October of last year, Morgan Stanley released a private report titled, “Neuralink: AI in your brAIn” addressing that Elon Musk and Neuralink are at the forefront of a larger technological shift that society may not be ready for: one with staggering implications that could ultimately impact everything from healthcare to gaming, defense, investing, and society at large. The report also addressed the challenges of a potential “neuro-elite” evolving over time. 

“As AI moves into the physical world through expressions ranging from robotaxis to humanoids and autonomous weapons systems, we recommend paying closer attention to developments in brain-computer interface,” a portion of the paper states, under a section titled “Prometheus Shrugged.”

A month before this report was released, on September 24, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, along with Senators John Cornyn and Ron Wyden, proposed legislation to regulate BCIs, requesting that the FTC review the policy for long-term use.

Named the MIND Act, guidelines should be created alongside a framework to address ethical concerns and safeguard American interests.

Altogether, as the race to merge minds and machines intensifies, the broader consequences of who controls these technologies—and how they are used—remain in question.

Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and the founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com. To contact Chrissy with a story, please email chrissy @ thedebrief.org.

A new study shows that one psychedelic experience doesn’t just alter how a person feels; it may also change the brain itself. Researchers at UC San Francisco and Imperial College London found that a single 25 mg dose of psilocybin produces signs of likely anatomical changes in the brain that persist for at least a month after the experience.

Published in Nature Communications, the study was conducted in healthy adults with no prior psychedelic use. These results may help explain why psilocybin-assisted therapy is being explored as a treatment for depression, anxiety, and addiction.

The researchers identified a key mechanism behind these changes. Instead of focusing on a single brain region, they identified brain entropy as a key factor linking the experience to later outcomes.

What the Brain Looks Like on Psilocybin

Brain entropy refers to the diversity of neural activity happening at any given moment. A low-entropy brain tends to fall into predictable, repetitive patterns. A high-entropy brain is processing a richer, more varied stream of information. Within 60 minutes of taking the 25 mg dose, EEG recordings showed a sharp spike in entropy.

This increase in entropy persisted longer than the drug’s immediate effects. People who experienced the biggest jumps in entropy also reported more psychological insight the next day, saying they felt a deeper sense of emotional self-awareness. These insights coincided with improvements in well-being that lasted for at least two to four weeks.

“Psychedelic means ‘psyche-revealing,’ or making the psyche visible,” said senior author Robin Carhart-Harris, PhD, the Ralph Metzner Distinguished Professor of Neurology at UCSF. “Our data shows that such experiences of psychological insight relate to an entropic quality of brain activity and how both are involved in causing subsequent improvements in mental health.”

How the Study Was Designed

The study included 28 healthy adults with no mental health diagnoses. The experiment had two phases. First, each person received a very low 1 mg dose of psilocybin, which acted as a placebo. Researchers then tracked their brain activity and structure using EEG, MRI, and diffusion tensor imaging over the next few weeks.

One month later, those same participants received the 25 mg dose. The researchers then repeated the same series of brain scans and assessments.

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), a technique that measures water movement along neural pathways, showed that participants’ brain connections were more structurally intact a month after the high dose. This finding is the opposite of what typically happens with aging, which tends to weaken these connections. The most noticeable changes were in pathways linking the front and middle parts of the brain, areas involved in self-reflection, emotional regulation, and decision-making.

The Trip Is the Treatment

All but one participant described the 25 mg experience as the most unusual state of consciousness they had ever experienced. The other person ranked it among their top five. A month later, the group also performed better on a test of cognitive flexibility, which measures how well a person can adapt their thinking to new information.

Author Taylor Lyons, PhD, a research associate at Imperial College London, pointed to this chain of effects as the study’s most significant takeaway.

“Psilocybin seems to loosen up stereotyped patterns of brain activity and give people the ability to revise entrenched patterns of thought,” Lyons said. “The fact that these changes track with insight and improved well-being is especially exciting.”

These results could guide future research. If brain entropy during the experience predicts how well the treatment works, scientists might be able to use it to calibrate dosage in real time. This could help ensure patients get enough to support insight and recovery, without so much that it causes excessive stimulation.

What Comes Next

Carhart-Harris noted that the therapeutic promise of psilocybin has been recognized for years. This study now provides new details about the biological mechanisms that may underlie its effects.

“We already knew psilocybin could be helpful for treating mental illness,” Carhart-Harris said. “But now we have a much better understanding of how.”

The idea that memories might not correspond to real events but could actually be illusions created by chance from cosmic static has been discussed in physics for more than a century. Recently, three physicists examined the logic behind this idea and found that arguments on both sides may be fundamentally circular.

