What You Choose to Remember Shapes Memory More Than Emotion
Summary: A new study reveals that intentional memory control—deciding what to remember or forget—is more powerful than emotional influence when forming long-term memories. Participants were more likely to recall words they were told to remember than those carrying emotional weight, even though emotion sometimes strengthened recall or caused false memories. Interestingly, sleep itself did not […]
Calcium Supplements Do Not Raise Dementia Risk
Summary: A long-term study of more than 1,400 older women found no evidence that calcium supplements increase dementia risk, easing previous concerns about their safety. Conducted over 14.5 years, the research compared women taking calcium monotherapy to those given a placebo and found no difference in cognitive outcomes. Even after accounting for genetics, diet, and […]
Social Brain: Neurons That Decide Who Wins and Who Yields
Summary: Researchers have pinpointed specific brain cells that control how animals react to social defeat, offering new insight into the biology of dominance and submission. In male mice, neurons in the dorsomedial striatum—known as cholinergic interneurons—were found to regulate the “loser effect,” where past defeats lower an individual’s future social rank. When these neurons were […]
AI Builds the Most Detailed Map of the Mouse Brain Yet
Summary: Researchers have created one of the most detailed maps of the mouse brain ever made, using artificial intelligence to reveal 1,300 distinct regions and subregions. The AI model, called CellTransformer, identified new brain areas that had never been charted before, providing an unprecedented view of brain organization. Unlike traditional brain maps based on human […]
Hidden Early Signs of Diabetic Blindness Revealed
Summary: Scientists have developed a powerful new imaging method that reveals how immune cells in the eye behave long before visible damage occurs in diabetic retinopathy. Using a combination of a head-fixation device, contact lenses, and a custom objective lens, researchers were able to capture live, high-resolution images of microglia activity in diabetic mice. They […]
Brain’s Shape Could Reveal the Earliest Signs of Alzheimer’s
Summary: A groundbreaking study reveals that aging alters not just the size but the shape of the human brain, reshaping regions in ways linked to memory and reasoning decline. Researchers found that as people age, the lower and front areas of the brain expand outward, while the upper and back regions compress inward. These geometric […]
CBD Calms the Inflamed Alzheimer’s Brain
Summary: A new study reveals that cannabidiol (CBD) can significantly reduce neuroinflammation associated with Alzheimer’s disease. In experiments using an Alzheimer’s mouse model, researchers found that inhaled CBD lowered the activity of key genes driving inflammation and decreased harmful proinflammatory molecules in the brain. The compound interacted with specific immune regulators that control the body’s […]
Neurons Burn Fat for Fuel: Discovery Could Reverse Brain Damage
Summary: Scientists have shown that neurons don’t rely solely on sugar for energy — they can also burn fat. When energy demand spikes, neurons even create their own fats by recycling parts of themselves, a process dependent on a key protein called DDHD2. In Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia 54 (HSP54), DDHD2 malfunctions, cutting off this energy […]
AI Images That Change When Rotated Reveal How the Mind Sees
Summary: Researchers have developed AI-generated “visual anagrams” — images that transform into entirely new objects when rotated — to explore how the brain processes perception. Unlike traditional optical illusions, these rotating images allow scientists to isolate how people interpret size, emotion, and animacy in visual information. Early experiments revealed that people’s aesthetic preferences still matched […]
AI Learns to Design the Human Body’s Most Elusive Proteins
Summary: A new machine learning method has achieved what even AlphaFold cannot — the design of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs), the shape-shifting biomolecules that make up nearly 30% of all human proteins. These unstable proteins play key roles in cellular communication, sensing, and disease, yet their ever-changing structures have defied traditional AI prediction models. Using […]