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December 18, 2025<\/p>\n
4 min read<\/p>\n
Add Us On Google<\/span>Add SciAm<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The 10 Most Mind-Blowing Discoveries About the Brain in 2025<\/p>\n From glowing neurons to newborn memories, here are the most fascinating brain discoveries of 2025<\/p>\n By Allison Parshall edited by Andrea Thompson<\/span><\/p>\n Getty Images\/Andriy Onufriyenko<\/p>\n The human brain has 86 billion neurons connected by roughly 100 trillion synapses, making it one of the most complex objects in the known universe. Each year neuroscientists make fascinating, important and downright strange discoveries about how this resilient structure works, and 2025 didn\u2019t disappoint. Here are 10 of the most fascinating brain discoveries of this year for your own brain to noodle on.<\/p>\n A representative MRI tractography image of the first era of the human brain. This image is representative of the general pattern seen across the brains in the study during the second era of neural wiring, the adolescent phase.<\/p>\n Dr Alexa Mousley, University of Cambridge<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n Brain scans of thousands of people revealed that the human brain has five distinct eras, with turning points in the way it is organized occurring at age nine, 32, 66 and 83. Across each of these stages\u2014for example, the \u201cadolescent\u201d period between age nine and 32\u2014people\u2019s brains tend to experience the same types of changes.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t remember being a newborn or even a toddler. Adults\u2019 earliest memories tend to start around preschool and no earlier. But recent research suggests that your brain was making memories back then; you just don\u2019t have access to them now. A study of the infant hippocampus, a deep-brain structure crucial for memory formation, found that it can store memories once babies are around one year old\u2014though it\u2019s not clear why we can\u2019t recall them once we grow up.<\/p>\n Researchers also discovered another oddity of newborn babies\u2019 brain: they have very high levels of a protein that, in adults, indicates Alzheimer\u2019s disease. Tau proteins help to stabilize brain cells\u2019 structure, but they can undergo chemical changes that lead them to become tangled up, a process linked to Alzheimer\u2019s. The fact that healthy newborn brains have high levels of these proteins, which later decrease, suggests that these detrimental changes in adults could be avoided or reversed.<\/p>\n Neural precursor cells (green) have been difficult to identify in human brains.<\/p>\n Carol N. Ibe and Eugene O. Major\/National Institutes of Health\/Science Source<\/p>\n Neuroscientists long believed that you\u2019re born with all of the neurons you\u2019ll ever have. But evidence has slowly accumulated to suggest that adults can form new neurons, a process called neurogenesis. Until now, the evidence was mostly circumstantial (and controversial). But this year researchers discovered newly formed neurons and the precursor cells that birthed them in the brains of adults, some as old as age 78. These findings \u201cshould finally put this all to rest,\u201d said a neurobiologist who wasn\u2019t involved in the research.<\/p>\n When you imagine an apple, your brain activity is not that different from when you actually see an apple. So how does your brain know the difference? Scientists discovered a \u201creality signal\u201d generated by a region of the brain called the fusiform gyrus, which is then evaluated by another region to determine whether something is real or imagined. The researchers think that dysfunction of this system could lead to hallucinations, in which people mistake something generated by the brain for something real.<\/p>\n Early results from a clinical trial have shown that a drug called AMT-130 slows the progression of Huntington\u2019s disease. If approved by regulators, it will be the first treatment for this rare, genetic neurological disorder that actually treats the disease itself, not just the symptoms. The treatment works by delivering the drug directly to the deep brain through an eight- to 10-hour surgery.<\/p>\n The human brain is special. Yet much of what scientists thought made us different from other animals has been steadily eroded by evidence. This year scientists learned more about the cognitive abilities of our closest primate relatives. Chimpanzees, for example, can weigh evidence to update beliefs when they are proven wrong, a type of rational thinking. And bonobos can tell when a human doesn\u2019t know something\u2014an ability called theory of mind.<\/p>\n Teal is as close as you can get to seeing the new color without having your eyes lasered.<\/p>\n Our brains construct colors based on the activation of cells in our retinas that pick up blue, green and red light. Because of a quirk of biology, there\u2019s no light on Earth that can activate only green-light-detecting cells. But researchers were able to do just that by lasering the eyes of five participants to create an impossible new color the scientists called olo: a wildly saturated blue-green that exists beyond our normal visual range.<\/p>\n Did you know that your brain glows? Living tissues emit light called biophotons as a by-product of consuming energy\u2014and the brain consumes a whole lot of energy. In a recent experiment, scientists detected biophotons emitted by the human brain from outside the skull for the first time. The emission changed as people did different mental tasks, but whether these photons play a role in cognition at all remains to be seen.<\/p>\n The greatest mystery about the brain is how it creates consciousness. How does the activity of tens of billions of neurons create your experience of the world? Scientists have many theories of consciousness, and two recently went head-to-head in a scientific face-off. The results were extremely mixed, challenging some of the central tenets of both theories and highlighting just how much mystery remains in the quest to understand our mind.<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. Scientific American<\/span> has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a Scientific American<\/span> subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm <\/span>always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.<\/p>\n If you subscribe to Scientific American<\/span>, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.<\/p>\n In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.<\/p>\n There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" December 18, 2025 4 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm The 10 Most Mind-Blowing Discoveries About the Brain in 2025 From glowing neurons to newborn memories, here are the most fascinating brain discoveries of 2025 By Allison Parshall edited by Andrea Thompson Getty Images\/Andriy Onufriyenko The human brain has 86 billion neurons connected by<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[2121,15451,20914],"class_list":{"0":"post-38032","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-brain","9":"tag-discoveries","10":"tag-mindblowing"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Eras Tour<\/h2>\n
On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
Missing Memories<\/h2>\n
Untangling Alzheimer\u2019s<\/h2>\n
A Neuron Is Born<\/h2>\n
Reality Check<\/h2>\n
Huntington\u2019s Hopes<\/h2>\n
Primate Enlightenment<\/h2>\n
Beyond the Rainbow<\/h2>\n
Glowing Brain<\/h2>\n
The Big Question<\/h2>\n
It\u2019s Time to Stand Up for Science<\/h2>\n