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Neuroscience News is an independent open access science magazine. Since 2001, we have featured neuroscience research news from labs, universities, hospitals and news departments around the world. Topics include brain research, AI, psychology, neuroscience, mental health and neurotech.

Latest Neuroscience News

Science news articles cover neuroscience, neurology, psychology, AI, mental health, robotics, neurotechnology and cognitive sciences.

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Watching Pain on Screen Can Make Your Body Flinch

Watching someone experience pain on screen activates your own brain’s touch-processing system in a highly organized, body-specific way. Visual regions of the brain contain hidden maps of the body that allow sight alone to trigger sensations normally produced by physical contact.

Brain Damage in Schizophrenia May Begin in Specific Neural Epicenters

New brain imaging research shows that structural damage in schizophrenia spectrum disorders may begin in specific “epicenter” regions before spreading across connected brain networks. Individuals with the condition showed widespread reductions in structural similarity between key cognitive and emotional brain regions.

Brain Uses Molecular Timers to Decide What We Remember

New research shows that long-term memory is not stored by a single molecular switch, but by a sequence of timed genetic programs unfolding across different brain regions. Using a virtual-reality learning model in mice, scientists found that experiences are promoted or demoted through multiple biological “durability gates.”

AI Uncovers Hidden Stress Damage in the Body

Researchers developed an AI tool that detects chronic stress by measuring adrenal gland volume on routine chest CT scans. This biomarker aligns with cortisol levels, stress questionnaires, and future cardiovascular outcomes, offering the first imaging-based method to quantify stress load in the body.

Brain Rebuilds New Skills Using “Cognitive LEGO Blocks”

New research reveals that the brain’s flexibility comes from its ability to reuse “cognitive building blocks” across many tasks, allowing rapid adaptation with minimal relearning. By studying monkeys performing a set of related categorization tasks, researchers found that the prefrontal cortex combines and recombines shared neural patterns like components in a modular system.

Neurology News Articles

Neurology news articles cover neurology, brain cancer, traumatic brain injuries, neurosurgery, neuroanatomy, brain research and neurological disorders.

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Young Adults With Obesity Show Early Signs of Brain Stress

New research shows that young adults with obesity already display biological patterns associated with liver stress, chronic inflammation, and early neural injury—changes typically seen in older adults with cognitive impairment. Participants with obesity also had unusually low blood choline levels, a nutrient critical for liver function, inflammation control, and long-term brain health.

Your Brain Has a Built-In Isolation Mode

New research uncovers the exact immune-to-brain pathway that drives the loss of social motivation during sickness. Scientists showed that when the cytokine IL-1β binds to receptors on neurons within the dorsal raphe nucleus, it activates a circuit that reduces social interaction.

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Untreated Sleep Apnea Doubles Parkinson’s Risk

A large analysis of more than 11 million medical records found that people with untreated obstructive sleep apnea face a substantially higher risk of developing Parkinson’s disease over time. Even after accounting for factors like age, obesity, and cardiovascular conditions, those who did not use CPAP were nearly twice as likely to be diagnosed with Parkinson’s as those who treated their apnea.

Gene Discovery Reveals Hidden Risk Pathway for Delirium

A massive genetic analysis of over one million people has revealed that APOE, long known for its role in Alzheimer’s disease, also independently increases a person’s risk of delirium. The researchers found that this effect cannot be explained solely by dementia, showing that APOE directly contributes to delirium vulnerability in otherwise cognitively healthy individuals.

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One in Two Americans Have Neurological Disorders

A comprehensive national analysis shows that over 180 million Americans—more than half the U.S. population—are living with a neurological disease or disorder. These conditions span the lifespan, from neurodevelopmental disorders to migraines to age-related diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

AI News Articles

AI news articles cover science articles about artificial intelligence including ChatGPT, Bard, Dalle, neural networks, machine learning, LLMs, AGI and other AI related topics.

AI Reveals Lions Don’t Just Roar, They Have a Second Call

A new study reveals African lions produce two types of roars, overturning long-held assumptions and opening the door to more precise wildlife monitoring. Using machine learning, researchers automatically distinguished between full-throated and newly identified intermediary roars with over 95% accuracy, eliminating much of the human bias in vocal identification.

AI Interviews Outperform Standard Mental Health Rating Scales

A new study demonstrates that an AI assistant can conduct psychiatric assessment interviews with greater diagnostic accuracy than widely used mental health rating scales. In a sample of 303 participants with confirmed psychiatric conditions, the AI assistant Alba provided DSM-based diagnostic suggestions after a brief conversational interview, outperforming rating scales in eight of nine disorders.

The Brain Has a Dance Mode, And AI Just Mapped It

A team of researchers used a massive dance video dataset and advanced AI models to map how the human brain interprets dance, revealing striking differences between experts and nonexperts. By pairing fMRI recordings with AI-derived cross-modal features, they found that higher-order brain regions outperform simple motion or sound cues when processing choreography.

AI Models Form Theory-of-Mind Beliefs

Researchers showed that large language models use a small, specialized subset of parameters to perform Theory-of-Mind reasoning, despite activating their full network for every task. This sparse internal circuitry depends heavily on positional encoding, especially rotary positional encoding, which shapes how the model tracks beliefs and perspectives.

Brain Decoder Translates Visual Thoughts Into Text

A new brain decoding method called mind captioning can generate accurate text descriptions of what a person is seeing or recalling—without relying on the brain's language system. Instead, it uses semantic features from vision-related brain activity and deep learning models to translate nonverbal thoughts into structured sentences.

Psychology News Articles

Science research articles cover psychology, depression, mental health, schizophrenia, mental disorders, happiness, stress, PTSD, autism, psychiatry and therapy.

Genes Behind Dog Behaviors Also Shape Human Emotions

Researchers analyzed the genomes and behavioral profiles of 1,300 golden retrievers and found that several behavioral traits—such as trainability, fear of strangers, and aggression toward other dogs—are shaped by specific genetic variants. Remarkably, a dozen of these same genes also influence emotional and cognitive traits in humans, revealing shared biological roots across species.

Genetics Point to a New Type of Suicide Risk

New research shows that many people who die by suicide without prior suicidal thoughts or behaviors are not simply “missed cases”—they may have an entirely different underlying risk profile. Genetic analyses of more than 2,700 deaths revealed that these individuals carry fewer genetic risk factors for major psychiatric conditions compared to those with known suicidality.

Stress-Like Behaviors Traced to a Single ATP Circuit in the Brain

New research reveals that reduced ATP signaling in the hippocampus plays a causal role in both depression- and anxiety-like behaviors. In stressed male mice, ATP levels and the ATP-releasing protein connexin 43 were markedly lower.

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Psychedelic ‘Ego Death’ Tied to a Collapse in Alpha Brain Waves

A new study using DMT as a scientific tool reveals how psychedelics alter the brain’s alpha-wave dynamics and weaken our sense of self. The researchers found that DMT pushes the brain away from its usual “critical” balance between chaos and order, a state believed to be essential for coherent self-awareness over time.

Brain Circuit That Forces Behavior Into “Repeat Mode” Identified

A new study has identified a specific brain circuit that can push behavior into a compulsive “repeat mode,” forcing mice to continue digging and sniffing even when rewards are available. The circuit links the nucleus accumbens to the hypothalamus and then to the lateral habenula, a region involved in processing negative experiences.

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Brain Learning Power Peaks at Specific Times of Day

A new study reveals that the brain’s responsiveness and capacity for learning shift with the time of day, governed by molecules like adenosine that link metabolism, sleep, and neural signaling. Using optogenetics, researchers found that identical stimuli activated brain cells differently at sunrise versus sunset, suggesting that neuronal excitability and plasticity follow daily rhythms.

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Human Mind Prefers Simple Explanations Over Complex Truths

New research shows that people tend to prefer simple explanations even when complex ones are more accurate. The study found that individuals focus mainly on visible or known causes while neglecting hidden or absent ones, leading to oversimplified reasoning.

Rotating Brain Waves Help the Mind Refocus After Distraction

Neuroscientists have discovered that when the brain is distracted, coordinated “rotating” waves of neural activity help it steer back to focus. Using electrical recordings in animals, the team found that neurons in the prefrontal cortex synchronize in circular patterns—like starlings in flight—to recover from cognitive interruptions.

When Using AI, Users Fall for the Dunning-Kruger Trap in Reverse

A new study reveals that when interacting with AI tools like ChatGPT, everyone—regardless of skill level—overestimates their performance. Researchers found that the usual Dunning-Kruger Effect disappears, and instead, AI-literate users show even greater overconfidence in their abilities.

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Supplement Shows Promise in Blocking Amyloid in Alzheimer’s

A new study shows that oral arginine, a naturally occurring amino acid, can significantly suppress amyloid-β aggregation in Alzheimer’s disease models. Researchers found that arginine not only prevented Aβ42 from clumping but also reduced plaques and inflammation in mouse and fruit fly models carrying Alzheimer’s-related mutations.

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