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Category: neuroscience

Digital therapy outperforms referrals to campus clinics among college students

College students with anxiety, depression and eating disorders may be more likely to start and to respond more positively to therapy offered via a digital app compared to referrals to in-person campus clinics, according to a study led by Penn State researchers and published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

Globally, an estimated 40% to 60% of college students experience a mental health disorder at some point, and the need for campus counseling services has increased faster than institutions’ capacity to provide these services, according to the researchers.

The research team wanted to see if a proactive intervention using a digital therapy app could effectively treat anxiety disorders, depression and eating disorders, as well as address the increased need for psychological services.

Unlocking lithium’s hidden effects on Alzheimer’s disease at the cellular level

A recent study using advanced cell mapping shows that lithium chloride changes the activity of multiple enzymes linked to Alzheimer’s disease. These findings could help researchers design safer, more effective treatments for cognitive decline and dementia.

The spontaneous prioritization of “unfinishedness” in perception: A visual Zeigarnik effect

The events that occupy our thoughts in an especially persistent way are often those that are unfinished-from half-written papers to unfolded laundry. These events seem to also be privileged in memory, as in the “Zeigarnik effect”: When people carry out various tasks, but some are never finished due to extrinsic interruptions, memory tends to be better for those tasks that were unfinished. But just how foundational is this sort of “unfinishedness” in mental life? The Zeigarnik effect is often explained by appeal to the salience of goals or the weight of obligation, but might unfinishedness also be spontaneously prioritized even in visual processing-independent of these high-level social/motivational factors? Across four experiments (N = 120), observers viewed paths that gradually unfolded through mazes, from a start point to an end point. Probes briefly appeared along the path, and observers later simply reproduced their positions. Critically, each path either reached its end point or stopped shortly before-remaining visually unfinished. Although this manipulation was entirely task-irrelevant, it greatly influenced performance-with more precise reproductions on unfinished trials. This same pattern held across multiple experiments, even while carefully controlling for various lower level visual properties, and it generalized across different types of displays. This new visual Zeigarnik effect shows how vision extracts an unexpectedly rich property that is usually associated with higher level thought, and how the unfinishedness of events is privileged in the mind at a deep level. (PsycInfo Database Record © 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

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Beyond Paradox | Iain McGilchrist

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
— Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2

The two hemispheres of our brain collaborate to produce a coherent understanding of the world—at least, that’s what they’re supposed to do. In his groundbreaking book, The Master and His Emissary, neuro-philosopher and psychiatrist, Iain McGilchrist, proposed that our culture has been captured by the left hemisphere, whose dogmatic, technical and irrational way of processing information leads it to manifestly dangerous conclusions about the way the world works. Importantly, the left hemisphere never changes its mind.

In one of the widest conversations on Planet: Critical to date, Iain explains how we came to lose sight of the bigger picture by forsaking the intuition, creativity and intelligence of the right hemisphere. We discuss how our relationship to language makes and unmakes the world, the search for meaning, human agency, relationality, morality, art and the divine, with Iain clearly spelling out a path to human fulfilment—which may very well be the only thing which can save Earth from the worst of us.

🔴 The Master and His Emissary: https://channelmcgilchrist.com/master… Platformed: Charles Foster 🌎 Support Planet: Critical: / planetcritical 🌎 Subscribe: https://planetcritical.com/ 🌎 BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/racheldonald…

🗣️ Platformed: Charles Foster

A brain reward circuit inhibited by next-generation weight-loss drugs in mice

New research using humanized mouse models has finally pulled back the curtain on how these small-molecule drugs work in the brain, revealing that they don’t just tell the body it’s full—they actually change how we perceive “treats.”

1. The Homeostatic Circuit: This is the body’s fuel gauge. It involves the hypothalamus and hindbrain, which manage basic hunger and energy levels. It’s the circuit that tells you, “I’ve had enough calories for today.”

These new weight-loss pills do more than just settle your stomach; they speak directly to the brain’s reward center to help quiet the “food noise” that leads to overeating.

This is a “proof of concept” study. It proves the mechanism exists, but it doesn’t yet guarantee that a pill will be a side-effect-free “cure” for overeating in humans.

Humanized glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor (GLP1R) mouse models are used to investigate the neural circuitry through which small-molecule GLP1R agonists modulate feeding, with implications for how these orally delivered weight-loss drugs engage brain reward circuits.

Nanotechnology-Driven Therapeutic Innovations in Neurodegenerative Disorders: A Focus on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease

Neurodegenerative disorders entail a progressive loss of neurons in cerebral and peripheral tissues, coupled with the aggregation of proteins exhibiting altered physicochemical properties. Crucial to these conditions is the gradual degradation of the central nervous system, manifesting as impairments in mobility, aberrant behaviors, and cognitive deficits. Mechanisms such as proteotoxic stress, neuroinflammation, oxidative stress, and programmed cell death contribute to the ongoing dysfunction and demise of neurons. Presently, neurodegenerative diseases lack definitive cures, and available therapies primarily offer palliative relief. The integration of nanotechnology into medical practices has significantly augmented both treatment efficacy and diagnostic capabilities.

Researchers discover advanced language processing in the unconscious human brain

Baylor College of Medicine researchers have found that the human brain is capable of sophisticated language processing while in an unconscious state from general anesthesia. The findings, published in the latest edition of Nature, challenge what we know about the role of consciousness and cognition, and could open new ways of understanding memory, language and brain-computer interfaces.

“Our findings show that the brain is far more active and capable during unconsciousness than previously thought,” said Dr. Sameer Sheth, professor and Cullen Foundation Endowed chair of neurosurgery and a McNair Scholar at Baylor. “Even when patients are fully anesthetized, their brains continue to analyze the world around them.”

Sheth, who is also a neurosurgeon at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center, and his collaborators first recorded neural activity from hundreds of individual neurons in the hippocampus, a part of the brain associated with memory, while patients were under general anesthesia during epilepsy surgery. Patients undergoing this type of surgery were sought after because it allowed researchers access to this particular part of the brain.

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