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A surprising new discovery suggests that fear may cause the brain to blur the line between danger and safety rather than distinguish them more clearly. By observing brain activity in mice using augmented reality, scientists found that memories of threatening and harmless environments began to overlap, potentially allowing faster responses to danger. This "better safe than sorry" survival mechanism could help explain why people with anxiety or PTSD sometimes experience intense fear in completely safe situations.

Scientists have uncovered an unexpected connection between inflammation during pregnancy, placental damage, and autism-like traits in male mice, while females appeared naturally protected. The discovery could help explain why autism is diagnosed more frequently in boys and reveal new opportunities for early intervention.

Eating an avocado and a cup of mango every day may provide surprising benefits for heart health, according to a new study involving adults with prediabetes. After just eight weeks, participants experienced significant improvements in blood vessel function and diastolic blood pressure, particularly among men. These benefits occurred without weight gain or changes in calorie intake, suggesting that the nutrient-rich combination could support cardiovascular health through a simple dietary adjustment.

A massive new study reveals that intelligence plays a surprisingly limited role in children's reading success, while visual processing showed no meaningful connection at all. Instead, the strongest predictors are sound recognition, vocabulary, and background knowledge, offering new clues about how to help struggling readers.

Mark Dybul contends the group can finally help countries control malaria, TB, and HIV

More than €55 billion from EU fund has gone to research and innovation, but researchers worry those investments will not be sustained

Organismal physiology depends on continuous, non-hierarchical communication among cells, tissues, and organs. We argue that this communication rests on metabolic flexibility-the capacity of cells and tissues to adapt substrate use to changing energetic demands-and that the hypothalamus serves as the central hub coordinating this flexibility across the body. Using hypothalamic agouti-related protein (AgRP) and pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) neurons as a model, we show these melanocortin neurons do...

Why mitochondria progressively fail in aging neurons remains a fundamental question in neurobiology. Although bioenergetic decline and oxidative stress are hallmarks of aging, whether redox signaling remodels mitochondrial nucleoids (mt-nucleoids) to impair neuronal bioenergetics remains unclear. Using aged mouse neurons and human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived neurons, we demonstrate that redox-driven mt-nucleoid remodeling underlies reduced mtDNA transcript abundance and...

Organismal physiology depends on continuous, non-hierarchical communication among cells, tissues, and organs. We argue that this communication rests on metabolic flexibility-the capacity of cells and tissues to adapt substrate use to changing energetic demands-and that the hypothalamus serves as the central hub coordinating this flexibility across the body. Using hypothalamic agouti-related protein (AgRP) and pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) neurons as a model, we show these melanocortin neurons do...

This systematic review aimed to synthesize and critically appraise qualitative evidence on U.S. older adults' experiences with food and nutrition. Searches of five databases identified 40 qualitative studies published between 2000 and 2023. Studies were included if they examined food- and nutrition-related experiences among U.S. adults aged 60 and older using qualitative interview or focus group methods. A thematic synthesis approach was used to summarize key findings across studies, and the...

Age-associated loss of muscle mass and function, termed sarcopenia, increases morbidity and mortality risks concomitant with decreased physical activity. Chronic exercise training is the most effective countermeasure against sarcopenia, but physical limitations create a barrier to participation in the elderly. Investigation into alternative pharmaceutical and nutraceutical treatments to prevent sarcopenia and maintain muscle plasticity late-in-life are therefore warranted. Polyamine metabolism...

Chronic low-grade inflammation (inflammaging) is a central feature of aging, yet its magnitude and trajectory vary substantially among individuals and tissues. This variability is not fully explained by chronological age or cumulative inflammatory exposure. We therefore examine inflammaging through a spatiotemporal framework focused on how inflammatory responses are initiated, contained, resolved, and distributed across tissues. The framework integrates established mechanisms-including defective...

This study aimed to elucidate the independent, sex-specific dose-response trajectories between serum uric acid (SUA) and phenotypic age acceleration (PhenoAgeAccel), while carefully accounting for concurrent metabolic confounding. Using multivariable linear regression and sex-stratified restricted cubic splines (RCS) in a large-scale cross-sectional cohort, we found that elevated SUA showed a robust inverse association with biological aging in both sexes upon comprehensive metabolic adjustment....

In Drosophila, like other animal species, females tend to live longer than males, a phenomenon known as sex gap in longevity (SGL). One possible explanation could involve the activity of transposable elements (TE). TEs are normally repressed by epigenetic mechanisms, but this regulation weakens with age. Y chromosomes are enriched in TEs, and age-related TE activity may therefore be more pronounced in older males, likely affecting longevity (toxic Y hypothesis). Using three Drosophila species...

Brain aging is accompanied by profound cellular and microstructural changes that precede overt tissue loss, yet in vivo MRI studies largely emphasize macroscopic measures or isolated diffusion and relaxation metrics, providing limited insight into how cellular-scale tissue architecture is altered across the adult lifespan. Here, we apply multidimensional diffusion-relaxation MRI (MD-MRI) to map voxel-wise microstructural phenotypes in cognitively unimpaired adults spanning early adulthood to...

Neuroinflammation and microglial activation are common features in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and excessive alcohol consumption. Alcohol induces liver damage and inflammation, and altered serum aminotransferases have been reported in patients with AD. Small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) and their cargo are emerging as mediators of intercellular communication in AD and alcohol-induced liver injury. However, the effects of alcohol use on AD progression remain to be elucidated. In this study, we...

Handgrip strength (HGS) declines with age and is associated with morbidity and mortality. This study aimed to investigate sex-specific associations between absolute and allometric HGS and all-cause mortality in Mexican adults aged 50 years and older. We analyzed data from the Mexican Health and Aging Study, including 1917 adults aged ≥ 50 years with HGS assessed at wave 3. Absolute HGS (kg) and allometric HGS (HGS/height²) were examined using sex-specific quartiles and standardized z-scores....

Psychosocial stress is a risk factor for aging-related diseases. The COVID-19 pandemic placed a psychosocial burden on individuals, potentially increasing the risk for aging-related diseases for which epigenetic clocks are used as early biomarkers. Based on four epigenetic clocks (DunedinPACE, GrimAge2, Horvath, and PedBE), we investigated whether epigenetic aging changed during the pandemic and whether these changes were associated with objective and subjective pandemic-related stressors and...

Age-related decline in male fertility, including diminished sperm quality, poses significant risks to offspring health and is exacerbated by modern trends toward delayed parenthood. Focusing on the hypothalamus-pituitary-testis axis, which governs hormonal control of male reproduction, we identified Synage, a long noncoding RNA expressed in the hypothalamic medial preoptic area (mPOA). We found that Synage expression in gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) neurons decreases with age,...

This paper uses newly harmonized survey and register data on incomes and labor market outcomes as the basis for consistent comparisons of inequalities across 17 North American and European countries over the period 1995-2021. We examine trends in disposable income inequality in the working-age population, defined as persons aged 25 to 60, as well as its component parts of market income inequality and redistribution through government tax and transfer systems. We adjust incomes to allow for...