Dyslexia is well-known to impact reading ability but it has been unclear which brain processes are affected by the condition. Whether dyslexia is, at its core, a visual processing disorder is hotly debated among researchers. With reading and writing a key challenge among children with dyslexia, increasing understanding of its effects on the brain might improve existing interventions. 

Anti-vaccine sentiment is not new but from the 1950s until the late 1990s it was isolated small pockets of deniers. With claims that MMR vaccines, and then preservatives in vaccines, caused autism, the west coast of America became overrun with vaccine denial. In 2021, anti-vaccine sentiment switched to middle America with COVID-19. 

The names change but health disinformation remains the same, as are ways to combat it. A recent study looked at combating typhoid misinformation in Sierra Leone and found that explicitly addressing falsehoods seems more effective in busting misbeliefs than simply stating scientific facts.

What do Taylor Swift, the Jonas brothers, and Miley Cyrus share in common? They're all great musicians and nice people. They were also home schooled. 

A new study examining how homeschooling affected adolescents’ character, health and well-being found that adolescents who are homeschooled are more likely to report greater character strengths and fewer risky health behaviors later in life, but are less likely to attain a college degree. 

Over 6,000 light-years away from earth, in the constellation Puppis in the southern sky, is an emission nebula.

Emission nebulae are diffuse clouds of gas that have become so charged by the energy of nearby massive stars that they glow with their own light. The radiation from these massive stars strips electrons from the nebula’s hydrogen atoms - ionization. As the energized electrons revert from their higher-energy state to a lower-energy state, they emit energy in the form of light, causing the nebula’s gas to glow.

A recent paper examined 45,079 cases of toxoplasmosis in wild mammals—a disease that has been linked to nervous system disorders, cancers and other debilitating chronic conditions—using data from 202 global studies and found wildlife living near dense urban areas, where there are lots of cats carrying the pararsite, were more likely to be infected.

One infected cat can excrete as many as 500 million Toxoplasma oocysts (or eggs) in just two weeks. The oocysts can then live for years in soil and water with the potential to infect any bird or mammal, including humans. Toxoplasmosis is particularly dangerous for pregnant women.

A new paper reaffirms how humankind's embrace of agriculture, and resulting lower 'cost' of food, led to a cultural boom that resulted in mass migration and many of the world's major language families.

If you speak modern Japanese, Korean, Turkish and Mongolian, you have a connection to neolithic millet farmers from the Liao River valley - Inner Mongolia and the provinces of Liaoning and Jilin in China. People speaking nearly 100 dialects and languages across 5,000 miles have a shared genetic ancestry stretching back 9,000 years, the research found.