ScienceDaily: Mind & Brain News

An anti-inflammatory compound may have the potential to treat systemic inflammation and brain injury in patients with severe COVID-19 and significantly reduce their chances of death, according to a new study.

Researchers have developed a protocol for using robotic pets with older adults with dementia. The protocol uses a low-cost robotic pet, establishes ideal session lengths, and identifies common participant responses to the 'pets' to aid in future research.

A new study shows that the experience of racial discrimination affects the microstructure of the brain, as well as increasing the risk for health disorders.

Researchers have discovered the molecule in the brain responsible for associating good or bad feelings with a memory. Their discovery paves the way for a better understanding of why some people are more likely to retain negative emotions than positive ones -- as can occur with anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Drinking a caffeinated beverage before shopping leads to more items purchased at the store and increased spending.

Neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's disease are caused by folding errors (misfolding) in proteins or peptides, i.e. by changes in their spatial structure. This is the result of minute deviations in the chemical composition of the biomolecules. Researchers have now developed a simple and effective method for detecting such misfolding at an early stage of the disease. Misfolding is revealed by the structure of dried residue from protein and peptide solutions. The method involves analyzing micrographs with neural networks and has a predictive accuracy of over 99 percent.

Scientists have challenged the widespread belief that shift workers adjust to the night shift, using data drawn from wearable tech.

Psychologists and biologists have investigated whether voice pitch can influence how female faces are evaluated. Their conclusion: a higher voice does indeed influence how the corresponding face is evaluated. However, this does not apply to all ratings. Faces with a higher voice were rated as younger, but other assumptions that the faces are also rated as more attractive, more feminine or healthier do not apply.

A new scale for measuring the psychological safety of patients has been developed.

Going to the doctor might make you want to cry, and according to a new study, doctors could someday put those tears to good use. Researchers report a nanomembrane system that harvests and purifies tiny blobs called exosomes from tears, allowing researchers to quickly analyze them for disease biomarkers. Dubbed iTEARS, the platform could enable more efficient and less invasive molecular diagnoses for many diseases and conditions, without relying solely on symptoms.

Nerve cells regulate and routinely refresh the collection of calcium channels that enable them to send messages across circuit connections.

After decades of study, there remains no clear evidence that serotonin levels or serotonin activity are responsible for depression, according to a major review of prior research.

People who are genetically at higher risk for stroke can lower that risk by as much as 43% by adopting a healthy cardiovascular lifestyle, according to new research.

The study of the genomes of our closest relatives, the Neanderthals and Denisovans, has opened up new research paths that can broaden our understanding of the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens. A new study has made an estimation of the time when some of the genetic variants that characterize our species emerged. It does so by analyzing mutations that are very frequent in modern human populations, but not in these other species of archaic humans.