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brain research

Research articles and news stories tagged with brain research

·December 11, 2025·5 min read

Boosting Sleep Ripples Helps Preserve Memories Normally Forgotten

A new study shows that precisely manipulating brain activity during sleep can help mice retain memories that would normally fade, offering a potential pathway for treating memory loss conditions. Researchers identified a specific sleep-related pattern—large sharp-wave ripples—that signals when new experiences are being transferred from the hippocampus to the neocortex for long-term storage. By boosting these ripples at just the right moment using optogenetics, scientists enabled mice to remember brief encounters they would typically forget.

Featured Neuroscience Psychology

·December 11, 2025·7 min read

Stress Levels Predict Cannabis Use

New research shows that rats with naturally higher baseline stress hormone levels are significantly more likely to self-administer cannabis vapor. Over several weeks, rats were allowed to nose-poke for cannabis, and those with elevated corticosterone displayed the strongest drug-seeking behavior.

This shows a neuron with a broken myelin sheath.

Featured Neuroscience

·December 11, 2025·7 min read

Losing Myelin Scrambles the Brain’s Sensory Signals

New research reveals that even a small loss of myelin—the protective coating around neurons—can severely disrupt how the brain sends and interprets sensory information. Studying corticothalamic circuits in mice, scientists found that when the first segment of myelin closest to the neuron’s cell body was degraded, nerve signals slowed and lost their crucial “first wave,” altering how sensory information was encoded.

Neuroscience

·December 10, 2025·7 min read

Anti-Inflammatory Treatments Show Promise for Depression

A new analysis shows that anti-inflammatory medications may help reduce symptoms for a subset of people with depression who also have chronic, low-grade inflammation. By reviewing randomized controlled trials that specifically enrolled individuals with elevated inflammatory markers, researchers found that anti-inflammatory treatments significantly reduced both overall depressive symptoms and anhedonia.

Featured Neurology Neuroscience

·December 10, 2025·8 min read

AI Turns Simple EEG Scans Into Accurate Dementia Detectors

New research shows that deep learning can use EEG signals to distinguish Alzheimer’s disease from frontotemporal dementia with high accuracy. By analyzing both the timing and frequency of brain activity, the model uncovered distinct patterns: broader disruption across multiple regions in Alzheimer’s and more localized frontal and temporal changes in frontotemporal dementia.

Featured Neuroscience Psychology

·December 10, 2025·6 min read

Positive Imagining Changes the Brain in Seconds

Vividly imagining a positive interaction with someone can increase how much you like them — and even alter how your brain stores information about that person. During imagined encounters, participants developed stronger preferences, and brain scans revealed activity patterns similar to those seen when people learn from real rewarding experiences.

Featured Neuroscience

·December 10, 2025·9 min read

How the Brain Interprets Sarcasm, Tone, and Hidden Meaning

A large study of 800 adults shows that pragmatic language skills—the ability to understand sarcasm, indirect requests, tone, and nonliteral meaning—organize into three distinct cognitive clusters. These clusters draw on social-rule knowledge, understanding of how the physical world works, and sensitivity to speech intonation.

Auditory Neuroscience Featured Neuroscience Visual Neuroscience

·December 9, 2025·6 min read

Blinking Drops When We Strain to Hear Speech

People blink less when working harder to understand speech in noisy environments, suggesting that blinking is tightly linked to cognitive effort. Across two experiments, blink rates consistently dropped during key moments of listening, especially when background noise made speech difficult to process.

Featured Neuroscience

·December 9, 2025·7 min read

AI-Powered Bionic Hand Restores Natural, Intuitive Grasping Ability

A new study shows that integrating artificial intelligence with advanced proximity and pressure sensors allows a commercial bionic hand to grasp objects in a natural, intuitive way—reducing cognitive effort for amputees. By training an artificial neural network on grasping postures, each finger could independently “see” objects and automatically move into the correct position, improving grip security and precision.

Featured Genetics Neuroscience

·December 9, 2025·7 min read

Key Brain Protein Controls How We Learn Reward Cues

Changing levels of the brain protein KCC2 can alter how reward associations form, reshaping the learning process that links cues to outcomes. Reduced KCC2 activity increased dopamine neuron firing and strengthened new cue–reward connections, offering insight into how addictions and maladaptive habits develop.

This shows the outline of heads and newspapers.

Autism Featured Neuroscience Psychology

·December 9, 2025·6 min read

Reading Habits Predict Hidden Biases Toward Autism

A new study shows that the newspapers people read are strong predictors of their automatic, unconscious biases toward autism—even after accounting for age, education, political views, and personal experience. Readers of right-leaning tabloid outlets showed more negative automatic biases, reflecting the more stereotyped and less frequent coverage of autism in these publications.

This shows a map and the overlay of a person.

Featured Neuroscience

·December 9, 2025·6 min read

Insufficient Sleep Strongly Predicts Shorter Life Expectancy

A new nationwide analysis shows that getting fewer than seven hours of sleep a night is one of the strongest predictors of shorter life expectancy across U.S. counties. Sleep sufficiency outperformed other behavioral factors—including diet, exercise, and loneliness—with only smoking showing a stronger association.