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.
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…
Scientists reviewing lab rat studies say juvenile 'play fighting' helps shape the social brain. Research over the past 100+ years shows that when young rats are deprived of normal peer play during the juvenile period, adult rats show socio-cognitive problems and changes in neurons in the prefrontal cortex, especially the…
Anger and aggression have large impact on people's safety and the society at large. In order to provide an intervention to minimise aggressive behaviours, it is important to understand the neural and cognitive aspects of anger and aggression. In this systematic review, we investigate the cognitive and neural aspects of…
This rat study tested whether stress during the peripuberty period (seven non-consecutive days between postnatal day 28 and 42) changed play fighting at adolescence and later brain markers. Rats exposed to peripubertal stress showed more play fighting at P45. The researchers found that animals with very high play fighting in…
