Summary: A pilot randomized, controlled clinical trial provides the first targeted clinical evidence that immunotherapy may offer a new treatment avenue for people with treatment-resistant depression. The study tested whether tocilizumab, an anti-inflammatory drug commonly used for autoimmune conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, can relieve depressive symptoms by blocking a specific inflammatory pathway. By selecting … Read more

Summary: A bold, cross-disciplinary study will investigate how intense human emotions distort and reorganize memory. The project, titled Quantum Emotions, represents a major advance within the emerging field of quantum cognition by combining psychological research, cognitive neuroscience, and mathematical methods drawn from quantum theory. Researchers will apply quantum-inspired mathematical models alongside behavioural and neural measures … Read more

Summary: Researchers have produced the first direct experimental evidence that the severity of a genetic mutation can change sex-based vulnerability to autism spectrum disorder (ASD). While autism is diagnosed about four times more often in males than females, this new study shows that mild mutations spare female resilience, whereas severe mutations can overwhelm it and … Read more

Summary: Researchers have developed the first objective, real-time method to detect alcohol-induced blackouts while a person is still drinking. This breakthrough addresses a major public health problem: until now, blackouts could only be confirmed after the fact, often only the next day—after injuries, arrests, assaults, or overdoses might already have occurred. The team created a … Read more

Summary: New neurogenetics research shows that the APOE ε4 genetic variant—best known for increasing Alzheimer’s disease risk—also shapes how pathology spreads in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The study demonstrates that ALS is not a single uniform disorder but comprises biologically distinct subtypes, and that a patient’s APOE genotype strongly influences whether disease pathology remains localized … Read more

Summary: A landmark cognitive science study provides the first rigorous empirical evidence that a modern artificial intelligence can pass the Turing test. Using a randomized, controlled design based on Alan Turing’s 1950 framework, researchers evaluated whether current large language models (LLMs) can mimic human conversation convincingly enough that people cannot reliably distinguish them from real … Read more

Summary: The timing and structure of a person’s handwriting can provide an objective, non-invasive marker of cognitive decline. Researchers in Portugal measured subtle motor changes during writing using an inking pen on a digitizing tablet and found that demanding dictation tasks reveal disruptions in timing and stroke organization that distinguish older adults with cognitive impairment … Read more

Summary: A new Stanford study reveals a surprising link between schizophrenia and the peripheral immune system. Researchers found that neutrophils—the most numerous white blood cells in circulation—produce the complement protein C4A, previously thought to be produced mainly by the liver. C4A is a well-established genetic risk factor for schizophrenia and is implicated in excessive synaptic … Read more

Summary: A new longitudinal study provides the first empirical evidence that parental disapproval—particularly from mothers—can break up close friendships. Researchers followed the best friendships of 394 public-school students to evaluate how maternal opposition affects peer relationships. The findings show that mothers can be highly effective at disrupting friendships: when a mother voices strong disapproval or … Read more

Summary: A major technological advance removes a long-standing barrier in behavioral neuroimaging. Researchers introduced Neuroplex, an imaging pipeline that can simultaneously identify and track the real-time functional activity of up to nine distinct neuronal populations in freely moving mice. Neuroplex combines lightweight, head-mounted miniscopes with high-performance spectral confocal microscopy and a custom Python alignment tool … Read more