Behavior News

October 9, 2026

Top Headlines

Drug Target Could Block Brain Inflammation Linked to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s

Oct. 7, 2026 Blocking a receptor called P2X7 significantly reduced inflammation in human brain tissue, revealing a potential new treatment strategy for neurological and psychiatric disorders. The discovery could ...

What Happens in the Brain When Cannabis Makes You Anxious?

Oct. 6, 2026 Cannabinoids may intensify anxiety by removing a natural brake on specific neurons in the brain’s fear center, particularly during stressful situations. In mice, shutting down those neurons sharply reduced cannabinoid-related anxious ...

Your Gut Bacteria May Reveal How Fast Your Brain Is Aging

Oct. 4, 2026 A UCLA study links faster brain aging to specific gut bacteria and chemical byproducts, with older-looking brains also associated with poorer memory, focus, and mood. The findings suggest that biological signs of brain aging may appear decades ...

Alzheimer’s Risk Gene APOE4 May Have a Reversible Weakness

Oct. 1, 2026 The Alzheimer’s risk gene APOE4 may actively damage brain blood vessels and sabotage the cellular systems that remove harmful proteins. Researchers were able to reverse some of these effects in experiments, revealing promising new targets for ...

Resetting the Body Clock Could Help the Brain Recover After Stroke

Sep. 28, 2026 Strengthening the body’s natural daily rhythms helped mice recover after stroke by improving the brain’s waste-clearing system and reducing lingering inflammation. The approach worked even when treatment began three days after the stroke, ...

Scientists Found a Surprising Driver of Alzheimer’s Outside the Brain

Sep. 27, 2026 Scientists found that immune cells contributing to Alzheimer’s-related brain damage may be activated in lymph nodes outside the brain before traveling into the nervous system. Blocking this pathway in mice dramatically reduced neurodegeneration ...

Glucosamine, a Popular Joint Supplement, Linked to Faster Alzheimer’s Progression

Sep. 27, 2026 A large health-record analysis found that glucosamine use was associated with a 25% higher likelihood of mild cognitive impairment progressing to dementia. Lab experiments suggest the popular joint ...

Scientists Create a Needle-thin Brain Implant That Can Do Three Jobs at Once

Sep. 21, 2026 A new needle-thin brain implant can record neural activity, deliver drugs, and stimulate multiple brain regions using a single flexible fiber. Successful tests in mice suggest it could give ...

Stanford Scientists Discover the Human Brain May Actually Be Two Separate Organs

Sep. 21, 2026 Scientists have found that the human brain develops from two distinct cellular systems, suggesting that evolution fused together two ancient nervous systems with very different jobs. The discovery ...

Scientists Restore a Brain Protein and Reverse Signs of Aging in Mice

Sep. 18, 2026 Scientists found that declining levels of the brain protein Menin may help drive aging, with lower levels in mice linked to inflammation, cognitive decline, weaker bones, and thinner skin. Restoring Menin reversed several age-related changes, while ...

Textbooks May Have Misdrawn This Basic Brain Structure for 100 Years

Sep. 17, 2026 Scientists discovered that brain-cell axons may not be smooth tubes as textbooks have shown for more than a century, but instead naturally resemble strings of tiny pearls. Those pearl-like structures can change with neural activity and may help ...

Hidden “Immune Organ” in the Skull May Help Fight Brain Cancer

Sep. 16, 2026 Scientists discovered a hidden “immune organ” inside the skull that acts as a rapid first responder against brain cancer in mice. Strengthening this local immune defense improved tumor rejection and survival, raising the possibility of new ...

Latest Headlines

updated 8:00am EDT

Vagus Nerve Stimulation Could Help New Skills Stick

Oct. 5, 2026 Stimulating the vagus nerve after practice helped mice develop stronger long-term motor learning, revealing a potentially important window when the brain is still locking in a new skill. The effect ...

REM Sleep Paradox: Dreaming May Drain the Brain’s Energy Even as Fuel Supply Rises

Sep. 26, 2026 Scientists discovered a surprising energy paradox in the brain during REM sleep, the stage most closely associated with dreaming. Blood supply to the ...

Scientists Recreated What Mice Saw from Brain Activity Alone

Sep. 16, 2026 Scientists reconstructed videos from the brain activity of mice, producing 10-second clips based only on signals from neurons in the visual cortex. The breakthrough could help reveal how the brain ...

Smelling Chocolate Helped Men Complete More Reps Without Feeling More Tired

Sep. 15, 2026 Simply smelling chocolate helped men complete more leg extension repetitions without making the workout feel harder, with dark chocolate producing the strongest effect. The researchers think familiar ...

Scientists Reveal the Hidden Instructions That Build the Human Brain

Sep. 4, 2026 UCLA researchers have discovered two powerful influences that help guide how the human brain forms before birth. Radial glia, stem cells responsible for producing much of the cerebral cortex, change ...

New Injectable Treatment Helps the Brain Rebuild After Stroke

Sep. 3, 2026 Duke researchers developed an injectable scaffold that helped stroke-damaged brains grow new blood vessels, support nerve regrowth, and recover movement in mice. The treatment appears to work partly ...

Mindfulness May Lower Blood Pressure in Just 8 Weeks

Sep. 1, 2026 Mindfulness, gratitude, and optimism training may improve blood pressure, inflammation, and other heart-health measures within just eight to 12 weeks. The strongest programs paired daily practice ...

Scientists Find a Human-Only Gene That May Help Explain Our Brainpower

Aug. 31, 2026 Scientists discovered that human microglia, immune cells that help shape developing brain circuits, can take four to eight years to mature instead of just weeks as they do in mice. The unusually slow ...

