NPR Blogs

The same brain system that controls our muscles also helps us remember music, scientists say.

When we listen to a new musical phrase, it is the brain's motor system — not areas involved in hearing — that helps us remember what we've heard, researchers reported at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in New Orleans last month.

Summer may be long gone, but cases of West Nile virus are still popping up – making this year's outbreak the worst so far in the U.S. since 2003.

New tallies released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention bring the total case count for the year to 5,054, and the death toll to 228 — more than the past four years combined.

The man behind the anti-Islamic video that is believed to have sparked protests in the Muslim world was sentenced Wednesday to a year in prison for violating the condition of his probation.

Here's more from The Associated Press:

"U.S. District Court Judge Christina Snyder immediately sentenced Mark Basseley Youssef after he admitted to four of the eight alleged violations, including obtaining a fraudulent California driver's license.

In the Election Day scramble you might have missed that Pfizer got a new drug approved for rheumatoid arthritis.

Pfizer expects the twice-a-day pill called Xeljanz will be available in pharmacies later this month.

The drug won't come cheap. The wholesale price will run about $2,000 for a month's supply, the company says.

With Islamist groups growing more influential, Egypt's state prosecutor on Wednesday ordered a ban on Internet pornography, citing an earlier ruling that hadn't been implemented.

Throughout the Arab Muslim world, pornography is not permitted, though in Egypt and some other places the government has not actively tried to prevent access to online sites.

Shall we dance?

That's the key question for Congress now that another budget crisis is near. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev, today said he's ready to do a little two-stepping with Republicans to twirl away from the edge of the so-called fiscal cliff.

"It's better to dance than to fight," the former amateur boxer told reporters at a press conference. "Everything doesn't have to be a fight."

Now that the election is over and we have a winner, we can move on to consider questions that are of concern to any presidency. In fact, the question I'd like to consider today goes to the very core of scientific research and the way it functions in modern democracies, fomenting intellectual and technological innovation.

Are scientists who receive funds from the government free to create?

Darrell Royal, who coached the University of Texas Longhorns to three national titles "and became the biggest college football icon in a state that worships the sport, has died at age 88," Austin's American-Statesman reports.

After a shaky few years, President Obama's health care legacy looks secure.

His health overhaul law barely made it through Congress and to his desk. Then there were the legal challenges, launched when the ink of his signature was barely dry, that were resolved by a surprising Supreme Court ruling in June.

Two-Way readers were pretty smart about when we would hear who won the White House.

It was 11:29 p.m. ET last night when we posted the news that "Obama wins."

And:

"Between 10 p.m. ET and midnight Tuesday" was the most popular choice by the 13,801 readers who answered our "when will we know who won?" question. It was picked by 32.2 percent.

Rep. Paul Ryan, the Republican vice presidential nominee, says will go back to the House and pick up where he left off, after his loss.

On the day after voters returned President Obama to the White House and kept Democrats in control of the Senate and Republicans in control of the House:

"Investors pulled back sharply ... [amid] rising worries about the upcoming fiscal fight in Congress," The Wall Street Journal writes.

What a difference $46 million in TV ad spending can make.

At least that was the consensus in the wee hours of the morning at the Yes on Proposition 37 party, held at a performance art space in San Francisco's Mission District, even before the final votes were tallied.

Outspent many times over, "we couldn't get up on the air," organizer Stacy Malkan told The Salt when it appeared the measure was going down. "You need a certain saturation to have an impact."