“Pay attention!” We’ve heard that demand—maybe not in so many words—from everyone from parents, teachers, and bosses to the ad hucksters that permeate every environment. But just what exactly does “attention” mean?

All of us age, and as we do, myelin, the protective covering around the nerve cells in our brain, starts to deteriorate. This is like losing the insulation around an electrical wire. It causes nerve impulses to slow or even stop, and affects a range of bodily functions from thinking, memory, and behavior to balance and coordination. But this does not have to be the case.

COVID-19 has thrown a monkey-wrench into all our lives.

Some of us have shifted our work home. We may be dealing with living spaces that suddenly seem much too small, quandaries about how to keep children engaged, frustratingly slow internet. We are the lucky ones.

Samuel L Jackson, Marilyn Monroe, Winston Churchill, and even current presidential candidate Joe Biden—stuttered or stammered as children. While the vast majority overcome childhood stuttering, the embarrassment and bullying the condition elicits can leave long-lasting anxiety regarding speaking in social situations.

Last summer, the media was abuzz with apparent progress in developing a reliable blood test for Alzheimer’s disease. With this potential breakthrough—after decades of research to find a biomarker that could clearly diagnosis Alzheimer’s—researchers now may finally have a tool for measuring the effectiveness of drugs and other treatment interventions.  

How do we learn and remember? How, exactly, do the massive numbers of neurons in our brains and the connections between them allow us to recognize our own living rooms or remember the conversations that happened there last year?