Scientists Challenge a 70-Year-Old “lizard Brain” Myth

Aug. 31, 2026 A long-standing picture of brain evolution as newer, rational layers stacked on top of an ancient “lizard brain” may be deeply misleading. Researchers found that evolution instead appears to ...

Your Brain May Not Actually “make” Decisions

Aug. 25, 2026 A neuroscientist is challenging the idea that the brain contains a central system that actually “makes” our decisions. What we experience as choosing may instead emerge from the continuous ...

Scientists Reveal How the Brain Changes Its Connections When Uncertainty Strikes

Aug. 19, 2026 The brain has a remarkably flexible system for handling uncertainty and changing situations. Researchers found that the frontoparietal cortex constantly shifts how it communicates with other brain ...

Scientists Tracked Kids for 8 Years — the Screen Time Result Was Unexpected

Aug. 15, 2026 An eight-year Finnish study found that children who spent more time on screens tended to show better cognitive processing as teenagers, challenging common assumptions about screen use. Researchers ...

The Adult Brain Can Repair Itself Better Than Scientists Thought

Aug. 12, 2026 The adult brain may be far better at repairing itself than scientists once believed. In mice, researchers discovered a special group of support cells called astrocytes that respond to damaged brain ...

Immune Cells Flood Into the Aging Brain, Stanford Scientists Discover

Aug. 14, 2026 Scientists have discovered that the aging human brain may be far less isolated from the rest of the body than once believed. Stanford researchers found that large numbers of immune cells from the ...

Your Gut May Help Your Brain Decide What to Remember

July 29, 2026 Signals traveling from the gut to the brain may help turn meals into lasting memories. Rats showed stronger memory activity after consuming nutritious foods, but not after drinking sweet liquids with ...

Scientists Discover a Hidden Brain Shift That Begins Around Age 50

Aug. 6, 2026 Beginning around age 50, the brain’s memory center appears to lose many of its longtime immune cells and replace them with more inflammatory ones. This surprising shift may help explain how normal ...

A Single Dose Reversed Autism-Like Symptoms in Adult Mice Within Hours

July 25, 2026 Even mild inflammation during pregnancy led mouse offspring to develop persistent brain overactivity, sensory sensitivity, repetitive behaviors, and increased seizure risk. Remarkably, one dose of ...

Mysterious Waves Sweeping Across Your Brain May Help Turn Sensory Chaos Into What You See

Aug. 18, 2026 Traveling electrical waves sweeping across the brain may help determine what we notice, predict what comes next, and construct our internal picture of the world. Researchers now argue that these ...

Scientists Discover the Hidden Brain Switch That Assigns Bees Their Jobs

July 22, 2026 Researchers found that specific brain circuits help decide which jobs bees perform as they age. When those circuits were switched off, older worker bees began caring for the queen again instead of ...

Watching Too Much TV in Midlife May Shrink the Brain

July 21, 2026 Watching television very often in midlife may be linked to troubling brain changes decades later. In a study of about 1,700 adults, frequent TV viewers later showed smaller brain regions involved in ...

Alzheimer’s Breakthrough: Scientists Restore Two Hours of Sleep Without Clearing Brain Plaques

July 20, 2026 Researchers have uncovered a surprising culprit behind sleep loss in Alzheimer’s disease: the brain’s own immune cells. In mice with amyloid plaques, overactive microglia triggered inflammation ...

MIT Neuroscientists Discover the Brain Can Reason Without Words

Aug. 11, 2026 MIT neuroscientists have found striking evidence that language and logical reasoning are powered by separate systems in the brain. Even people with severe language impairments caused by stroke were ...

Multilingual People May Have Brains Up to 13 Years Younger

Aug. 22, 2026 People who speak several languages may have brains that age more slowly, with four-language speakers showing brains that appeared about 13 years younger than those of monolinguals. Starting earlier ...

Ozempic May Have Revealed the Brain’s Hidden “craving Center”

Aug. 12, 2026 Ozempic-like drugs appear to weaken more than hunger—they may also reduce cravings for alcohol and other addictive substances. Scientists are increasingly tracing this effect to the lateral septum, ...

Millions Take Omega-3 Fish Oil for Brain Health but a New Study Found No Benefit

June 29, 2026 Fish oil supplements successfully delivered omega-3s to the brain, but a two-year study found no meaningful benefits for memory, cognition, or Alzheimer’s-related brain changes. The results ...

The Universe May Be Hiding Conscious Minds Stranger Than We Can Imagine

June 24, 2026 What if consciousness isn’t limited to brains like ours? Philosophers Eric Schwitzgebel and Jeremy Pober argue that consciousness could arise in many different forms of life, even in beings built ...

Your Brain Can Keep Improving Into Your 90s, Study Finds

June 13, 2026 A three-year study of nearly 4,000 adults ranging from age 19 to 94 found that brain health can improve at any age, challenging the common belief that mental sharpness must decline as we get older. ...

New Autism Therapy Shows Surprising Benefits Even in Adult Mice

Aug. 7, 2026 Blocking the glycine transporter SLC6A20 restored important brain signaling and improved social, communication, and repetitive behaviors in autism-related mouse models. The treatment also worked in ...

Scientists Mapped Every Neural Connection in a Fruit Fly and Found a Surprise

June 10, 2026 A groundbreaking new connectome maps every neural connection in an adult fruit fly’s central nervous system, creating an unprecedented view of how the brain and body work together. The findings ...

Scientists Discover How the Brain Rewires Itself to Truly Multitask

July 12, 2026 Practice may do more than make perfect. Researchers found that extensive training physically reorganizes the brain, allowing learned tasks to bypass the prefrontal cortex and run through specialized ...