Persons with Parkinson's disease increasingly lose their mobility over time and are eventually unable to walk. Hope for these patients rests on deep brain stimulation, also known as a brain pacemaker. In a current study, researchers...
A new study confirms that children of people with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder have a higher risk of developing psychopathology compared to children whose parents do not have these conditions. The study, examines how the clinical...
Researchers demonstrated unprecedented rates of recovery for spinal cord injuries. Individuals with incomplete spinal cord injury safely received a combination of stimulation of a nerve in the neck with progressive, individualized...
A new study suggests that it might be possible to personalize care for people with bipolar disorder, using the results of detailed personality tests. It finds that such tests might help identify people who have certain combinations of...
Depression, schizophrenia and other mental health conditions affect 1 in 4 people in their lifetime, but mechanisms underlying these conditions are poorly understood. New research has linked the body's immune response with schizophrenia,...
Researchers have identified the neural mechanisms in the brain that regulate both positive and negative impressions of a social encounter, as well as how an imbalance between the two could lead to common neuropsychiatric disorders.
A new study sheds new light on these big questions, illuminating a general principle of neural processing in a mysterious region of the midbrain that is the very origin of our central serotonin (5-HT) system, a key part of the nervous...
Macaque mothers experience a short period of physical restlessness after the death of an infant, but do not show typical human signs of grief, such as lethargy and appetite loss, finds a new study by anthropologists.
Research has tracked depressive symptoms in 7100 young people from Tokyo and London and shown girls have more depressive symptoms than boys in both cities. The study found that this gap is around twice as large in London and the...
Climate change is not just an environmental issue -- it's a mental health crisis impacting on adolescent wellbeing right now in areas most affected by climate change, according to new research.
Scientists have developed an approach that combines rehabilitation robotics with spinal cord stimulation to restore movement in people with spinal cord injuries. The technology enhances rehabilitation and enables activities like cycling...
A decade of studies from labs around the world provide a growing evidence base that increasing the power of the brain's gamma rhythms could help fight Alzheimer's, and perhaps other, neurological diseases.
Boosting communication between the spinal nerves and the muscles using the spinal cord stimulation reverses spinal muscle atrophy (SMA) progression and could be applied to other motoneuron diseases, including ALS.
Various diseases can be treated by stimulating the vagus nerve in the ear with electrical signals. However, this technique does not always work. A study has now shown: The electrical signals must be synchronized with the body's natural...
According to a recent study, the tendency to experience positive affectivity contributed to people being physically active or even increasing their activity during the COVID-19 restrictions. In contrast, depressive feelings were linked...
A collaborative effort has shed valuable light on how monoamine neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine, and now histamine help regulate brain physiology and behavior through chemical bonding of these monoamines to histone...
When you are feeling hungry, the brain takes the necessary steps toward consuming a meal. Many of these steps are not well known, but a new study reveals brain circuits and chemical messengers that contribute to the regulation of meal...
A new study shows that an app can help parents who are mourning the loss of a child. Parents who used the app for three months reported reduced symptoms of prolonged grief and post-traumatic stress, and also had fewer negative thoughts....
In animal studies, boosting serotonin in the cells that line the gut reduced anxious and depressive-like behaviors without causing cognitive or gastrointestinal side effects.
Researchers have found a new receptor for nerve growth factor that plays an important role in pain signaling, even though it does not signal on its own, according to a new study. The findings hold promise for finding new treatments for...
Theta burst stimulation (TBS) is a non-invasive brain stimulation technique known for modifying human behavior and treating neurological diseases. A group of scientists conducted a systematic review and network meta-analysis to determine...
People who have chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) who have a family history of mental illness may have a higher risk of aggression in middle age, according to a new study.
A study reveals that the effectiveness of brain stimulation on motor skills is determined by an individual's learning ability rather than age, highlighting the need for a more personalized approach to neurorehabilitation.
Research shows that reward-based learning requires the two neuromodulators to balance one another's influence -- like the accelerator and brakes on a car
Investigators evaluated whether data collected from a fitness tracker could be used to accurately detect mood episodes in people with bipolar disorder.
A new study shows stimulating the vagus nerve in mice with colitis reduced stress-driven symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease by regulating SUMOylation, an immune response that triggers gut inflammation.
A type of therapy that involves applying a magnetic field to both sides of the brain has been shown to be effective at rapidly treating depression in patients for whom standard treatments have been ineffective. The treatment -- known as...
One of the characteristics of depression is a tendency to perceive sensory stimuli and everyday situations in an excessively negative way. But the mechanisms underpinning this 'negativity bias,' which can fuel the development of...
A recent study found that good physical fitness from childhood to adolescence is linked to better mental health in adolescence. These results are significant and timely, as mental health problems are currently a major societal challenge,...
Novel magnetic nanodiscs could provide a much less invasive way of stimulating parts of the brain, paving the way for stimulation therapies without implants or genetic modification, researchers report.
A new study has shed light on why some children and adolescents develop mental health disorders like PTSD, anxiety, or depression after experiencing a traumatic event.
Just as a musician can train to more sharply distinguish subtle differences in pitch, mammals can improve their ability to interpret hearing, vision, and other senses with practice. This process, which is called perceptual learning, may...
Wrist-based activity sensors worn by individuals with depression and those without over the course of two weeks provided evidence for the relationship between daily sunlight exposure and physical activity, according to a new study.
Researchers report significant strides in enhancing early diagnosis of bipolar disorder in adolescents. They demonstrate the efficacy of integrating multimodal MRI with behavioral assessments for greater diagnostic precision. Bipolar...
When surgeons perform brain surgery on people with brain tumors or epilepsy, they need to remove the tumor or abnormal tissue while preserving parts of the brain that control language and movement. A new study may better inform doctors'...
Serotonin in depression is highly relevant in diagnosis, treatment, and drug development. To better study this area, a team has now developed a fluorescent probe for imaging processes that is highly sensitive and selective toward serotonin.
Scientists have identified a molecular intermediate of a serotonin receptor that is involved in diseases such as depression and schizophrenia. The study points to a potentially new target for therapeutics.
In awake mice, researchers found that even low deep brain stimulation currents in the central thalamus could sometimes still cause electrographic seizures.
Two new studies are pointing the way toward round-the-clock personalized care for people with Parkinson's disease through an implanted device that can treat movement problems during the day and insomnia at night.
Scientists report that gamma frequency light and sound stimulation preserves myelination in mouse models and reveal molecular mechanisms that may underlie the benefit.
Currently, the first-choice treatment for PTSD is exposure-based psychotherapy, where therapists help rewire the emotions associated with the traumatic memory in the patient's brain, shifting from fear and arousal to a more neutral...
In a large Singapore cohort study involving over 13,000 participants spanning close to 20 years, higher consumption of fruits during midlife was found to be associated with lower odds of depressive symptoms at late-life.
Bipolar disorder and alcohol problems seem to go hand-in-hand, leading to a widespread belief that drinking acts as a kind of 'self medication' to ease bipolar's life-altering symptoms of mania, depression, anxiety, sleep disturbances...
A recent study has identified a specific neural activity pattern as a novel biomarker to accurately predict and monitor the clinical status of individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) who have undergone deep brain stimulation...