Jon Hamilton
Jon Hamilton is a correspondent for NPR's Science Desk. Currently he focuses on neuroscience and health risks.
In 2014, Hamilton went to Liberia as part of the NPR team that covered Ebola. The team received a Peabody Award for its coverage.
Following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Hamilton was part of NPR's team of science reporters and editors who went to Japan to cover the crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.
Hamilton contributed several pieces to the Science Desk series "The Human Edge," which looked at what makes people the most versatile and powerful species on Earth. His reporting explained how humans use stories, how the highly evolved human brain is made from primitive parts, and what autism reveals about humans' social brains.
In 2009, Hamilton received the Michael E. DeBakey Journalism Award for his piece on the neuroscience behind treating autism.
Before joining NPR in 1998, Hamilton was a media fellow with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation studying health policy issues. He reported on states that have improved their Medicaid programs for the poor by enrolling beneficiaries in private HMOs.
From 1995-1997, Hamilton wrote on health and medical topics as a freelance writer, after having been a medical reporter for both The Commercial Appeal and Physician's Weekly.
Hamilton graduated with honors from Oberlin College in Ohio with a Bachelor of Arts in English. As a student, he was the editor of the Oberlin Review student newspaper. He earned his master's degree in journalism from Columbia University, where he graduated with honors. During his time at Columbia, Hamilton was awarded the Baker Prize for magazine writing and earned a Sherwood traveling fellowship.
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Scientists are using MRI scans to understand how mental illness shows up in the bran. But new research raises concerns that existing studies are not reliable because the sample sizes are too small. -
Researchers say most brain scan studies are too small to explain complex human traits like intelligence or mental health. Meaningful insights will require studies of thousands of brains, not dozens.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Dr. Wilbur Lam, a lead investigator assessing COVID-19 diagnostic tests for the U.S. government, about detecting the omicron BA.2 subvariant with rapid tests.
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A study of more than 120,000 brain scans shows rapid growth before age 2 and accelerating decline after age 50. The results may one day help pick up abnormalities in the developing brain. -
Scientists are trying to understand PTSD and other human disorders by studying emotion-related brain circuits in animals, which research suggests may have a lot in common with the human brain. -
Mild cognitive impairment, a common brain condition, can be an early sign of Alzheimer's disease. But most people don't know the symptoms. And some may mistake it for normal aging. -
Scientists say that for most children, masks in school aren't a major obstacle to learning or socializing. Students in classrooms find other ways to connect. -
Some parents have argued that masks need to come off in schools because it affects kids' speech and social development. Is that really true? Researchers address this question from several angles.
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Arts therapies appear to ease brain disorders from Parkinson's to PTSD. Now, artists and scientists have launched an effort to understand how these treatments change the brain. -
Tiny, robotic fish powered by human heart cells suggest that scientists are getting closer to their goal of building replacement hearts from living tissue.
