Significant advances emerging from neuroscience and computer technology have long been a goal of the U.S. military.

Using exquisitely precise methods to measure how memories are embedded in brain cells in mice, scientists have shown how fear-based memories prompted by the sound associated with an electric shock can be activated and erased.

Listen to some spooky science stories from our Science Update archives!

At a AAAS briefing, experts challenged misconceptions about the permanence of post-traumatic stress and described evidence-based treatments that have helped veterans and other trauma survivors.

Agreement abounds over the VA research budget.

Ayumu the chimpanzee didn’t hesitate. Shown the numbers one through nine on a computer touch screen, he tapped the numerals in order, even after two through eight had disappeared behind white squares within a fraction of a second. The human audience watching a video of this performance began to murmur as they tried and failed to keep up with the fast-fingered chimp.

“Don’t worry, no one can do it,” Kyoto University researcher Tetsuro Matsuzawa reassured them with a laugh. “It’s impossible for you.”

A major study of worker health in the aftermath of the Gulf oil blowout got underway months later than desirable and may be limited as a result, a public health specialist told the AAAS Forum on Science and Technology Policy.

Dr. Bernard D. Goldstein, interim director of the Center for Healthy Environments and Communities at the University of Pittsburgh, said the federal government was unprepared to quickly mount studies of the possible long-term health effects of the 20 April 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill.