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Neuroscience News

·July 16, 2025·5 min read

Running the Clock: Attention and Movement Skew Time Perception

A new study shows that the way we move our bodies can warp our sense of time — not just because of physical exertion, but because of the cognitive demands of motor control. Researchers found that participants overestimated stimulus durations while running, walking backward, or performing a distracting mental task, compared to standing still.

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·July 22, 2025·6 min read

Hunger Sharpens Sleep Rhythms That Solidify Memories

New research shows that the brain’s slow oscillations and sleep spindles — key rhythms that consolidate memories during sleep — can be shaped by more than just age. While these rhythms have long been thought of as stable traits, studies reveal that metabolic state, like fasting before sleep, can enhance their timing and co-occurrence.

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·July 17, 2025·8 min read

Overactive Anterior Insula May Fuel Anxiety and Depression

New research shows that elevated glutamate-glutamine (Glx) levels in the anterior insular cortex (AIC) make people more sensitive to mistakes and more prone to anxiety and depression. Using functional magnetic resonance spectroscopy and reinforcement learning tasks, scientists found that high AIC Glx predicted both a general internalizing symptom score and heightened error sensitivity, which mediated this relationship.

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·February 25, 2020·3 min read

Social anxiety could be an empathy imbalance

Taijin-kyofusho, a form of social anxiety disorder characterized by a fear of causing others discomfort as a result of the sufferer's behavioral reactions, is linked to hypersensitivity of the emotional states of others and an inability to identify emotional context.

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·August 16, 2025·5 min read

Bipolar Mood Shifts Linked to Insulin Signaling in the Pancreas

A new study uncovers a pancreas–hippocampus feedback loop that may help explain mood swings in bipolar disorder. Using patient-derived pancreatic islets, researchers found reduced insulin secretion linked to elevated RORβ, a bipolar risk gene.

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·March 10, 2023·3 min read

High Protein Diet Reduces Depression Symptoms

Student-athletes who consumed diets higher in protein had lower depression symptom severity, a new study reports.

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·May 5, 2025·5 min read

Out-of-Body Experiences Offer New Clues About Consciousness

Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are often dismissed as hallucinations or brain malfunctions, but a new study gives voice to those who have lived them. Through in-depth interviews, participants described their OBEs as vivid, often peaceful, and undeniably real—sometimes more real than waking life.

This shows a brain with the amygdala and hippocampus glowing red.

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·July 26, 2025·6 min read

How the Brain Reactivates Emotional Experiences

A new study using direct recordings from human brains reveals how the amygdala and hippocampus coordinate to form and retrieve emotional memories. During aversive memory encoding, high-frequency gamma activity in the amygdala shapes hippocampal responses, which are later reactivated in the hippocampus—but not the amygdala—during memory recall.

This shows the outline of a sad child, a child looking into the mirror and an ominous adult in the background. There are chains tying the child to the adult.

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·August 11, 2025·5 min read

Early Abuse Shapes Adult Sexual Behavior

A new study has found that sexual narcissism mediates the link between childhood trauma and compulsive sexual behavior. Researchers compared individuals with and without compulsive sexual behavior, measuring trauma history, sexual narcissism, and hypersexuality.

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·November 9, 2025·8 min read

Shyness May Originate in the Cerebellum

New research reveals that trait shyness is linked to reduced spontaneous neural activity in the cerebellum, a brain region traditionally associated with motor control but increasingly recognized for its role in emotion and social cognition. Using resting-state fMRI and ReHo analysis, researchers found that shy individuals exhibited lower synchrony in the cerebellar Crus I region.

Neuroscience

·November 7, 2025·8 min read

Brain Decoder Translates Visual Thoughts Into Text

A new brain decoding method called mind captioning can generate accurate text descriptions of what a person is seeing or recalling—without relying on the brain's language system. Instead, it uses semantic features from vision-related brain activity and deep learning models to translate nonverbal thoughts into structured sentences.

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·July 19, 2025·6 min read

More Than Serotonin: How Psychedelics Engage the Whole Brain

Classical psychedelics like LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline are known for activating the 5-HT2A serotonin receptor, but a new study reveals their effects go far beyond. Researchers profiled 41 psychedelics against over 300 human receptors and found potent activity at serotonin, dopamine, and adrenergic sites.