One-Third of U.S. Adults May Unknowingly Use Medications That Increase Depression Risk Summary: Researchers report that nearly one in three American adults use prescription medicines that can increase the risk of depression or suicidal thoughts—often without realizing it. Source: University of Illinois. Overview A new analysis by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago … Read more

Postmortem brain slices can be “read” to determine how a mouse was trained to behave in response to specific sounds. What once sounded like science fiction is now a demonstrated laboratory technique: researchers can cut a brain into thin slices and, by measuring properties of particular neurons and their synaptic connections, determine what an animal … Read more

Summary: Researchers have identified 29 distinct sources of potential bias that can affect artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) models used in medical imaging, spanning every stage from data collection to model deployment. The report outlines the limitations of current AI/ML approaches in medical imaging and offers practical mitigation strategies to help enable fairer, more … Read more

Summary: A new study explains how the brain anticipates what comes next during speech. Source: PLOS International team identifies conserved auditory-cortex mechanisms that predict upcoming speech Researchers from Newcastle University (UK) and the University of Iowa (USA) report new evidence about how the auditory cortex supports prediction during speech processing. Published in PLOS Biology, the … Read more

Summary: Researchers have identified the thalamus as a key regulator in the emergence of normal sleep and wake states during brain development. Source: George Washington University. Conscious awareness depends on continuous, internally generated brain activity. The way this activity is modulated underlies the electroencephalogram (EEG) and supports sleep, dreaming, perception, and attention. The appearance of … Read more

Summary: Researchers identified elevated levels of alpha2-Na+/K+ ATPase (alpha2-NKA), a protein that promotes toxic, inflammation-driving astrocytes, in brain samples from people who died of progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), Alzheimer’s disease and other tau-related neurodegenerative disorders. In a mouse model, treating reactive astrocytes with the FDA‑approved drug digoxin reduced astrocyte reactivity, decreased neuroinflammation and slowed tau-driven … Read more

Neurobiologists have for the first time isolated the responses of individual neurons in the fly brain to specific motion stimuli. This advance in motion-vision research opens the door to a more detailed understanding of the fly’s motion-detection circuitry and the distinct roles single cells play within that neural network. The brain of the fly – … Read more

Summary: A new machine-learning algorithm accurately distinguishes lower-grade gliomas from glioblastoma using clinically relevant MRI measurements of tumor location and volume. Source: Yale An estimated 18,000 people in the United States died from brain and spinal cord tumors in 2020. To help clinicians more quickly and reliably distinguish tumor severity, an international research team led … Read more

Summary: A new study identifies a powerful psychological predictor of maternal sleep health: a pregnant woman’s expectations about postpartum sleep strongly forecast her actual sleep disruption after birth. These expectations predict outcomes even more than prior sleep problems, number of previous births, or past psychiatric diagnoses. In a prospective study tracking 432 women from mid-pregnancy … Read more

Summary: New UC Berkeley research reveals how the brain replays and organizes memories, compressing long experiences into short, fixed-length neural sequences. By recording hundreds of hippocampal neurons in freely flying bats, scientists observed neural replay and theta-like sequences outside the rodent model, offering fresh insights into memory formation, navigation, and planning. The team found that … Read more