GLP-1 drugs such as semaglutide are reshaping treatment of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease with broader physiological effects now emerging.

Uncertainty affects more than mindset—it activates stress responses in the brain and body. Learn how researchers are uncovering the physiological roots of resilience.

As we walk through the world, we use our eyes to take in the information around us and our brain to make sense of it. Our everyday visual experience feels like an automatic process where our brain rapidly and smoothly interprets our environment,

Featured article from the September 2024 issue of The Physiologist Magazine. Home / Publications & News / Newsroom / The Physiologist Magazine / The Role of the Microbiome in Human Physiology The Role of the Microbiome in Human Physiology Researchers…

American Toxic In the air and water, at work and at home, pollutants abound. By Lauren Arcuri From the air we breathe to the water we drink, from the food we eat to the places we work, humans and other animals are exposed to a wide variety of…

The Physiology of Pain The feeling of pain involves complex mechanisms that researchers are trying to figure out—as 50 million people in the U.S. continue to suffer from chronic pain. By Lauren Arcuri Pain is a universal human experience, one that is…

Eyes Wide Open Sleep is fundamental to human physiology. So, why don’t we know more about it? And why are most of us not getting enough? By Lauren Arcuri No matter our differences, no matter where we are in the world, there’s something we all have in…

Take a Deep Breath Stress can throw your body into overdrive. Your breath can help slow things down. By Lauren Arcuri It’s no surprise that most of us experienced increased stress in 2020. In the initial stages of the pandemic, many of us went…

The Physiology of COVID-19 Physiologists are at the forefront of research that advances understanding of how COVID-19 attacks the body and the ways to prevent the damage it causes. By Lauren Arcuri The world has been in the grip of the novel…

Published On June 17, 2019 KATIE HART HAS BEEN sick most of her life, but it took more than three decades for her to find out what was behind her debilitating fatigue, persistent headaches, muscle pain and dizziness. During her adolescence, medical…

Published On January 22, 2019 THE SENSATION OF SOUND, like all phenomena that make up the human experience, depends on an intricate relay of biological cells and signals running between the outside world and the brain. Human hearing begins when sound…

Abstract Three-photon microscopy was suggested in the 1990s, but laser technology at the time was just not up to the challenge. Lauren Ware explores how recent technology advances are bringing three-photon microscopy back into focus. When Cornell…

Published On September 22, 2014 IN THE LATE 1950s, A DENVER SURGEON named Ben Eiseman saw four patients who were dreadfully ill with recurrent diarrhea caused by antibiotics, which had obliterated the friendly bacteria in their gut, leaving them…

Published On July 23, 2013 NINE-YEAR-OLD SHAN RÉE OF WEST VANCOUVER, British Columbia, was no stranger to hospitals. Since infancy, she had been admitted two or three times a year for the intravenous antibiotics and intensive breathing treatments…

Published On May 3, 2011 IN 1888, WHEN THE SPANISH ANATOMIST SANTIAGO RAMÓN Y CAJAL began almost obsessively drawing every kind of brain tissue he could obtain—from humans, rabbits, pigs, dogs, fish, frogs, mice and other creatures—he depicted many…

Published On May 3, 2011 WE WALK AROUND EACH DAY WITH OUR BRAIN, a three-pound organ with the consistency of custard, sloshing about inside a sealed chamber of cerebrospinal fluid. It’s protected, though only just, by a tough outer membrane, the dura…