Summary: Researchers have long studied hemispatial neglect—a disorder in which people who suffered a stroke stop acknowledging events on the left side of space despite having intact basic vision. New intracerebral recordings reveal how attention and conscious perception interact in the brain, offering fresh insights into both cognitive disorders and the mechanisms of human awareness. … Read more

Summary: Researchers have identified a previously unrecognized sensory pathway that connects the foot to the face on the same side of the body. This ipsilateral route appears to partially bypass the spinal cord and may help explain neurological phenomena such as referred itch and the so-called jogger’s migraine. The discovery also raises the possibility of … Read more

When police in Spain sought to locate two murder victims last year, they turned to a tool that measures brain activity in convicted and confessed offenders. The technology, called Brain Fingerprinting and developed by the U.S. company Government Works Inc., attempts to use brain wave responses to specific stimuli to infer recognition and, by extension, … Read more

Summary: A new study finds that college football players—particularly linemen—are more likely to develop higher blood pressure and changes to left ventricular size and function over a single season. Source: American College of Cardiology Linemen show increased blood pressure and left ventricular hypertrophy after one season College-level American football is associated with a rise in … Read more

Summary: Individual differences in gut physiology and the gut environment strongly influence the composition and activity of the gut microbiome and how we process food. Using a small wireless capsule that recorded pH, temperature and pressure as it traveled through the digestive tract, researchers observed large variations in transit times and local gut conditions between … Read more

Summary: An international research collaboration has identified specific genetic variants that raise the risk of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), offering new biological insight into the condition. Source: Aarhus University. Researchers from the Danish iPSYCH project together with teams at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Massachusetts General Hospital, SUNY Upstate Medical University, and … Read more

Summary: In mice, exposure to THC caused sustained activation of mitochondrial cannabinoid receptors in astrocytes, triggering a molecular cascade that disrupted glucose metabolism. Astrocytes’ capacity to convert glucose into lactate—the metabolic “fuel” neurons rely on—was reduced, impairing neuronal function and diminishing social behavior for up to 24 hours after cannabis exposure. Source: INSERM Regular cannabis … Read more

Summary: New research shows that when stress occurs during pregnancy changes how it affects infant stress responses—and these effects differ by sex. The study found that stress in mid-pregnancy more strongly alters stress reactivity in girls, while stress experienced later in gestation has a greater impact on boys. Researchers measured infants’ hormonal responses to a … Read more

Summary: Researchers have identified a promising new biomarker for multiple sclerosis (MS): the thickness of the inflammatory rim that surrounds chronic brain lesions. This rim thickness, observable with molecular imaging and confirmed in tissue studies, predicts how rapidly and severely a patient’s disease will progress. By integrating in vivo PET imaging with detailed post-mortem tissue … Read more

Summary: Researchers have launched a pioneering study to determine how genes linked to autism spectrum disorder (ASD) converge on shared neural mechanisms, with a particular focus on auditory hypersensitivity. The team aims to identify common circuit-level changes that different ASD-associated genes may cause, which could explain why many individuals with autism experience overwhelming sensitivity to … Read more