Summary: A new study reveals that anxiety and apathy lead to fundamentally different patterns in decision-making under uncertainty. Anxious individuals perceive their environment as highly volatile, leading them to explore more options, especially after negative outcomes.In contrast, apathetic individuals view outcomes as random, reducing their willingness to explore new choices....
Summary: A new study will investigate how lifestyle, diet, and social connections influence aging. The Arlington Study of Healthy Aging (ASHA) will enroll 600 volunteers aged 50 to 80 to undergo full-body imaging, cognitive testing, and vascular health assessments.Researchers aim to provide insights that help individuals and healthcare providers better...
Summary: A new study finds that training people to think about specific future events can reduce impulsivity and improve decision-making. Researchers used fMRI scans to show that practicing episodic future thinking increased connectivity in key brain regions, making participants less likely to choose immediate rewards over long-term benefits.The technique, previously...
Summary: A large study analyzing over 60,000 mother-child pairs found that a Western diet during pregnancy—high in fat, sugar, and processed foods—was associated with a significantly increased risk of ADHD and autism in children. Even small shifts toward a Western diet correlated with a 66% higher risk of ADHD and...
Summary: A new study reveals how prenatal infections followed by early-life stress—known as “two-hit stress”—can lead to brain dysfunction and psychiatric-like behaviors. Researchers found that affected mice showed abnormal cerebellar activity, increased microglial turnover, and impaired brain-wide connectivity.Notably, microglia replacement therapy successfully reversed these effects, offering a potential new approach...
Summary: A new study finds that spite—driven by feelings of uncertainty, threat, or disadvantage—plays a key role in conspiracy theory belief. Researchers analyzed data from 1,000 participants and found that spiteful motives strengthened the link between conspiracy thinking and the need for understanding, security, and social significance.Rather than a conscious...
Summary: A new study finds that sleep spindles—bursts of brain activity during sleep—may predict recovery in unresponsive patients with recent brain injuries. Researchers analyzed EEG recordings of 226 comatose patients and found that those with sleep spindles were significantly more likely to regain consciousness and functional independence.By discharge, 76% of...
Summary: A new study reveals that Heschl’s gyrus, once thought to only process sound, actually plays a crucial role in interpreting speech melody, or prosody. Researchers tracked brain activity in epilepsy patients with implanted electrodes and found that this region encodes pitch accents as meaningful linguistic signals, separate from word...
Summary: A new study of 121 infants in Accra, Ghana, reveals that babies regularly hear between two and six languages from multiple caregivers. Unlike the Western model of learning one language from a primary caregiver, these children acquire language through a dynamic social environment.Local languages like Akan, Ga, and Ewe...
Summary: A new study reveals that consuming high-calorie, highly processed foods for just five days can reduce the brain’s sensitivity to insulin, a key factor in obesity and type 2 diabetes. Researchers found that even in healthy individuals, short-term unhealthy eating altered brain function, mimicking effects seen in people with...
