Summary: For years, researchers treated mRNA levels as a blueprint for protein production in the brain. New research shows that this blueprint can be misleading. Using Ribo-STAMP, a novel technique that directly monitors translation, scientists mapped real-time protein synthesis across nearly 20,000 individual cells in the mouse hippocampus and uncovered major differences between mRNA abundance … Read more

Summary: The specific kinds of words toddlers learn first—especially nouns organized by shared shape—can help predict which children will have ongoing language difficulties. Source: University of Miami Researchers led by Associate Professor Lynn Perry report that the types of words children acquire early in life can serve as an early indicator of later language outcomes. … Read more

Summary: Researchers report that neurotransmitter release is impaired in the brains of people with schizophrenia who carry a deletion in the neurexin 1 gene (NRXN1). Source: UMass A multidisciplinary team has demonstrated that a rare, single-gene mutation linked to neurodevelopmental disorders disrupts neurotransmitter release in neurons derived from schizophrenia patients. The study found that neurons … Read more

Summary: Researchers have identified a specific brain region in rats that plays a decisive role in economic choices under uncertainty, revealing how value is represented when animals face lottery-like decisions. The frontal orienting field (FOF) emerged as a principal site that encodes the value of risky options, while the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) showed only … Read more

Summary: The dopamine system helps the brain anticipate when and for how long unpleasant events will occur, but it does so without encoding prediction errors for those aversive events. Source: Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience A new study at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience clarifies how dopamine responds to unpleasant, aversive events. Dopamine is widely known … Read more

Summary: A recent neuroscience study finds that listening to emotional music while recalling neutral events can change the emotional tone of those memories. Participants who heard positive or negative music during recollection later remembered the same neutral stories with emotional details that matched the music’s mood. These memory changes were not short-lived: follow-up testing showed … Read more

Summary: Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed a reliable method to record human brain activity at the cellular level, revealing how individual neurons respond to numbers. Using microelectrode arrays during awake brain surgery, the team showed that single neurons can be tuned to specific quantities: a neuron becomes most active when … Read more

Summary: Researchers report that a woman’s attraction to a man can increase when his photo receives higher ratings from others. The same social influence was observed for abstract art. Source: University at St. Andrews. Researchers from the Universities of St Andrews, Durham, Exeter and Arizona State report that people’s preferences are shaped by others’ choices: … Read more

Response to Anxiety Linked to Movement Control Areas in the Brain Summary: Researchers report that anxiety responses in adolescents involve not only emotion-related regions but also motor control areas of the brain. Source: ECNP. A small longitudinal study presented at the ECNP Congress in Vienna suggests that social anxiety in teenagers is associated with activity … Read more

Summary: When anxiety develops, many specific brain regions become more active and the normal coordination between those regions breaks down. Source: University of New Mexico Overview: The global stressors of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic uncertainty and social unrest have heightened fear and distress for millions. Understanding how acute fear can evolve into long-lasting anxiety in … Read more