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ADHD may have a surprising creative advantage

2 weeks 3 days ago
Some of the attention patterns that make ADHD challenging may also help spark creativity by allowing the brain to explore more ideas and unexpected connections. Researchers think creative activities could potentially channel this “defocused attention” while helping strengthen the brain systems involved in focus and self-control.

Each extra hour of prolonged sitting linked to 9% higher cancer death risk

2 weeks 3 days ago
Sitting for long, uninterrupted stretches may carry greater health risks than sitting the same amount of time in shorter bouts. Researchers found that each extra hour of prolonged sedentary behavior was associated with a 9% higher risk of cancer death. Breaking up sitting with movement showed the opposite pattern, while replacing an hour of prolonged sitting with light activity was linked to a 12% lower risk.

“Broken heart syndrome” can look just like a heart attack. This test can tell them apart

2 weeks 4 days ago
“Broken heart syndrome” can mimic a heart attack so closely that patients often need invasive testing to tell the difference. Researchers have now developed the BioTAK score, which combines biological sex with blood biomarkers to identify the condition before cardiac catheterization. In a validation study of nearly 1,800 patients, it correctly classified almost 90% of participants.

Money problems may age your brain faster

2 weeks 4 days ago
Persistent financial hardship in early and middle adulthood was linked to poorer thinking skills by the 50s and more signs of brain aging later in life. Researchers say years of chronic stress and financial worry may gradually take a toll on the brain.

Alzheimer’s may leave a mark on the brain long before plaques appear

2 weeks 4 days ago
Brain changes associated with Alzheimer’s may begin at least seven years before amyloid plaques become detectable with current PET scans. Researchers uncovered the signal by tracking healthy older adults with repeated brain imaging over nearly 20 years. The discovery could help scientists identify Alzheimer’s earlier and suggests that important disease processes may start before visible plaque buildup.

Quenched-in shear transformation zones and Schmid-like visco-elastic creep in metallic glass

2 weeks 4 days ago
The absence of periodic atomic arrangement makes it difficult to detect microscopic defects in metallic glasses, yet their roles in macroscopic shape change are prominent. Motivated by probing defects mechanically, we perform stepwise tensile creep at ambient temperature on as-spun metallic-glass ribbons that show structural anisotropy in selected area electron diffraction. The main discovery is a non-linear strain response in which the segmentally added stress causes the creep strain to...
Yu Chen

Activation of transposable elements is linked to a region- and cell type-specific interferon response in Parkinson's disease

2 weeks 4 days ago
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder involving a neuroinflammatory response, the cause of which remains unclear. Transposable elements (TEs) have been linked to inflammation, but their potential role in PD remains unexplored. Using bulk- and single-nuclei RNA-seq of postmortem brain tissue from four brain regions, we studied TE transcription and its correlation with PD neuroinflammation. Over a thousand TEs, including LINE-1 s and ERVs, were expressed in a cell type- and...
Raquel Garza

Glucose hypometabolism gates tau-dependent necroptosis

2 weeks 4 days ago
Tau pathology closely tracks neuronal loss in Alzheimer's disease, but how phosphorylated tau becomes lethal has remained unclear. Chen et al. identify a dual-hit mechanism: glucose hypometabolism removes a protective A20-mediated brake on necroptosis while phosphorylated tau scaffolds RIPK1 activation, driving tau-associated neuronal death.¹.
Maria Livia Sassano

Evaluating pharmacological targeting of actin regulatory pathways during aging in C. elegans

2 weeks 4 days ago
Actin is a highly conserved cytoskeletal protein that regulates numerous cellular processes essential for tissue homeostasis and healthy aging. Although genetic studies have established important roles for actin and actin-binding proteins in longevity, pharmacological approaches offer complementary advantages for manipulating conserved cytoskeletal pathways across model systems. Here, we systematically evaluated the effects of small-molecule modulators targeting distinct actin regulatory...
Tiffany Wang

Intermediate leucine catabolism is associated with longevity and sustained reproduction in grasshoppers

2 weeks 4 days ago
Dietary isoleucine restriction improves metabolic health and lifespan in animal models. It is hypothesized that shifts in branched-chain amino acid catabolism drive longevity. We investigated dietary isoleucine restriction on organismal branched-chain amino acid catabolism and its association with longevity and reproduction. In two main experiments, adult female Lubber grasshoppers were assigned to a high-quality diet (Bal ile) or diets with two levels of isoleucine content (moderate isoleucine...
Kerri Conklin

Muscle age acceleration shapes resting-state brain connectivity: an EEG study on older adults

2 weeks 4 days ago
Aging is a multifaceted process where physiological metrics, such as brain age and muscle age (MA), provide deeper insights than chronological age alone. These nonlinear trajectories are heavily influenced by exogenous factors like lifestyle and nutrition. In older populations, muscle age acceleration (MAA) critically impacts functional autonomy and cognitive health, necessitating research into its link with brain network organization to refine assessments and, based on these, integrated motor...
Federico Frasca

Brain cognition gaps reveal associations with dopamine and factors related to brain health through artificial intelligence prediction of functional connectome

2 weeks 4 days ago
A key question in human neuroscience is to understand how individual differences in brain function relate to cognitive differences. However, the optimal condition of brain function to study between-person differences in cognition remains unclear. While many studies have developed objective biomarkers to accurately predict intelligence and general cognition, consensus on domain-specific markers has not yet emerged. Brain age has been proposed as a potential candidate, but recent research suggests...
Morteza Esmaeili

Genetic evidence and cross-species functional characterization implicate <em>CNN2</em> in age-related macular degeneration susceptibility

2 weeks 4 days ago
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a leading cause of irreversible visual impairment in the aging population globally. Although genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified many AMD susceptibility loci, the genes and mechanisms underlying many of these associations remain unresolved. Here, we integrated expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) data with AMD GWAS to prioritize nine putative genes. Through in vivo screening in zebrafish, we demonstrated that the downregulation...
Fei-Fei Cheng