A recent study published in the journal Entropy by Santa Fe Institute Professor David Wolpert, physicist Carlo Rovelli, and Jordan Scharnhorst revisits the Boltzmann brain hypothesis. This thought experiment, based on statistical mechanics, suggests that random fluctuations in entropy could, in theory, create a fully formed brain with false memories and a sense of a coherent past.

Rather than trying to prove or disprove the Boltzmann brain hypothesis, the researchers focused on identifying a structural flaw in the way scientists have debated the issue.

Where the Logic Breaks Down

The Boltzmann brain paradox comes from the H theorem, developed by Austrian mathematician and physicist Ludwig Boltzmann. This idea is key to statistical mechanics and supports the second law of thermodynamics, which explains why disorder (or entropy) increases over time and why we perceive time as moving forward. However, the H theorem itself treats the past and the future identically in its equations.

This symmetry creates a problem. If entropy can decrease in the future just as easily as it increased in the past, then the patterns that form our memories could just as likely come from random fluctuations as from real events. In other words, our memories might not necessarily correspond to actual past events.

The usual response is that this scenario is extremely unlikely. The chance of a functioning brain forming from random thermal noise is so small that it would take much longer than the current age of the universe for it to happen. However, the new study shows that this argument depends on assumptions that may not even be justified.

A Never-Ending Circle

To clarify the debate, the researchers created a mathematical framework that models the universe’s entropy as a time-symmetric Markov process, which they call the “entropy conjecture.” In this framework, they identified a key issue: physics alone cannot determine which moment in time to use as a reference point. That choice must be assumed.

This assumption leads to circular reasoning. Arguments against the Boltzmann brain hypothesis, including those that appeal to the second law of thermodynamics, usually assume that our memories accurately record real events. Yet the main reason to trust our memories is that the second law suggests they should be reliable. In other words, the conclusion relies on the premise, and the premise relies on the conclusion.

Arguments in favor of the hypothesis show the same circularity. The study finds that the Boltzmann brain hypothesis and the standard “past hypothesis,” which assumes the universe began in a low-entropy state at the Big Bang, have the same structure. Each approach analyzes the problem from a different moment in time, changing only which moment it treats as fixed.

Reframing the Question

The researchers stress that their findings are meant to diagnose the problem, not to give a final answer. Their study does not decide whether the Boltzmann brain hypothesis is true or whether our memories are real, but it does show that current arguments do not properly answer the question.

The team formalized the entropy conjecture as a mathematical process and revealed a problem earlier studies overlooked: every argument in this debate depends on assumptions about which facts to treat as fixed, and physics alone cannot resolve the issue.

Fundamentally, any real resolution has to come from outside the math—whether from prior beliefs, or from Bayesian reasoning. That, the authors suggest, underscores why the debate has continued to go in circles for so long.

The recent study, “Disentangling Boltzmann Brains, the Time-Asymmetry of Memory, and the Second Law,” appeared in the journal Entropy. 

Austin Burgess is a writer and researcher with a background in sales, marketing, and data analytics. He holds an MBA, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, and a data analytics certification. His work focuses on breaking scientific developments, with an emphasis on emerging biology, cognitive neuroscience, and archaeological discoveries.

Researchers suggest that old psychoanalytic ideas and modern brain science may be describing the same mental processes from different angles. More than a century after Sigmund Freud developed his influential theories of the mind, some researchers believe modern neuroscience may be arriving at surprisingly similar conclusions. A new paper published in the neurocognitive journal Entropy [...]

A biotech startup called Bexorg is doing something that sounds like it was ripped straight from the pages of a cyberpunk novel — or from the script of “RoboCop,” for that matter.

The company is extracting human brains just hours after their owners died and then hooking them up to specialized life support machines, Science reports. While the masses of pink mush no longer host electrical activity, most of their key functions remain intact, allowing scientists to test experimental drugs, such as potential treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, like never before.

You’d hope that the disembodied cerebrums are most assuredly dead. But according to the reporting, an extracted brain hooked up to one of Bexorg’s proprietary life support machines, BrainEX, “hovers between life and death.” There’s no spark of consciousness, and yet the brains are kept running on an artificial lung, kidney oxygenate, blood, and other fluids.

Perhaps you can put this ambiguity down to the startup being deliberately enigmatic to provoke attention. Or maybe it’s a reflection of how the distinction between life and death is uncomfortably blurry.

But you can put those doubts out of your very-much embodied mind, assures Brendan Parent, one of Bexorg’s six ethicists. The extracted brains are almost devoid of the coordinated neural firing necessary for minimal consciousness, he told Science. To prevent the eerie implausibility that some the brains produce electrical activity, the brains are also dosed with anesthetic propofol. Of course, that such a measure has to be taken in the first place may actually be less assuring and more unsettling.

