Tag Archives: Brains

The devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic may have left a significant mark on our brains, even if we didn’t get sick. Fatal cases of COVID-19 look scarily like old age in the brain, and now, new research suggests that the mental, social, and financial stresses of the pandemic may have aged our brains as well. A team led by researchers …

Scientists watched the pandemic reshape hospitals, jobs, and politics, but a new set of brain scans hints that it also reshaped the organ inside our skulls. People who were never infected with SARS-CoV-2 showed brains that looked a few months older than expected. This suggests that merely living through lockdowns, uncertainty, and social upheaval left a subtle neurological …

Brain aging may have sped up during the pandemic, even in people who didn’t get sick from Covid, a new study suggests. Using brain scans from a very large database, British researchers determined that during the pandemic years of 2021 and 2022, people’s brains showed signs of aging, including shrinkage, according to the report published in Nature Communications. People who …

Dopamine is one of the most extensively studied chemical messengers in the human brain, and yet scientists are still figuring out how it works to accomplish so much. For years, the classic view has been that, when released, dopamine slowly diffuses through the brain like a chemical megaphone, broadcasting information far and wide to numerous target cells. Recently, however, that …

Found in everything from protein bars to energy drinks, erythritol has long been considered a safe alternative to sugar. But new research suggests this widely used sweetener may be quietly undermining one of the body’s most crucial protective barriers – with potentially serious consequences for heart health and stroke risk. A recent study from the University of Colorado suggests erythritol …

Summary: Researchers have identified ripple-type brain waves as key to how humans segment and store memories. By recording brain activity in epilepsy patients watching a TV episode, they found ripples marked event boundaries in the hippocampus while supporting information processing in cortical areas. This segmentation acts like punctuation, helping organize experiences into coherent episodes. The findings may inform therapies for …

Summary: Long-term musical training may help older adults maintain youthful brain patterns and better speech perception in noisy environments, according to new research. Scientists found that older musicians showed more efficient brain connectivity and better performance than non-musicians of the same age. This suggests that musical training builds cognitive reserve, preserving brain networks and reducing the need for age-related compensatory …

Summary: New research uncovers how a hormonally tuned brain circuit in mice governs sex-specific mating behaviors. Scientists identified a subset of neurons in the prefrontal cortex that integrate oxytocin, ovarian hormones, and social cues to modulate sexual receptivity in females and suppress mating interest in males. Activating these neurons made non-fertile females receptive, while silencing them during estrus stopped their …

The human brain tends to lose a step as we age. Now, scientists want to minimize that decline by studying people with exceptional brains. JUANA SUMMERS, HOST: Once we get past about age 40, even a healthy brain begins to lose a step or two. Reaction times get slower. It’s harder to remember everything on your shopping list. But scientists …

We celebrate our birthdays on the same day each year, but the truth is that different parts of our bodies are aging at different speeds. New research suggests brain age could be a strong predictor for lifespan. This comes from a team from Stanford University, who applied a blood analysis technique on records of 44,498 individuals in a UK health …