Summary: Everyday social contact—like talking with a friend or simply anticipating a future conversation—can soften the emotional impact of social exclusion. A large study shows that brief, familiar interactions help people recover more quickly from minor social slights and feel more secure. In an experiment involving 664 participants who experienced simulated exclusion, researchers found that … Read more

Summary: In a first-in-human study, researchers used a minimally invasive brain implant to produce a sense of touch in people who had lost tactile sensations. This approach may offer a path to restore fingertip sensation for individuals with paralysis, neuropathy or other sensory loss. Source: Feinstein Institute for Medical Research Researchers at The Feinstein Institutes … Read more

Summary: A randomized controlled trial from Penn State found that localized head cooling can quickly reduce depressive symptoms and produce measurable calming brain activity in healthy adults. The noninvasive intervention used a liquid-circulating cooling cap kept at 33°F for 30 minutes and was evaluated with electroencephalography (EEG) and standard mood questionnaires over a one-week protocol. … Read more

Summary: Even low doses of alcohol can trigger transcriptomic and epigenomic changes in brain regions linked to addiction. Source: University of Illinois New rodent research finds that even modest amounts of alcohol can rapidly change gene expression and chromatin structure in brain circuitry critical to addiction. Researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago report that … Read more

Summary: A novel deep learning algorithm that assesses the burden of genomic variants achieves about 70% accuracy in distinguishing mental health disorders among African American patients. Source: CHOP Researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) report that a deep learning model applied to whole genome sequencing data shows promising accuracy for identifying and differentiating … Read more

Small study links Zika virus to autoimmune attacks on brain myelin similar to multiple sclerosis A small clinical study released today and scheduled for presentation at the American Academy of Neurology’s 68th Annual Meeting (Vancouver, Canada, April 15–21, 2016) suggests that Zika virus infection may trigger immune-mediated damage to the brain’s myelin, producing effects that … Read more

Summary: A sudden fall in blood glucose during hunger can worsen mood and trigger stress responses. Hunger and mood are closely linked, new research from the University of Guelph shows. Researchers at the University of Guelph have found that an abrupt drop in glucose—what many people experience as that “hangry” feeling—can negatively affect mood and … Read more

Summary: A large analysis of more than 58,000 U.S. women and nearly 150,000 births indicates that offspring sex is not purely random at the family level. Instead, families often display a subtle, consistent bias toward boys or girls, linked in part to maternal age at first birth and specific maternal genetic variants. The study’s results … Read more

Study reveals novel role for the Pin1 molecule A synapse may appear as a tiny, empty space, but it is one of the brain’s most active and dynamic sites. As an electrical signal reaches the presynaptic terminal, it is converted into a chemical message that crosses the synaptic cleft and is then translated back into … Read more

Summary: A new noninvasive imaging approach combines acoustic imaging techniques and advanced inversion algorithms to map stiffness changes in the brain’s white and gray matter after head injury. Source: Acoustical Society of America Waveguide Elastography: Noninvasive Mapping of Brain Stiffness After Head Injury Researchers are refining a noninvasive technique to measure mechanical stiffness along fibrous … Read more