Ethics aside — not a statement that should be made lightly — the scientific possibilities that these extracted brains afford may well hold promise. Bexorg CEO Zvonimir Vrselja said that the brains come with decades of environmental exposures, histories of drug treatments, and other factors that make them a more realistic testing medium for drugs. “You get cells that have been there for 60 to 80 years,” Vrselja told Science.

Bruna Bellaver, who studies neurodegeneration at the University of Pittsburgh, was also effusive. 

“It’s a huge step up from mouse models,” she told Science.

Bexorg is the same startup that demonstrated, over six years ago, that it could keep decapitated pig brains alive for 36 hours using a prototype of its BrainEX machine.

Today, its human brains aren’t kept running in perpetuity. After 24 hours, they’re sliced into hundreds of pieces so they can be analyzed by scientists. The company plans to use a robotic arm to slice up to 1,600 brains per year.

Though Bexorg hasn’t itself published any papers on its work with human brains, other companies have already been eagerly experimenting with them. The pharmaceutical firm Biohaven has used 130 of its brains to test drugs, according to Science, including a potential treatment for Parkinson’s disease, and plans to launch a clinical trial for another drug using data it gathered from those experiments.

More on neuroscience: Scientists Say Test Subjects Were Able to Quit Smoking After They Blasted Their Brains With a Huge Magnet

The post Startup Testing Drugs on Freshly Extracted Human Brains That Are Kept On Life Support appeared first on Futurism.

Therapy is predicated on trust. You can’t be honest and vulnerable, and share how you’re really feeling, if you don’t believe in the embodied-concerned-frown sitting in the armchair across from you.

So you can understand why one woman, 31-year-old Molly Quinn, was taken aback when her trusted therapist suddenly whipped out an AI model to start recording their private conversations, NPR reports. 

“She wasn’t taking notes like she usually did,” Quinn recalled realizing halfway through one session. “The iPad was just propped up.”

Where were her words being processed and stored? Will they one day become training data? It’s not something you have to ask yourself when your therapist jots stuff down on a clipboard. But those questions were now racing through Quinn’s head, leaving her uneasy.

“The more I thought about it, the more I just started getting more and more sick to my stomach,” she told NPR. “This person who I’m supposed to be able to trust with some very private and very intense emotions had just completely disregarded something I said I was not comfortable with. I felt completely violated.”

Though her therapist offered to stop using the AI tool, Quinn cut her off and found another one.

“The trust was gone,” she told NPR.

Like doctors, therapists across the country are adopting AI tools for notetaking and generating transcripts. AI companies offering these services frame it as a way of cutting down on the drudgery of paperwork and other administrative tasks, freeing up more time to focus on patients — a permutation of a common AI industry refrain: let us do the tedious stuff for you. 

The reliability of AI tools remains fairly dodgy, though, and even setting aside questions of hallucinations creeping into clinical notes — which is something we’re already seeing happen — it’s not clear whether patients are even comfortable with the tech yet. In a YouGov survey cited by NPR, only 11 percent of Americans said they would be open to using AI in mental health care. An even slimmer eight percent said they would trust AI being used this way, while 40 percent said they don’t trust the technology at all.

“Even the presence of AI changes the therapeutic experience,” Marisa Cohen, a couples and sex therapist in New York, told NPR. “Clients know or feel like something else is listening to them. That awareness can subtly alter their disclosure.”

“When you introduce something that’s being stored electronically, it raises additional questions about trust and safety,” Cohen added. “It’s essentially a third party.”

Tal Salman, the CEO a popular AI scribe tool for therapists called Berries, insists that conversation recordings are deleted immediately and that transcripts are stored on HIPAA compliant servers in the US. Even if this is true, if AI companies’ tools are to ever have a place in private mental health settings, they need the trust of patients — and that’s something the AI industry clearly hasn’t earned yet. Quinn fears that AI-recorded conversations could one day be exposed by hackers.

“We’re going to see breaches,” she told NPR. “Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next week. But in a few years? I think we’re going to see them. And I don’t want my therapy session to be part of that.”

More on AI: The Pope Just Low Key Declared Holy War on Artificial Intelligence

The post Woman Alarmed When Her Trusted Therapist Starts Recording Her With AI appeared first on Futurism.

Parents say their kids are going ballistic when they take their iPads away from them, leaving them unsure of what normal behavior might be — and whether there’s something sinister going on with their child’s connection to the devices.

