Each month our editorial team sifts through hundreds of papers and curates notable findings—for practitioners and informed readers who want to stay current with the evidence. Subscribe to the monthly Research Digest for expert analysis and concise summaries of key papers.
111 papers
The study introduced the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ), a short self-test that gives a score from 0 to 50 to measure autistic traits in adults with normal intelligence. The researchers tested four groups (58 adults with Asperger/high-functioning autism; 174 random controls; 840 Cambridge students; and 16 math Olympiad winners) and found…
This paper is a meta-analysis of more than 300 studies in humans that looked at links between psychological stress and measures of the immune system. It found that very short, acute stressors (minutes) were tied to increases in some natural (innate) immune measures and decreases in some specific (adaptive) immune…
This 2002 review looked at animal and human research on exercise and the brain. It reports that voluntary exercise in animals raises levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and other growth factors, spurs the birth of new neurons, changes gene activity in ways that support plasticity, and can improve learning…
The glymphatic system is a recently discovered pathway in the brain that uses perivascular tunnels made by astroglial cells to clear soluble proteins and waste and to move nutrients and signaling molecules around the brain. It works mainly during sleep and is much less active when we are awake, so…
Researchers interviewed 92 adults with autism to study “camouflaging,” which means hiding or changing autistic behaviors in social situations. They used thematic analysis to make a three-stage model. People said they camouflage to fit in and make connections. Camouflaging included masking (hiding traits) and compensation (using learned social techniques). Reported…
This review looked at brain studies of how people with autism sense sounds, touch, and sights. It notes that unusual sensory reactions are very common in autism (reported in over 96% of children) and that brain measures (like ABR, EEG, MEG, and fMRI) often show differences in early auditory pathways…
This 2002 PNAS review by Marcus Raichle and Debra Gusnard examines how the brain uses energy. The authors say the brain uses a large share of the body's energy and that most of that energy goes to ongoing, background neural activity. They note that short-lived, task-related increases in energy use…
This umbrella review looked at the best existing reviews and large studies to see if depression is linked to low serotonin or low serotonin activity. Across measures of serotonin in fluids, receptor and transporter studies, tryptophan depletion experiments, and large genetic studies, the evidence was mixed or absent. The authors…
Ketamine has been used as a safe anesthetic for more than 50 years and also works well for pain relief. The active form is S(+)-ketamine and it is mainly broken down into an active metabolite called norketamine. Ketamine blocks NMDA receptors in the brain, which helps explain its special effects…
This review examines studies on how testosterone relates to anxiety and depression and how that might help explain sex differences in these disorders. About 18% of U.S. adults have an anxiety disorder each year and about 7% have major depressive disorder, and women are more than twice as likely as…
Evolution has endowed all humans with a continuum of innate, hard-wired, automatically activated defense behaviors, termed the defense cascade. Arousal is the first step in activating the defense cascade; flight or fight is an active defense response for dealing with threat; freezing is a flight-or-fight response put on hold; tonic…
Researchers studied mouse vagus nerve cells and found two small, separate groups of sensory neurons (called P2ry1 and Npy2r). Each group has only a few hundred neurons and sends dense branches into the lung but to different brainstem areas. Using optogenetics (light to activate chosen neurons), turning on P2ry1 neurons…
