Summary: Researchers have designed a new maze to evaluate spatial and navigational memory. The Honeycomb Maze is reported to be a substantial improvement over the widely used Morris Water Maze. Source: Sainsbury Wellcome Center. A new behavioral tool for studying spatial memory, the Honeycomb Maze, offers researchers more precise and controllable measures of navigation than … Read more

Summary: Tissue plasminogen activators (tPA), FDA-approved drugs commonly used to dissolve clots in heart attack and stroke patients, are being investigated as a potential emergency treatment for severe COVID-19 respiratory failure. Researchers propose using tPA to break up microclots in the lungs when ventilators are ineffective or unavailable. Source: MIT Researchers from MIT and the … Read more

Summary: This study compared real-world social network size and resting-state functional connectivity of a social brain network in people with schizophrenia and individuals with social anhedonia. Only the schizophrenia group showed smaller real-life social networks. At the neural level, schizophrenia and social anhedonia produced opposite patterns: schizophrenia was associated with reduced segregation and lower functional … Read more

Summary: Early postmenopausal estrogen replacement may reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease in some women. Source: IOS Press Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the leading cause of dementia and the most common neurodegenerative disorder. It disproportionately affects women. A recent study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease highlights how factors such as age, reproductive status, … Read more

Summary: A new study identifies the architectural and evolutionary principles that shape how children and artificial neural networks acquire language. Bridging cognitive linguistics and deep learning, the research demonstrates how iterated learning—where language is transmitted across generations—causes language to grow more structured, making it easier to learn. Using a deep linear neural network designed to … Read more

Summary: Two or more hours of daily screen time is associated with increased inattention and other clinically significant behavioural problems in preschool-aged children. Source: University of Alberta Overview: A Canadian study of more than 2,400 families found that preschool children who spend two hours or more per day using screens are significantly more likely to … Read more

Summary: New fMRI research identifies distinct connections between musical processing and brain regions typically involved in language. Source: University of Tokyo Researchers in Japan used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine how secondary school students’ brains respond while detecting errors in music. They found that students who received early musical training showed stronger and more … Read more

Summary: Researchers report that regular use of the club drug GHB (gamma‑hydroxybutyrate), and especially repeated GHB‑induced comas, are linked to changes in brain networks involved in long‑term memory and working memory, and to higher levels of stress and anxiety. Source: European College of Neuropsychopharmacology Regular recreational use of GHB and repeated GHB‑induced comas are associated … Read more

Summary: Children and adults on the autism spectrum are more accurate at matching and maintaining relative pitch than they are at matching absolute pitch, and this pattern holds across both speech and song. Source: University at Buffalo A new study comparing how well people match pitch and duration in speech and song sheds light on … Read more

Summary: Researchers at the University of Cologne have shown that gephyrin, a central protein at inhibitory synapses, assembles into ordered filamentous structures that form the physical scaffold of postsynaptic densities. This discovery challenges the previous assumption that synaptic scaffold proteins were largely disordered and reveals a higher level of molecular organization at inhibitory synapses. Using … Read more