Summary: Researchers at the University of Georgia have identified nearly a dozen genes that enable planarian flatworms to regenerate dopamine-producing neurons and rebuild their brains after injury. This discovery maps the molecular instructions that guide stem cells to become functional dopaminergic neurons and suggests pathways that could inform future regenerative approaches for Parkinson’s disease and … Read more

Summary: Researchers at Stanford University examined brain activity and problem-solving behavior in 8- to 10-year-old children and found that developmental dyscalculia is closely linked to difficulty switching and optimizing arithmetic strategies. Rather than reflecting a single deficit in number representation, the condition appears tied to altered coordination across multiple cognitive brain systems that govern attention, … Read more

Summary: Neuroscientists have discovered that a small adjacent region to the amygdala—the amygdalostriatal transition zone (ASt)—shows sustained, high activity that maintains fear-related behaviors long after an initial threat is detected. While amygdala neurons fire briefly at the onset of danger, the ASt remains active across the duration of a threat, acting as a functional bridge … Read more

Summary: Neuroscientists have identified a core mechanism of neocortical communication showing that neighboring visual regions form a dynamic consensus through bidirectional connections. When areas of the visual cortex agree about incoming sensory information, their coordinated activity is sustained; when signals conflict, the discrepant patterns fade within fractions of a second, preventing unstable or mixed perceptions. … Read more

Summary: A nationwide cohort study spanning more than three decades and including 3.7 million births shows that congenital TORCH infections—those transmitted from mother to fetus—are associated with substantially increased risks of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and intellectual disability in affected children. Although these infections are rare at the population level, among the small number of … Read more

Summary: A new mouse study from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) shows that maternal immune activation during a narrow gestational window can trigger autism-like developmental disruptions that affect only male fetuses. The team traced this male-specific vulnerability to damage of spongiotrophoblast cells in the placenta, indicating that failure of placental immune tolerance—occurring before sexual differentiation … Read more

Summary: Researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of USC have developed a noninvasive metric, the cerebral blood flow–cell-body staining intensity similarity index (CCSI), to quantify how laminar blood flow aligns with cellular density across the living human cerebral cortex. Combining ultra-high-field 7-Tesla MRI with detailed cellular and molecular atlases, the team shows that tight … Read more

Summary: A new study finds that exposure to light at night is strongly linked to objectively measured sleep disruption in outpatients with schizophrenia. Participants whose bedrooms were brighter at night slept nearly an hour less on average. Even relatively low levels of nocturnal illumination were associated with worse sleep efficiency and more time awake during … Read more

Summary: Researchers report that spontaneous eye-blink rate (sEBR) is a simple, noninvasive marker for tracking the emergence of executive function in early childhood. In a study of preschoolers, higher blink rates predicted better performance on cognitive flexibility tasks, and this behavioral marker was linked specifically to focused activation in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). … Read more

Summary: Scientists have resolved the first three-dimensional crystal structure of an umami taste receptor ortholog from pufferfish, revealing a distinctive molecular latch that enables the receptor to recognize both savory L-amino acids and sweet D-amino acids. This structural discovery shows how sensory receptors can evolve internal stabilizing interactions to expand taste recognition, with potential applications … Read more