Summary: Researchers at the University of Missouri report that young adults with autism may show early brain changes linked to Parkinson’s disease. Using Dopamine Transporter (DaT) scans—commonly used to evaluate Parkinson’s in older adults—the team detected irregularities in dopamine recycling in some participants, suggesting DaT imaging might serve as an early biomarker decades before motor … Read more

Summary: Canaries are accomplished vocal learners, capable of combining 30 to 40 distinct syllables into long, structured songs. Researchers have built TweetyBERT, a self-supervised AI model that automatically parses these songs with accuracy comparable to expert human annotators. TweetyBERT adapts the transformer architecture behind early BERT-based language models to detect notes, syllables, and phrases in … Read more

Summary: Could the water you drink affect your brain? A large preliminary study finds a clear association between the age and type of groundwater people use for drinking and their risk of Parkinson’s disease. Researchers report that people whose drinking water comes from relatively “new” groundwater—recharged within roughly the last 70–75 years—or from certain underground … Read more

Summary: New research challenges the long-standing idea that better navigators have visibly larger brain regions. Using advanced deep learning applied to MRI scans, researchers found no clear link between macroscopic brain structure—including the hippocampus—and real-world spatial navigation performance in healthy young adults. Researchers applied state-of-the-art deep convolutional neural networks and graph convolutional neural networks to … Read more

Summary: For a small subset of people with long COVID, flavors such as chocolate and coffee have been missing for more than a year. A new study now supplies direct biological evidence linking persistent taste loss to a specific molecular defect in human taste buds. Researchers performing biopsies on human fungiform taste papillae found a … Read more

Summary: How much we enjoy a sweet drink can depend more on what we expect than on the drink’s actual ingredients. A new human neuroimaging study shows that the brain’s reward circuitry responds differently depending on whether people believe a beverage contains sugar or an artificial sweetener—meaning expectations alone can make sugar substitutes feel more … Read more

Summary: GLP-1 receptor agonists—widely prescribed drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy for diabetes and weight management—may also offer unanticipated benefits for people with chronic migraine. A preliminary, observational analysis found that people with chronic migraine who started GLP-1 drugs had fewer emergency department visits and hospital admissions and were less likely to escalate to additional … Read more

Summary: Why do people with alcohol use disorder often choose drinking over meaningful social connections? A new animal study pinpoints a specific brain region—the anterior insula—as a driver of that maladaptive choice. Using rat models, researchers observed that activity in the anterior insula rises sharply just before a decision is made, biasing the brain toward … Read more

Summary: Many esports athletes rely on sugary energy drinks or caffeine to endure long tournaments, but a healthier, simple option may already be in the fridge. Researchers at the University of Tsukuba report that unsweetened, highly carbonated (sparkling) water helps players sustain mental focus, lowers signs of cognitive fatigue, and increases enjoyment during prolonged three-hour … Read more

Summary: Why do we often stick with the “tried and tested” even when a clearly better option is available? A large-scale study suggests that repetition itself—rather than an objective evaluation of outcomes—strongly shapes our preferences. Researchers analyzed 15 datasets from more than 700 participants and found that people do not always store the intrinsic value … Read more