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Christof Koch is taking on one of science’s deepest mysteries: how the brain creates conscious experience, or whether it creates it at all. He argues that materialism has yet to solve this “hard problem” and will explore puzzling phenomena such as near-death experiences and terminal lucidity. His work points toward the possibility that consciousness may be woven into reality itself.

A compound in rice bran may help calm an overactive gut by reducing the calcium signals that cause intestinal muscles to contract. Ferulic acid suppressed contractions triggered by several chemical messengers in laboratory experiments. The discovery could eventually support new dietary approaches for diarrhea-related digestive disorders, although it may make constipation worse.

Background and ObjectivesArtificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly used in healthcare decision-making to improve clinical efficiency and patient risk assessment. However, emerging evidence suggests these tools may disadvantage older adults from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, potentially worsening health disparities. This scoping review examines how AI-driven healthcare decision tools affect health outcomes among socioeconomically disadvantaged older adults.MethodsFollowing the Arksey and...

Declines in nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) are linked to metabolic stress accompanying aging and disease. While precursor-based approaches elevate systemic NAD, their clinical translation can be constrained by biosynthetic bottlenecks and first-pass metabolism. RENEWAL-NAD+ (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT07336836; retrospectively registered 01/04/2026) was a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled Phase 0/1b trial in healthy adults aged 45-75 years (60 randomized; primary analysis n = 50)...

CONCLUSION: The co-occurrence of slow gait and mild cognitive impairment (MCI-SG) represents a distinct high-risk clinical phenotype strongly linked to AD pathology. Aβ and APOE ε4 show differential associations across the gait-cognitive spectrum. Integrated assessment of gait and cognition improves risk stratification in older adults and may guide early intervention strategies.

Underrepresented populations, often characterized by minority ethnicity, sex/gender or low socioeconomic status, have a higher risk burden and more adverse lifetime experiences of conditions negatively impacting cognitive health than better represented populations. There are several methodological challenges of research in and with marginalized populations that hinder research on improvements to their cognitive health. This review aims at presenting challenges of recruitment, data collection,...

The self-renewal and differentiation of stem cells are tightly controlled to maintain tissue homeostasis. Failure in stem cell maintenance results in stem cell depletion and precocious aging. However, how stem cells are maintained still remains not fully understood. Here, through a large-scale RNAi screen for maintenance and proliferation of adult Drosophila intestinal stem cells (ISCs), we identify several subunits of V-ATPase including Vha68-2/ATP6V1A, required for ISC proliferation,...

Cardiac fibrosis, a major pathological hallmark of aging that leads to heart failure, is characterized by excessive collagen deposition. Our knowledge of what sustains collagen synthesis in the aging heart is still very preliminary. Here, we uncover a central role for chaperone-mediated autophagy (CMA), a selective lysosomal degradation pathway, in this process. We demonstrate that CMA is suppressed in the aging heart, which promotes collagen overproduction in fibroblasts, whereas enhancing CMA...

Taking a daily multivitamin may help older adults preserve the strength and stamina needed for everyday activities. After three years, users reported better functional health than those taking a placebo, although the preliminary findings still require peer review.

A liquid brushed onto cavities in seconds may spare many young children from pain, infection, and surgery. A major U.S. trial found that silver diamine fluoride stopped decay in more than half of treated baby teeth. The treatment requires no drilling, shots, or sedation, although it does permanently darken the decayed area.

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 little or no nutritional value. Blocking the vagus nerve erased this effect and made it harder for the animals to remember where food had been located. Over time, diets high in fat and sugar also weakened this memory system.

Newly found earthworks suggest about 3 million people might have lived in just about 3% of the forest’s entire area

A new cooking method could make French fries crispier in less time while significantly limiting how much oil they absorb. Researchers propose combining microwave heating, which keeps oil out, with conventional frying, which provides the crunch consumers expect.

Dysfunctional mitophagy is proposed as a key component of Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology, yet direct in vivo evidence and mechanistic insights are still lacking. Here we show that AD model mice expressing a mitophagy reporter (APP/PSEN1/mt-Keima) develop large accumulation of acidic and neutral mitochondria within neuronal processes that form a previously unrecognized pathological structure termed mitochondrial plaques (MPs). The development of MPs is driven by abnormal mitochondrial buildup...