John Hamilton

The study used a hearing system that responds to a person's own brainwaves.

Nima Maskarani of Columbia University says the system detects a special signal produced when the brain is trying to focus on a specific sound.

When the signal appeared, the system automatically amplified the corresponding voice and filtered out competing voices.

Researchers say a hearing aid that works this way could solve a major problem for people with hearing loss, picking out one voice in a crowded room filled with speakers.

John Hamilton, NPR News.

Researchers wanted to understand how memory and imagination work together in the brain.

Varun Wadia of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Caltech says it takes both functions to accomplish something people do every day.

I can look at an object in the world around me, but I can also close my eyes and imagine the object.

So Wadia and a team studied the activity of more than 700 neurons in 16 people.

The scientists found that the same neurons that fire when someone looks at an object also fire when a person imagines that object.

The finding supports earlier evidence from brain scans suggesting that seeing and imagining activate the same circuits.

John Hamilton, NPR News.

Many psychedelics come from natural sources, like mushrooms, medicinal plants, or the skin of a Sonoran desert toad.

But a team in Israel thought there must be an easier way to obtain large quantities of mind-bending compounds, including psilocybin and DMT.

So, they studied how living organisms make these substances.

Then, they genetically altered a tobacco plant to give it the same ability.

The result?

A tobacco plant capable of simultaneously producing five different psychedelics.

These products aren't intended for recreational use, though.

The goal is a better source of psychedelics for experimental treatments of psychiatric conditions, including depression, anxiety, and PTSD.