ScienceDaily: Mind & Brain News

Outdoor nature-based activities are effective for improving mental health in adults, including those with pre-existing mental health problems, a new study has found.

Researchers say their studies on air pollution and cognitive decline -- one involving humans and one with mice -- provide evidence that cleaner air may reduce risk for Alzheimer's and other dementias.

The medication naloxone is so effective at saving the lives of opioid overdose victims that some people worry that it might make drug users think heroin and related drugs are no longer risky. But a new study suggests that is not the case.

Athletes still have the edge over action video gamers when it comes to dynamic visual skills, a new study shows.

In 2013, the U.S. government began investing $100 million to decipher human brain anatomy in a large collaborative project called the BRAIN Initiative. Researchers built tools and set standards for describing all the cells in the brain. On October 7, 2021 the initiative reached a major milestone, publishing a comprehensive census of cell types in the mouse, monkey, and human primary motor cortex.

A mouse study reveals new insights into the wiring of a major circuit in the brain that is attacked by Parkinson's and Huntington's disease. The findings could hone scientists' understanding of how these disorders arise in the human brain and pinpoint new therapeutic targets.

While researchers have discovered numerous cell types in the brain, this atlas of all cell types in one area -- the primary motor cortex -- is the first comprehensive list and a starting point for tracing cellular networks to understand how they control our body and mind and how they are disrupted in mental and physical disorders.

It takes billions of cells to make a human brain, and scientists have long struggled to map this complex network of neurons. Now, dozens of research teams around the country have made inroads into creating an atlas of the mouse brain as a first step toward a human brain atlas. The results describe how different cell types are organized and connected throughout the mouse brain.

Researchers further refine the organization of cells within key regions of the mouse brain and the organization of transcriptomic, epigenomic and regulatory factors that provide these brain cells with function and purpose.