Rachel, a mother of two, tried limiting her son Jonah’s screen time by warning him that he had put down his iPad to leave for a birthday party at 11 AM. Despite the repeated warnings the day before and several reminders before the hour mark, when it came time to leave, Jonah had a meltdown.

“He just left his body,” the mother told The Cut of her son, who hurled the electronics and started screaming: “You said I had until 11! It’s not 11 yet! You’re always doing this!”

Jonah followed her around the house, distraught, until finally collapsing on the kitchen floor and refusing to move.

“I remember standing there thinking, I don’t know this person,” she recalled. “I genuinely did not recognize him.”

Thirty minutes later, he tied his shoes, got in the car, and acted like nothing had happened.

“That’s the part that really messes with you,” Rachel says. “How fast they come back.”

Think that’s bad? Hear what Nora had told The Cut about her 13-year-old son when she asked to check his phone settings: he accused Nora of ruining his life, before dropping a grenade in conversation.

“You make me want to kill myself,” he lashed out.

And while getting dinner last month at an Italian restaurant, Rachel told the outlet that she allowed her daughter Maya to watch YouTube Kids on the phone. When it was time too leave, she took the phone back. Maya went rigid, screamed, and hid under the table.

What’s going on here? Are these the kind of extreme tantrums that kids are prone to throw no matter the toy they’re being deprived of? Is everyone a bad parent, or at least not handling this the right way? Or are apps and the devices they run on uniquely addictive, somehow impacting a child’s development in novel and frightening ways?

The research into this area is still emerging, as are the generation of children raised on YouTube Shorts, Roblox, and other mobile games. That’s to say that we’re still a long way from grasping the long-term cognitive effects of being a so-called “iPad kid.” And the latest Silicon Valley horror, AI chatbots, are an even bigger question mark.

What evidence we do have, however, is alarming. The Cut cites a recent University of Washington study that found that 22 percent of parents’ attempts to cut down screen time sparked a negative reaction from kids under five. And in another study from Brigham Young University, 93 percent of parents reported that their toddlers would sometimes whine or throw tantrums when “transitioning away from media.”

Experts are mixed on whether the devices are provoking some newly negative response. 

“We frequently hear from parents who say, ‘When I ask my child to get off technology, they get very mad at me.’ That is true of almost anything that children find reinforcing,” Dave Anderson, a senior psychologist at the Child Mind Institute in New York City, told The Cut.

Anderson was skeptical of using the word addiction to describe what’s fueling iPad rages, noting that withdrawal symptoms of actual addiction don’t disappear within minutes. Kid’s minds just aren’t developed enough to handle having their favorite toy taken away from them, she said.

Stanford psychiatrist Anna Lembke, however, hasn’t hesitated to invoke the specter of addiction, calling screen devices a “digital drug” in an interview with Oprah. And Sarah Coyne, a professor of human development at Brigham Young, seemed to consider equating post-iPad rages to tantrums related to other pleasures outrageous. 

“I’m not sure how many children are struggling to function because their parents tell them to be done with their ice cream,” she told The Cut, adding that she’s seen addiction-like behavior in kids using devices as young as two years old.

If describing these patterns as signs of outright addictive behavior goes too far, there’s certainly there is a lot of evidence painting screen time’s cognitive effects. One study found that the more  babies and toddlers looked at screens each day, the more likely they were to miss key development goals, including fine motor skills and social skills.

The effects are no less worrying in older children. A study that followed tweens over four years found that increased screen time was a reliable predictor of ADHD diagnoses. Beyond iPad rages and worrying cognitive trends, there are other behaviors that illustrate the impact of device usage on children. In a survey of UK preschool school teachers, the teachers on average estimated that a third of their pupils didn’t know how to correctly use books — as in they literally couldn’t figure out that they had to turn the page. Instead, some reportedly tried to swipe or tap them.

More on mental health: Influential Tech Founder Says His Peers Are Suffering From Mass AI Psychosis

The post Kids Are Flying Into Lunatic Rages When Their iPads Are Taken Away appeared first on Futurism.

It’s no secret that many of the world’s top CEOs are obsessed with AI. By pursuing lofty goals of complete AI automation, these executives have created one of the largest financial bubbles in recent memory while transforming the job market into a barren wasteland, with little to show for their efforts so far.

As the top tech companies have yet to find a way to turn AI into a profitable venture, those decisions to go all-in on AI are looking increasingly delusional. According to Aaron Levie, CEO and founder of the massive cloud computing company Box, there’s a simple explanation for it: many of his colleagues are suffering from AI psychosis.

