ScienceDaily: Mind & Brain News

Shell beads found in a cave in Morocco are at least 142,000 years old. The archaeologists who found them say they're the earliest known evidence of a widespread form of human communication.

Has the scent of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies ever taken you back to afternoons at your grandmother's house? Has an old song ever brought back memories of a first date? The ability to remember relationships between unrelated items (an odor and a location, a song and an event) is known as associative memory.

Few studies have explored the effect of psychological stressors on behavior, and neurogenesis, in the context of depression. With the elucidation of a vicarious social defeat stress mouse model, scientists have successfully endeavored in connecting the dots between psychological stress and depression.

Researchers have found that learning -- a universal feature of intelligence in living beings -- can be mimicked in synthetic matter, a discovery that in turn could inspire new algorithms for artificial intelligence (AI).

Levodopa, or L-dopa, is considered the most effective treatment for Parkinson's disease today. After a few years of treatment, however, almost all patients develop a debilitating side-effect called L-dopa induced dyskinesia, or LID, which causes involuntary movements in the limbs, face, and torso. Deep brain stimulation can alleviate LID, but the procedure is highly invasive and not all patients are eligible.

Social inequality can incite collective violence in an experimental setting, finds a new study.

Researchers report that Kleefstra syndrome, a genetic disorder that leads to intellectual disability, can be reversed after birth in a mouse model of the disease. The series of experiments showed that postnatal treatment resulted in improved symptoms, both in the brain and in behavior.