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The human brain is the center of the human nervous system and is a highly complex organ. Enclosed in the cranium, it has the same general structure as the brains of other mammals, but is over three times as large as the brain of a typical mammal with an equivalent body size.

UVA researchers find how postoperative delirium may set the stage for dementia

UVA Health researchers have discovered how a form of delirium that often strikes older patients after surgery may set the stage for dementia – and identified a drug that could reverse the underlying brain changes.

18 Aug 2026

Music activates brain networks for imagination and meaning

In a new paper appearing Aug. 18 in Nature Communications, Princeton University researchers show how music produces distinct patterns in the regions of the brain associated with imagination and meaning, similar to those prompted by spoken narratives.

18 Aug 2026

Five-week training program helps college students regulate their emotions

A five-week training intervention taught college students to better regulate their emotions in response to negative events, a new study finds.

18 Aug 2026

Leicester-led research reveals long COVID’s lasting impact on healthcare workers

Major research has found that long COVID continues to affect a substantial proportion of healthcare workers, with serious consequences for their health, work and home lives, and NHS workforce overall.

18 Aug 2026

Deep-learning tissue clocks reveal how organs age and leave disease-linked signals in blood

Deep learning applied to more than 25,000 histopathology slides revealed tissue-specific structural signatures of biological aging that tracked telomere attrition, pathology, comorbidity, and molecular changes more closely than chronological age alone.

18 Aug 2026

Laser treatment may extend survival in glioblastoma patients

For patients facing a diagnosis of glioblastoma - one of the most aggressive and devastating forms of brain cancer - the standard path forward has long meant an invasive open-skull surgery and a daunting prognosis.

17 Aug 2026

New microfluidic chip predicts personalized glioblastoma treatment responses

Even for the same brain tumor treated with the same anticancer drug, the effect can differ from patient to patient.

17 Aug 2026

Severe mental illness may accelerate dementia and stroke vulnerability

People living with severe mental illness face a substantially higher risk of dementia throughout adulthood, as well as a significantly elevated risk of stroke in early and middle adulthood, according to a large new study based on health records from Catalonia, Spain.

17 Aug 2026

AI can recreate food convincingly, but there is one thing it still struggles to trigger

AI-generated food images matched real food images in perceived healthiness and estimated calorie content but were rated as less realistic and elicited lower willingness to eat. A subset of hyperrealistic AI images received stronger appetitive ratings, suggesting that perceived realism may shape how synthetic food imagery is evaluated.

17 Aug 2026

New book guides high-risk pregnancy decisions after Dobbs

Doctors and patients confronting high-risk pregnancies have always faced profound and life-altering decisions.

17 Aug 2026

Childhood trauma affects brain pathways linked to adult anhedonia

Experiencing trauma in childhood can lead to a lack of motivation and less pleasure from rewards-or anhedonia-later in life.

17 Aug 2026

Engineered immune cells help eliminate severe bacterial infections effectively

Severe bacterial infections remain a major global health challenge because antibiotics alone often fail when the host immune system becomes dysfunctional.

17 Aug 2026

Wearable sensors coupled with AI can non-invasively monitor blood pressure

Wearable sensors coupled with AI can generate blood pressure readings nearly as well as the invasive and risky arterial lines relied on in intensive care units and operating rooms, new work by Johns Hopkins University researchers demonstrates.

17 Aug 2026

New study shows attention actively shapes the body's inflammation

We usually think of bodily sensations as information the brain receives. What if the way we attend to those sensations can feed back and change the biological response itself?

17 Aug 2026

Cocoa looks promising for mood, but the brain benefits come with a catch

A review of clinical and preclinical studies suggests cocoa polyphenols may support mood, neuroplasticity, cerebral blood flow, and gut-brain signaling through pathways involving BDNF/CREB, inflammation, and oxidative stress.

17 Aug 2026

Intracranial local field potentials offer clues to prolonged disorders of consciousness

Prolonged disorders of consciousness (pDOC) represent states in which patients fail to show reliable evidence of awareness after severe brain injury.

16 Aug 2026

Sprint exercise sends a very different molecular signal through the body

Sprint-interval exercise triggers a much larger and faster shift in circulating proteins and metabolites than moderate-intensity exercise, revealing distinct patterns of predicted communication between organs. The findings suggest that exercise intensity shapes systemic molecular signaling, with skeletal muscle and adipose tissue emerging as potential source and target tissues linked to cardiometabolic health.

16 Aug 2026