Summary: Our brain does more than record the passage of time—it segments and organizes experience into distinct, retrievable moments. New research from the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience at NTNU shows that neurons in the lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC) produce sudden, distinctive shifts in activity when meaningful events occur. These neural “bookmarks” separate the continuous … Read more

Summary: A new study shows that toddlers from around two years old can learn new words even when a speaker’s mouth or eyes are covered. Researchers found that successful vocabulary learning is driven by children following the speaker’s gaze and shifting their attention between the speaker and the object, rather than by seeing mouth movements. … Read more

Summary: New research demonstrates that a single olfactory neuron in fruit flies can drive two distinct behaviors in response to the same odor. When flies detect the smell of rotting fruit, one downstream neural pathway guides them toward the source, while a separate pathway controls changes in walking speed. These findings challenge the long-standing assumption … Read more

Summary: New research shows that the developmental timing of fluoxetine (Prozac) exposure has profound, long-lasting effects on mood and brain function. In a rodent model, early postnatal fluoxetine treatment produced persistent anxiety- and depression-like behaviors in males, whereas the same drug given during adolescence produced the opposite behavioral effects, reducing those symptoms. The study also … Read more

Summary: A new study shows that astrocytes — the star-shaped glial cells in the striatum — are central to how obesity alters brain function and whole-body metabolism. In obese mice, researchers found that altering astrocyte activity in the striatum improved cognitive flexibility and corrected aspects of metabolic regulation, pointing to astrocytes as underappreciated contributors to … Read more

Summary: A new study from the University of Cambridge demonstrates that grafted neural stem cells can generate new myelin in the central nervous system, offering renewed hope for therapies that target progressive multiple sclerosis (MS). In a mouse model, induced neural stem cells matured into oligodendrocytes—the cells that make myelin—and integrated safely into demyelinated areas. … Read more

Summary: Our bodies process food differently depending on the time of day, and consuming the bulk of daily calories later in the biological day has been linked to poorer metabolic health. A twin study found that those who concentrated most of their calories earlier in their personal day showed better insulin sensitivity and lower markers … Read more

Summary: New research finds that positive emotions can strengthen memory for otherwise meaningless images. In a controlled experiment, participants viewed neutral “squiggle” images paired with positive, neutral, or negative emotional pictures while researchers recorded brain activity. Squiggles shown alongside positive images were more likely to be remembered the following day, and specific patterns of brain … Read more

Summary: A new longitudinal study finds that anxiety experienced on Mondays is associated with a sustained rise in stress hormones among older adults, including retirees. Researchers report that participants who felt anxious on Mondays had, on average, 23% higher long-term cortisol levels measured in hair samples than peers who reported anxiety on other days, suggesting … Read more

Summary: New research from MIT shows how the poor, low-color vision experienced in early infancy can shape the brain’s visual pathways into specialized systems. Using computational models trained first on low-quality images and later on high-quality ones, the team demonstrated that this developmental progression encourages the emergence of processing units resembling magnocellular and parvocellular channels. … Read more