ScienceDaily: Mind & Brain News

A novel compound similar in structure to the psychedelic drug ibogaine, but lacking its toxic and hallucinogenic effects, has been found to rapidly reverse the effects of stress in mice. Researchers found that a single dose of tabernanthalog (TBG) can correct stress-induced behavioral deficits, including anxiety and cognitive inflexibility, and also promotes the regrowth of neuronal connections and restores neural circuits in the brain that are disrupted by stress.

From shamans and mystics to cult leaders and divine kings, why have people throughout history accorded high status to people believed to have supernatural powers? According to a new study, this tendency to attribute social dominance to such individuals is rooted in early development.

Alzheimer's disease is the main cause of dementia and current therapeutic strategies cannot prevent, slow down or cure the pathology. The disease is characterized by memory loss, caused by the degeneration and death of neuronal cells in several regions of the brain, including the hippocampus. Researchers have identified a small molecule that can be used to rejuvenate the brain and counteract the memory loss.

Biomedical engineers have developed an automatic process that uses streamlined artificial intelligence (AI) to identify active neurons in videos faster and more accurately than current techniques. The technology should allow researchers to watch an animal's brain activity in real time, as they are behaving.

A combination of optical coherence tomography (OCT), adaptive optics and deep neural networks can easily and precisely track changes in the number and shape of retinal ganglion cells in the eye. This new AI-driven method can enable better diagnosis and monitoring for neuron-damaging eye and brain diseases like glaucoma.

A comprehensive analysis of 437 studies from around the world provides the best evidence to date that narcissism is an important risk factor for both aggression and violence, researchers said. The link between narcissism and aggression was found for all dimensions of narcissism and for a variety of types of aggression. Results were similar regardless of gender, age, whether they were college students, or country of residence.

Research has found that women with depression during pregnancy, or with a history of depression, had a reduced quality of mother-infant interaction at both eight weeks and 12 months after their babies were born.

While we sleep, the brain produces particular activation patterns. When two of these patterns - slow oscillations and sleep spindles - gear into each other, previous experiences are reactivated. The stronger the reactivation, the clearer will be our recall of past events, a new study reveals.

Marketers can capitalize on the power of serendipity to increase consumer satisfaction.

Intermittent Fasting (IF) is an effective means of improving long term memory retention and generating new adult hippocampal neurons in mice. Researchers hope that this has the potential to slow the advance of cognitive decline in older people.