Brain & Aging
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Autistic Teenagers Are Bullied Three Times as Often, and We Have Barely Studied How to Protect Them
Autistic teenagers are bullied roughly three times as often as their peers, and the sexual-victimization risk that shadows them into adulthood is just as real, yet the research meant to protect them is small, scattered, and looking the other way.
Brain & AgingThe Amino Acid Sold for Focus Tracked Fewer Years for Men, Not Women
In more than 270,000 people, men with higher blood tyrosine died sooner, by nearly a year on the genetic estimate. Women showed no clear lifespan signal. The amino acid is sold in capsules for focus.
Brain & AgingThey Didn't Rewrite the Memory. A Flinch of Surprise Predicted Who Got Better.
Polish researchers had 180 young adults imagine a defender stepping into a painful childhood memory. The rewrite itself helped only modestly. What predicted who improved was an involuntary jolt of surprise, measured in the skin, when the expected blow never came.
Brain & AgingThe Calm-Down Breath That Made People Bet Bigger
A 2-second inhale and an 8-second exhale slowed 41 people's hearts and, across the same sessions, made them more willing to take the risky bet. The pull came from the reward side, not from any loss of caution.
Brain & AgingA Stanford Lab Deleted One Immune Receptor and Its Old Mice Barely Aged
Stanford says it found one big reason we age. The proof is a genetically engineered mouse, no such drug exists for people, and the senior author already holds patents on inhibiting the receptor she wants blocked.
Brain & AgingThe ADHD Creativity Bump Is Modest, and It Fades Right Where the Symptoms Turn Clinical
The headlines sell the wandering ADHD mind as a hidden creative gift. The data underneath shows the edge is modest and flattens right as symptoms cross into the clinical range.
Brain & AgingChronic Money Trouble Showed Up on the Brain Scans, Decades Later
In a British cohort followed since birth, people who spent years in the bottom fifth of income had weaker verbal memory by their fifties and larger brain ventricles, a marker of brain aging, by their seventies, even after childhood and education were accounted for.
Brain & AgingIn Mice, Early-Life Stress Writes a Molecular Mark Onto the Brain's Reward Neurons. Turn One Enzyme Down, and It Never Sets
Early-life stress raises an enzyme called SETD7 in the brain's dopamine neurons, loosening the DNA around stress genes so they fire too easily into adulthood. When researchers blocked it in mice, the stressed animals did not develop the same anxiety-like stress sensitivity, and stayed as social and
Brain & AgingIn Depressed Brains, the New-Neuron Supply Had Stalled Where Fresh Pain Gets Sorted From Old
Columbia researchers mapped nearly 500,000 cells from postmortem brains and found the depressed ones showed a stalled supply of new hippocampal neurons, the cells thought to keep a fresh setback from merging with every old one.
Brain & AgingIn Abstinent Mice, a Deep Brain Region More Than Doubles Its Activity Before Relapse
In mice, a deep brain region more than doubled its activity after they quit drinking, before they touched a drop again. Relapse-like drinking may be a brain adaptation, not a failure of will.
Brain & AgingThe Vitamin D Trials That Found No Brain Benefit Never Tested This Dose
Fifty-four older adults with failing sleep and early memory loss, and the ones taking 5,000 IU of vitamin D a day scored 13 percent higher on a standard cognitive test. The major null trials never tested that dose.
Brain & AgingA Brain Clock Says Your Fourth Language Is Worth 13 Years. Nobody's Published the Proof.
The 13-years-younger figure comes from a conference talk with no paper behind it, and the sturdier study underneath still can't tell you whether the languages did anything at all.
Brain & AgingBanned in 1979, 'Legacy' PCBs Are Now Tied to Shorter Telomeres in Children
Dioxin-like PCBs left American factories decades ago and never left children's bodies. New research traces how they may erode the protective caps on kids' chromosomes, and may help explain lower cognitive scores.
Brain & AgingThe Marmoset Under Salk's Claim That Brain Waves Build the Reality You See
A Salk lab says the electrical waves rolling across your cortex are a generative engine that builds what you see. The catch: the splashy new paper is a review, and the experiments under it are marmosets squinting at faint dots.
Brain & AgingBracing for a Fall That Hasn't Happened Yet: The Bargain the Aging Ankle Strikes
Falls kill more older Americans than any other injury, and a study of 107 walkers points at the body's own defense: the aging ankle appears to brace for stability, buying it with a shorter, slower, more tiring stride.
Brain & AgingAny Amount of Midlife Movement Tracked With Slower Brain Decline, Most Clearly in Mexican American Adults
In a San Antonio cohort followed since 1979, any physical activity in midlife tracked with slower brain decline, and the link showed up most clearly in the Mexican American adults Alzheimer's research keeps leaving out.
Brain & AgingThe Craving Brake Nobody Mapped: How GLP-1 Drugs Quiet Cravings From the Lateral Septum
The anti-craving effect pushing people to use a diabetes shot off-label against drinking traces to a brain region built to inhibit, not to reward, and the human evidence is still just two small trials deep.
Brain & AgingFor Twenty Years, Women Were Warned That Estrogen Raised Their Dementia Risk. Stanford's Autopsies Point the Other Way.
A randomized federal trial spent two decades warning that hormone therapy raised older women's dementia risk. A Stanford autopsy study just found the opposite association. The catch: both studied women who started the drug far too late to settle it.
Brain & AgingThis Week's Autism 'Breakthrough': A Rare Mutation, an Injection Into Mice, and Not One Human Patient
An injection that silences one gene rescued social behavior in mutant mice and a dish of human cells. The headlines called it an autism therapy. No autistic person has received it, and the gene it targets is mutated in a small fraction of cases.
Brain & AgingThey Measured the Forever Chemicals in the Umbilical Cord Itself. The Babies With the Most Scored Lower at Two.
Scientists skipped the usual stand-in and measured the forever chemicals in the umbilical cord blood itself. By age two, the babies carrying more of them scored lower on communication and motor development, and the companies that made these chemicals knew the risk for decades.
Brain & AgingThe Stress Hormone Was Already High Before Daily Cannabis Users Woke Up
Oregon State measured the morning stress hormone in 39 daily users and 43 non-users. The people reaching for cannabis to unwind started every day with cortisol already running higher, and it tracked with the cannabis-related consequences they reported.
Brain & AgingEurope's Wildfire Smoke Has a Second Blast Radius: Stopped Hearts and Mood-Disorder ER Visits Far From the Flames
When California's wildfire PM2.5 climbed, depression ED visits rose 15 percent and mood-disorder visits 29 percent up to a week later, and per microgram that smoke was tied to larger health effects than ordinary city smog.
Brain & AgingChemists Cracked Unsorted Plastic Into Hydrogen With Lye, and Trapped Three-Quarters of the Carbon Instead of Torching It
Most plastic never gets recycled. It gets burned or buried, and polyethylene keeps turning up in human brain tissue. A UCLA and Ewha team cracked mixed, unsorted trash into more than 90 percent pure hydrogen at low heat and trapped 75 percent of the carbon instead of letting it escape.
Brain & AgingChristof Koch Bet a Case of Wine That Science Would Find Consciousness in the Brain by 2023. He Lost.
At a symposium in Portugal, the neuroscientist who spent 25 years hunting consciousness inside the brain conceded the field's central promise is still unpaid, and floated that consciousness might be fundamental to reality rather than manufactured by neurons.