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When neurons fire together uncontrollably, epileptic seizures ensue. Yet what sparks the cells to go haywire in the first place? In January scientists found an unexpected answer. When glial cells in the cortex of fruit flies cannot properly control their calcium levels, they leave neighboring neurons vulnerable to seizures.

Protection against the disease pertussis, or whooping cough , doesn’t appear to be as strong with the currently administered vaccine when compared with the older version administered up until the 1990s, according to a new study in Pediatrics . During a pertussis outbreak in 2010–11 in California teens who had received four doses of the current vaccine were at almost six times more likely to get pertussis as those who had received four doses of the older preparation.

What is science revealing about the nature of the criminal mind? Adrian Raine, a professor at the university of Pennsylvania, is an expert in the expanding field of “neurocriminology.” He has written The Anatomy of Violence , a sweeping account of crime’s biological roots, including genetics, neuro-anatomy and environmental toxins like lead. He spoke with Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook .  

The detective story had begun, as they always do, with a ringing phone. A biologist was on the line. He had found a corpse. A few days later he called a second time, having found another. Soon the calls were coming “again and again,” Melissa A. Miller recalls. “At the h ghest point, we were getting four a day.” As the bodies piled up, so did the questions.

Government officials in Washington have shut down mail delivery to the US Senate after detecting ricin in a letter addressed to Mississippi senator Roger Wicker, a Republican, on 16 April. Here are some facts about the toxin.

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Melanie Thernstrom lies motionless inside the large, noisy bore of a functional MRI scanner at Stanford University. She tries to ignore the machine's loud whirring as she trains her attention on a screen mounted inside the scanner, right in front of her eyes. An image of a flame bobs and flickers, shifting subtly in size. To her, the flame is a representation of the searing pain in her neck and shoulder, with its fluctuations reflecting the rise and fall of her discomfort. To the neuroscientists scrutinizing her through a window from the control room next door, the flame is a measure of the activity in a part of her brain.

Back in the 18th century, German physician Franz Mesmer peddled a concept called animal magnetism. Creatures contain a universal fluid, he asserted, that when blocked in flow, caused sickness. Mesmer used magnetized objects to redirect that flow in patients, initiating unusual body sensations, fainting, vomiting or violent convulsions that ended in profound salubrious effects.

If you go into a bar in Bangkok tonight, don’t be surprised if you find it full of celebrating conservationists.

Less than 200 years ago schizophrenia emerged from a tangle of mental disorders known simply as madness. In the upcoming fifth edition of psychiatry's primary guidebook, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , or DSM-5 , schizophrenia will finally shed the outdated, 19th-century descriptions that have characterized it to this day. Yet the disorder remains poorly understood. “There is substantial dissatisfaction with schizophrenia treated as a disease entity; its symptoms are like a fever--something is wrong, but we don't know what,” says William Carpenter, a psychiatrist at the University of Maryland and chair of the manual's Psychotic Disorders Work Group. Psychiatrists may discover that this disorder is not a single syndrome after all but a bundle of related conditions.