When you make scrambled eggs for breakfast, you are probably not expecting any signs of life in the resulting mush, let alone development into chicken embryos. Indeed, it seems common sense that living things are organized structures, and once these structures are jumbled up, life... click to read more

What do ants, processionary caterpillars, birds, apes and football supporters have in common? They all exemplify the huge variety of present-day collective and social behaviours. One of the questions puzzling scientists is whether collective behaviour appeared very early in the evolution of animals or more... click to read more

Without a doubt, Tyrannosaurus rex is the most famous dinosaur in the world. Its adult body length of 40 feet, 5-foot-long head, and bone-crushing teeth are the stuff of legend, but we know surprisingly little about its childhood. What did it look like then? How... click to read more

Memory is how our past experiences shape our behavior in the future. For example, as children, we form memories of our parents and other people speaking and use those memories to learn spoken language ourselves. Forming memories cause changes to many different regions of our... click to read more

In 1970, Thomas Woolsey, a young neuroscientist, was peering through a microscope at thin slices of mouse brain, when he observed something quite remarkable. In a region of the brain called the cerebral cortex, which plays a key role in sensing, memory and emotion in... click to read more