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A new study published in Jama Network Open looked at education levels and poststroke cognitive trajectories. “Having a stroke can sometimes affect a person’s thinking,” study author Mellanie V. Springer told us. “Researchers have not yet identified all of the factors that put people at risk for developing problems with their thinking after stroke. We did this study to determine whether a person’s education level before stroke influences their risk of having problems with their thinking after stroke.” [More]

A new study published in PNAS looked at how expert navigators deploy rational complexity–based decision precaching for large-scale real-world planning. “Our study is about the intricate planning processes of London taxi drivers, who are renowned for their exceptional knowledge of the city's layout,” study author Daniel C. McNamee told us. “We aimed to uncover how these expert navigators manage the complex task of route planning across more than 26,000 streets in London.” [More]

A new study published in the Journal of Nature looked at how dopamine dynamics are dispensable for movement but promote reward responses. “We tested whether rapid dopamine dynamics are necessary for the behavioral functions of dopamine,” study author Pascal S. Kaeser told us. “There is conflicting literature on each dopamine function as to whether it is mediated by fast and precise signalling or by slower, tonic signaling.” [More]

A new study published in the Journal of Child Development looked at autobiographical memory for the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, psychological adjustment, and their relation over time. “We were interested in getting some insight on how children and adolescents thought about and remembered their lockdown experiences,” study author Dr. Tirill Fiellhaugen Hjuler from the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Aarhus University Hospital told us. [More]

A new study published in the Psychological Bulletin looked at a meta-analytic review of the association between mental effort and negative affect. “In psychology, there is a decades-long controversy about the nature of mental effort,” study author Erik Bijleveld told us. “On the one hand, psychologists often assume that people avoid mental effort whenever they can.” Bijleveld cites an example of this when people make daily-life decisions such as what restaurant to go to, they are usually not going to process all relevant information that is available to them. [More]

A new study published in Child Development looked at how mothers speak less to infants during detected real-world phone use. “Our study looks at how phone use affects parental speech around their children,” study author Kaya de Barbara told us. “We expected that when parents use their phones they would speak less around their kids.” [More]

A new study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association looked at cardiovascular health, Race, and the decline in cognitive function in midlife women. “Based on our literature review, we hypothesized that cognitive function would decline in midlife,” study author Imke Janssen told us. “But that this decline would be observed in both Black and White women, would be slower for study participants with good heart health, and that the effect would be stronger in White compared to Black women.” [More]

A new study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders looked at how brain–gut photobiomodulation restores cognitive alterations in chronically stressed mice through the regulation of Sirt1 and neuroinflammation. “The study deals with how photobiomodulation using multiple modes of emission (Laser diode, IR LED and Red LED) in different tissues at the same time (gut-brain) exerts beneficial effects in a model of depression induced by chronic stress,” study author Albert Giralt Torroella told us. [More]

A new study published in Cell and Tissue Research looked at the identification of vagal afferent nerve endings in the mouse colon and their spatial relationship with enterochromaffin cells. “The purpose of this study was to identify for the first time, the sensory nerve endings of the vagus nerve in the inner lining (called the mucosa) of the colon,” study author Nick Spencer told us. [More]

A new study published in the Journal of Child Development looked at infection detection in faces and children's development of pathogen avoidance. “We were interested in understanding whether children ages four to nine years old can avoid and recognize sick faces,” study author Tiffany S. Leung told us. “Previous studies have reported that adults can use faces to recognize when someone is sick and make judgements about whether to approach or avoid them." [More]