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Today:
What if The Brain Doesn't Create Consciousness? Scientist Proposes It Might Be The Fabric of Reality Itself
NEWS | 12 August 2026
Koch explained to ScienceAlert that it may be time to rethink one of neuroscience's deepest assumptions: that consciousness is something the brain produces. Instead, he asks a different question: Does the brain create consciousness, or could it be shaping something more fundamental? Despite remarkable progress in understanding how the brain processes information, neuroscience still faces a profound mystery, Koch argues. Koch argues that if current assumptions about consciousness prove incomplete, neuroscience itself may eventually require a similarly profound conceptual shift. He argues that consciousness remains one of science's greatest unsolved mysteries, and that understanding it may require researchers to rethink long-held assumptions about the relationship between mind, brain, and reality.

Top Stories:
Weird 'Loophole' Could Finally Let Energy Move Faster Than The Speed of Light
NEWS | 12 August 2026
But a quirk of how sound waves interact in water may have just shown how something can appear to. It works underwater with sound – which means that, theoretically at least, it could also work with waves of light in a vacuum. Interference between direct and reflected sound waves can shift the energy peak later (b), or earlier (c), than the direct wave alone (a). "These yield effects occurring at speeds exceeding light speed in a vacuum, yet the speed of information is less than the speed of light in a vacuum. Hence, we explore if the direct + reflected path effect also conveys information at speeds less than light speed in a vacuum."

World:
This Deadly Brain Cancer Hijacks Brain Activity to Fuel Its Growth, Study Reveals
NEWS | 12 August 2026
Previous research has shown that active neurons release a protein called neuroligin-3 (NLGN3), which promotes glioma cell proliferation. Exactly how the glioma cells detect NLGN3 and convert it into a growth signal, however, has remained unclear. One protein stood out: chondroitin sulfate proteoglycan 4 (CSPG4), which is abundant on the surface of both OPCs and glioma cells. The resulting ion flow activates signaling within the cell that promotes glioma cell proliferation. Four weeks later, the glioma cells without PIEZO1 were proliferating significantly less than those with the intact channel.

Current Events:
No Palaces, No Pyramids: How This Ancient City Got Rich Without Inequality
NEWS | 12 August 2026
While the growth and rise of a civilization – from small villages into sprawling cities – usually widens the inequality gap between the rich and the poor, in Mohenjo-daro the opposite happened. As the homes could be dated too, the team could see that inequality shrank over time as Mohenjo-daro continued to prosper. "Legacy data from the ancient city shows that as the city matured, the gap between the largest and smallest homes narrowed," says archaeologist Adam Green, from the University of York. Overall, Mohenjo-daro scored 0.44, compared to 0.86 for the Bronze Age Greek city of Knossos, and 0.75 for the Maya site of Palenque. (Green et al., Antiquity, 2026)"While ancient Egyptians were building pyramids for god-kings, and the Greeks were constructing massive palaces at Knossos, the people of the Indus were building something entirely different," says Green.

News Flash:
A Week-Long Meditation Retreat Produced Psychedelic-Like Brain Changes, Study Finds
NEWS | 12 August 2026
It's only reasonable to assume that attending a seven-day meditation retreat would have a calming and restorative effect on a person. (ArtistGNDphotography/Getty Images Signature/Canva)In addition to attending the retreat activities discussed above, the study participants also undertook several tests before and after the event. After taking part in the meditation retreat, the participants showed significant changes in multiple tests. The fMRI data showed that after the meditation, brain activity was reduced in the default mode network, which is associated with self-referential and internally directed thought. Brain activity was also reduced in the salience network, which helps detect both internal and external stimuli.

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SPONSORED | 12 August 2026
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Latest:
Test Yourself: This Week's Microscope Mystery
NEWS | 12 August 2026
Familiar things can look very strange when viewed under a microscope. Each week in our newsletter, our team shares a head-scratching microscopic image and asks readers to work out what exactly they're looking at. Well, somehow the weekend has flown by and we're back at our desks scratching our head over another microscope mystery. This week's specimen looks like something growing on a windowpane in midwinter – delicate branches, needle-fine, studded with tiny glassy beads at every tip. Fungi like this one are quietly everywhere: in soil, in compost, on the roots of the plants outside your window.

