Immunology

How chronic inflammation may drive down dopamine and motivation

Growing evidence shows that the brain's dopamine system, which drives motivation, is directly affected by chronic, low-grade inflammation. A new paper proposes that this connection between dopamine, effort and the inflammatory ...

Neuroscience

Born to run: just not on cocaine

Cocaine is a highly addictive psychostimulant that induces complex molecular, cellular and behavioral responses. Despite various approaches and years of pre-clinical studies, effective, mechanism-based therapies to assist ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

Sensitive babies become altruistic toddlers

Our responsiveness to seeing others in distress accounts for variability in helping behavior from early in development, according to a study published September 25 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Tobias Grossmann ...

Neuroscience

Stinky or fragrant? Predicting changing odor preferences

Pleasant and unpleasant odors are a part of everyone's life, but how do our reactions to smells change when other odors are present? To answer this question, researchers at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan have ...

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