Summary: A new study from Okayama University shows that pleasant touch strengthens social bonds between humans and rats by activating oxytocin signaling in the brain. Repeated tickling increased rats’ 50 kHz vocalizations, led them to prefer human interaction, and raised oxytocin receptor expression in the ventrolateral ventromedial hypothalamus (VMHvl). When researchers blocked oxytocin signaling in … Read more

Summary: New research suggests the Covid-19 pandemic may have accelerated brain ageing in the general population, including people who were never infected. Longitudinal brain scans from nearly 1,000 adults indicate that older adults, men, and people from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds experienced the largest changes. Although measurable declines in cognitive processing speed and mental flexibility were … Read more

Summary: Scientists have explained how our internal clocks preserve a roughly 24-hour rhythm even as temperatures change. By applying physics-based mathematical methods to models of gene activity, researchers showed that the rhythm of clock gene expression becomes skewed at higher temperatures—rising faster and decaying more slowly—so that the overall cycle length stays the same. This … Read more

Summary: Researchers have built the first practical sort-in-memory hardware system that handles complex, nonlinear sorting without conventional comparators. By combining a novel Digit Read mechanism with a Tree Node Skipping algorithm and several cross-array scaling strategies, the team demonstrated a fast, energy-efficient, and reconfigurable memristor-based architecture suitable for AI, big data, and edge computing workloads. … Read more

Summary: A large national study found that greater exposure to green space before birth and during early childhood is associated with lower risks of neurodevelopmental disorders. Analysis of more than 1.8 million mother–child pairs enrolled in Medicaid showed reduced rates of ADHD, autism spectrum disorder (ASD), intellectual disability and learning difficulties in areas with higher … Read more

Summary: New research reveals how tau pathology spreads and damages synapses in progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). Using human postmortem tissue and live human brain slice models, scientists demonstrated that tau accumulates in both presynaptic and postsynaptic terminals and likely propagates neuron to neuron through synaptic contacts. Synapses containing tau were more prone to loss, and … Read more

Summary: New research demonstrates that the brain’s slow oscillations and sleep spindles—two critical rhythms that support memory consolidation during non‑REM sleep—are influenced by more than age alone. Once thought to be fixed individual traits, these rhythms can be modulated by metabolic state: for example, fasting before sleep can improve their timing and coordination. In animal … Read more

Summary: New research shows how the brain’s structural connectivity shapes psychopathic traits and the externalizing behaviors that often accompany them. Using advanced connectome-based predictive modeling, investigators identified two distinct white-matter networks: one linked to altered social-affective and reward processing, and another tied to weakened attentional control. These complementary pathways help explain how psychopathy can combine … Read more

Summary: A large Danish register-based study finds that most diagnosed cases of major mental illnesses—such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression—occur in people who do not have an affected close relative. By analyzing data from over 3 million individuals across multiple generations, the researchers show that while family history raises the risk for the same … Read more

Summary: A large Danish study finds that children who carry a higher burden of genetic variants linked to ADHD have an increased statistical risk of experiencing severe childhood maltreatment and neglect. The risk is further elevated when parents have a psychiatric diagnosis. The research highlights how genetic vulnerability and environmental factors interact and points to … Read more