ScienceDaily: Mind & Brain News

People who live in communities with higher levels of racial prejudice have worse health outcomes, including more heart disease and mental health problems and higher overall mortality rates, according to new research.

Researchers calculate that exposure to car exhaust from leaded gas during childhood stole a collective 824 million IQ points from over 170 million Americans alive today, more than half of the population of the United States.

Researchers have identified two types of cells in our brains that are involved in organizing discrete memories based on when they occurred. This finding improves our understanding of how the human brain forms memories and could have implications in memory disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.

Researchers show what happens in the human brain when we try to influence other people or when we ourselves are influenced by others.

By employing artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to formulate therapeutic proteins, a team has successfully stabilized an enzyme able to degrade scar tissue resulting from spinal cord injuries and promote tissue regeneration. The study details the team's ground-breaking stabilization of the enzyme Chondroitinase ABC, (ChABC) offering new hope for patients coping with spinal cord injuries.

Researchers have discovered two types of brain cells that play a key role in dividing continuous human experience into distinct segments that can be recalled later. The discovery provides new promise as a path toward development of novel treatments for memory disorders such as dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

Hearing loss and epilepsy are early features of Parkinson's, according to pioneering new research.

'Don't worry, be happy,' is more than just song lyrics. A growing body of evidence supports an association between optimism and healthy aging, but it is unclear how optimism impacts health. When it comes to dealing with day-to-day stressors, such as household chores or arguments with others, a new study has found that being more or less optimistic did not make a difference in how older men emotionally reacted to or recovered from these stressors. However, optimism appeared to promote emotional well-being by limiting how often older men experience stressful situations or changing the way they interpret situations as stressful.

We can now decode pigs' emotions. Using thousands of acoustic recordings gathered throughout the lives of pigs, from their births to deaths, an international team of researchers has translated pig grunts into the emotions they appear to express.

Investigators have discovered how a drug for multiple sclerosis interacts with its targets, a finding that may pave the way for better treatments.