Outlook in 2016

Could a high-risk treatment play a part in tackling multiple sclerosis?

New drugs are beginning to show promise for people with one of the less common, and harder to treat, forms of multiple sclerosis.

Emerging evidence points to a viral infection, low levels of vitamin D and genetics as culprits in multiple sclerosis, but how they combine to cause the disease is unclear.

The characteristic brain pathology and motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease are well established. But the details of the disease's cause and course are much murkier.

Deep brain stimulation is a proven treatment for Parkinson's disease. The only thing left to find out is how it works.

By bootstrapping existing technologies, researchers can gain a minute-by-minute understanding of a patient's disease.

In the 200 years since Parkinson's disease was first described, the understanding and management of the disease has come a long way. But researchers have yet to unlock all of its secrets. By Liam Drew.

Biomarkers will be essential if research on Parkinson's is to progress, but their discovery depends on scientists sharing data, says Mark Frasier.

Non-motor symptoms such as sleep disorders and a poor sense of smell may hold the key to diagnosing Parkinson's disease before the characteristic tremor starts.

A controversial theory that could revolutionize our understanding of Parkinson's disease is gaining ground. But not everybody is convinced that misfolded proteins that spread in the brain are the cause of the disease.

Scientists have theories about dark matter and dark energy — and some observations — but both are poorly understood. Here are four of their biggest questions.

Astronomy is entering an era in which gravitational waves and neutrinos will be used to complement existing techniques and to uncover the hidden features of our Universe.

In 1998, Brian Schmidt discovered that, contrary to expectations, the expansion of the Universe is accelerating. The discovery won him a share of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics and launched the search to uncover the nature of dark energy.

George Smoot shared the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of small temperature variations in the cosmic microwave background radiation, providing support for Big Bang theory. Smoot spoke to Nature about last year's big cosmological discovery, gravitational waves.

The path to understanding dark energy begins with a single question: has it always been the same throughout the history of the Universe?

The leading theory of dark matter is running out of room to hide.

The quest to understand lysosomal storage disorders (LSDs) has left researchers grappling with questions that have implications for other diseases too.