Posts in category: Uncategorized

The human brain is a complex organ with over 80 billion neurons. But it can still trip up when it comes to multitasking. Trying to send an email at the same time as talking to someone can almost be enough to short-circuit our synapses, leaving us distracted and prone to making mistakes.

Playing video games may boost your cognitive abilities and exercise can play a role in improving your mental health, but not the other way around, a large-scale study has found.

Consuming more ultra-processed foods—from diet sodas to packaged crackers to certain cereals and yogurts—is closely linked with higher blood sugar levels in people with type 2 diabetes, a team of researchers in nutritional sciences, kinesiology and health education at The University of Texas at Austin have found.

A multi-institutional group of researchers led by the Hubrecht Institute and Roche’s Institute of Human Biology has developed strategies to identify regulators of intestinal hormone secretion. In response to incoming food, these hormones are secreted by rare hormone producing cells in the gut and play key roles in managing digestion and appetite.

The Autism Transitions Research Project has released new findings that underscore critical challenges and opportunities in transitioning autistic youth into adulthood. As approximately 1.2 million autistic individuals are expected to reach adulthood in the coming decade, these insights are vital for shaping future research and services.

Psychology experts in the UK and US have found there is “not enough evidence” to link social media use to mental health problems like anxiety and depression.

A research team led by Prof. Patrizia Agostinis (VIB-KU Leuven) has found that melanoma cell populations protect themselves from a form of cell death called ferroptosis by secreting the lipoprotein apolipoprotein E (ApoE). Their work appears in Science Advances.

Cannabis is one of the most widely used drugs, with an estimated 219 million users globally in 2021, with the highest number of users in the Americas. It is also the most used drug among young people. In the U.S., cannabis use among young adults (age 19 to 22) reached a historically high level in 2021, with 42.6% reporting use in the past year.

The foundation for healthy eating behavior starts in infancy. Young children learn to regulate their appetite through a combination of biological, psychological, and sociological factors. In a new paper, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign propose a model that explores these factors and their interactions, providing guidelines for better understanding childhood appetite self-regulation. The study is published in the journal Social Science & Medicine.

A new study conducted by SISSA’s Laboratory of Cerebral Cortex Development and recently published in BMC Biology has led to a surprising revelation about the role of the FOXG1 gene: not only does it orchestrate development of the anterior brain by regulating RNA transcription, but its role includes direct regulation of RNA translation, i.e. protein production.