Breaking:
Infamous 17th-Century Shipwreck Reveals Trade Route Secrets of The Dutch East India Company
NEWS | 12 August 2026
The wreck of the Dutch East India Company ship Batavia, which sank off the coast of Western Australia in 1629, is one of the most infamous in the region's history – primarily because of the massacre and mutiny that took place amongst the survivors. Of particular interest to the researchers was where these sandstone blocks had been sourced from – and the answer to that question has revealed a surprising strategic choice by the Dutch East India Company four centuries ago. "We wanted to know if tiny mineral grains could give us a reliable fingerprint of where the stone formed, and help reveal how the Dutch East India Company sourced and transported materials across its global network." When the researchers compared samples from two sandstone blocks against each other, they found their patterns didn't match. Both are known to have been used by the Dutch East India Company.

Trending:
Psychopathic Tendencies Are Linked to Microbes Inside Your Body, Study Reveals
NEWS | 12 August 2026
In a new early-release study published in Translational Psychiatry, scientists have found evidence to suggest that microbiota may even influence people's experience of psychopathy, with researchers discovering links between levels of certain gut and oral microbes and psychopathic personality traits. "We hypothesized that the composition of the gut and oral microbiota may be associated with subclinical psychopathic personality traits… To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore this association." From that perspective, a higher abundance of three specific kinds of bacteria showed a positive association with stronger psychopathic traits. But hypothetically speaking, if these microbes do influence people's behavior towards psychopathic tendencies, then how? "Overall, our findings highlight the potential of microbiota and their metabolic outputs as biomarkers for psychopathic traits in the general population," the researchers write.

This Just In:
Ketamine Alters Brain Structures – But Only in One Sex, Study in Mice Finds
NEWS | 12 August 2026
For example, in a new mouse-based study published in Science Advances, researchers have described a puzzling result: Ketamine anesthesia causes a remodeling of brain tissues – but only in females. About an hour after ketamine administration, microglia started establishing significantly more contact with neurons in the brains of female mice. In a previous study, researchers found that ketamine anesthesia induced anxiety traits – but, again, only in female mice. "There were only a handful of anecdotal studies showing that women experience nausea and sickness more often after ketamine anesthesia," Siegert notes. asks Bosiljka Tasic, a neurobiologist at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle and one of the study's co-authors.

Today:
Ant Colonies Pulse Like a Physical System, And Scientists Are Beginning to Understand What Triggers Them
NEWS | 12 August 2026
These sudden flurries, known as activity bursts, are followed by stretches of relative calm. A new mathematical model, described in a study published in PRX Life, suggests that ant colonies suddenly become synchronized after reaching a critical point. In the model, ants switch among three states: active, inactive, and refractory. frameborder="0″ allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen>How, then, can one ant's activity spread through an entire nest before dying out? Activity bursts may therefore involve trade-offs among movement, communication, energy use, and the organization of work.

Top Stories:
Engineers Create Superglue That Bonds in 10 Seconds, Holds For Years And Gets Stronger Underwater
NEWS | 12 August 2026
This is because water molecules coat surfaces, forming a repulsive barrier. In a new study published in Nature Communications, researchers have developed a uniquely strong, reusable underwater adhesive that works through a sci-fi-sounding principle. The second part means that subjecting this adhesive to water makes it re-assemble its atoms, bonding underwater surfaces in the process. Commun., 2026)It proved strong and quick-setting, displaying an adhesive strength of 1.1 million pascals after only 10 seconds of underwater curing, "significantly exceeding that of traditional underwater adhesives". "This study not only introduced a high-performance underwater adhesive," the researchers conclude, "but also presented a strategy for advancing environmentally responsive smart materials" with global consequences.

World:
Scientists Made a Surface That Performs Calculations Using Light Itself
NEWS | 12 August 2026
With current technology, the electromagnetic signal is typically converted into an electrical signal and digitized into numbers, which can then be processed to extract the information it carries. But transmitting a radio wave is only part of the job. One increasingly powerful way to do that is with a metasurface – a thin, engineered surface covered in tiny structures designed to alter electromagnetic waves in carefully controlled ways. This allowed the metasurface to move beyond controlling electromagnetic waves and to use electromagnetic waves as a computational medium." "The resulting wave components then combine coherently, producing the Fourier transform or convolution results in the outgoing electromagnetic wave.

Current Events:
'Hiding in The Shadows': Discovery of 3 New Assyrian Kings Reveals a More Brutal History Than Records Suggest
NEWS | 12 August 2026
The protective deity known as a lamassu, commonly commissioned by Assyrian kings, protected palaces and gateways. The evidence comes from a poorly preserved cuneiform tablet, discovered in Nineveh and published over 125 years ago, that Frahm previously examined. A poorly preserved tablet inscribed with the royal grant, which helped lead to the discovery of the first unknown king, Tiglath-pileser. (Edmonds & Frahm, J. Cuneif. Stud., 2026)This work demonstrates that Neo-Assyrian history was not as rosy as recorded in the unambiguously named Assyrian King List.