Welcome to Cool Facts Friday, where I share some of the latest stuff I've come across

that was interesting, and I tell you why it's interesting and why it's useful for you,

most of it's about what's happening now or in the future.

The first cool fact is about a tiny brain manipulating machine that's helping researchers

understand neurological diseases and neurotransmitters.

And you might say why do I care about that?

Because the chances of you getting a neurological disease over the course of your 180-year lifespan

or experiencing neurotransmitters are about 100%, so let's see what we can do to reverse it.

This comes out of Northwestern University, and they looked at stem cell-derived mini-brains

with the help of a new technology they created.

And they figured out how a brain regenerates and rebuilds itself after something bad happens

to it.

In the lab, scientists put their little mini-brains to the test by manipulating them to

induce stress in different ways your brain can experience stress, and then they watch

how the brains recover.

And those mini-brains are called cortical spheroids, and scientists can look at these without

having to slice your brain open, which is really nice.

What that means for you is that we are now at the point where we can see what's happening

inside your brain without opening it up, and we're going to discover all sorts of cool

things about why we get Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and also why our brains change as we age

and what to do to turn it around.

I have the hippocampal volume of the average 20-year-old, and I have the brain response time

...