“CEOs are uniquely prone to AI psychosis because they’re sufficiently distant from the last mile of work that still has to happen to generate most value with AI,” Levie wrote on X-formerly-Twitter. Translation: AI-happy CEOs are out of touch with the rank-and-file workers tasked with making their AI ambitions come to life.

As an example, Levie offers cases in which corporate executives say “look I made this awesome product prototype” with an AI chatbot. “Yes but you didn’t have to review the code before it went into production and fix a bunch of issues,” he retorts.

Whether “AI psychosis” is the best metaphor for this concept is up for debate. Arguably the most common definition of AI psychosis is that it’s a phenomenon where extreme interactions with AI triggers or amplifies delusions or paranoia, sometimes already existing and sometimes seemingly newly cooked up with the AI. The symptoms can be extreme, with AI chatbots convincing victims that they’re communing with God-like entities, or have singlehandedly uncovered a grave threat to humankind.

There are indeed some executives who seem to fit the bill. Last year, Futurism reported that colleagues of Geoff Lewis, managing partner of the multi-billion dollar investment firm Bedrock, were concerned that he was suffering from a break with reality after spending too much time with ChatGPT (ironically, Bedrock was an early investor in OpenAI.) In that case, Lewis had claimed to be mapping an incomprehensible “non-governmental system” that was designed to disrupt his life.

That said, there’s a major gap between an exec believing they’re targeted by a vast conspiratorial network and an exec buying into AI hype. The phenomenon Levie is identifying might better fall under “organizational blindness,” a known phenomenon where leaders of a company find themselves disconnected from the reality of work on the ground. Coupled with a ravenous hunger for profit, this kind of tunnel vision seems to be exactly what we’re seeing in companies around the globe.

In today’s world, many executives and managers operate at an abstract level, working via spreadsheets, emails and Zoom meetings. This is different from concrete labor, meaning the specific, friction-heavy tasks that workers perform, like writing code or wiring server racks. When a board-room full of executives loses sight of this tangible labor — by failing to consider the kinds of tasks AI chatbots are actually good at, for example — it can certainly create a break from material reality, though one driven by social factors rather than psychological.

In other words, there are two possibilities: either the world’s CEOs are losing their minds, or they’re just succumbing to the latest manifestation of capitalism run amok. Occam’s razor probably suggests the latter.

More on AI and CEOs: 99 Percent of CEOs Are Preparing to Lay Off Workers and Replace Them With AI Within Two Years, Survey Finds

The post Influential Tech Founder Says His Peers Are Suffering From Mass AI Psychosis appeared first on Futurism.

Longtime Cybertruck watchers might remember a peculiar day back before the brutalist pickup was even released, when Tesla CEO Elon Musk randomly tweeted that the vehicle would function as a rudimentary flotation device.

“It will even float for a while,” he wrote at the time.

It wasn’t a one-off claim. Musk later boasted that the vehicle would be able to “traverse at least 100m [330 feet] of water as a boat.”

“Mostly just need to upgrade cabin door seals,” he claimed, writing at another point that the “Cybertruck will be waterproof enough to serve briefly as a boat, so it can cross rivers, lakes and even seas that aren’t too choppy.”

The Cybertruck finally did make it to market, where it’s suffered a seemingly endless parade of recalls, embarrassing incidents, and dismal sales figures.

Unsurprisingly, all Musk’s bluster about the truck serving as a makeshift schooner turned out to be flimflam. In fact, it quickly emerged that just getting wet in a car wash could brick the thing.

To muddy the waters further, the company ended up adding what it calls “Wade Mode” to the vehicles, which sets the truck’s ride height to the highest level, ostensibly so it can ford creeks and streams.

All that mixed messaging clearly got jumbled for a Texas man, though, who activated Wade Mode and drove his Cybertruck into a lake. Unsurprisingly, things didn’t go well for him.

“Yesterday, [Grapevine Police Department] and [Grapevine Fire Department] were dispatched to Grapevine Lake, where a Tesla Cybertruck was stranded in the water,” police in Grapevine, Texas, wrote on X-formerly-Twitter. “The driver drove into the lake to use the ‘Wade Mode’ feature when the vehicle became disabled.”

Not only is the man’s vehicle swamped — as the cops showed in an amazing attached photo — but he’s in legal trouble as well.

“The passengers abandoned the vehicle and the driver was arrested,” they wrote.

More on the Cybertruck: Cybertruck Recalled to Keep Its Wheels From Flying Off While Driving

The post Man Drives Cybertruck Into Lake to Test Elon Musk’s “Boat” Claims, and It Went About as Well as You’d Guess appeared first on Futurism.

Some effects can be traced to chemical signals inside appetite neurons.