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Collaborative rule learning promotes interbrain information alignment

How do brains align during social interaction to support shared understanding? This study shows that interbrain information alignment emerges rapidly and strengthens with practice, with distinct neural processes supporting sensory synchrony during early alignment and shared cognitive representation in real pairs during late alignment.

Parkinson’s Link to Gut Bacteria Suggests Unexpectedly Simple Treatment

Researchers have suspected for some time that the link between our gut and brain plays a role in the onset of Parkinson’s disease.

A recent study identified gut microbes likely to be involved and linked them with decreased riboflavin (vitamin B2) and biotin (vitamin B7), suggesting an unexpectedly simple treatment that may help: B vitamins.

“Supplementation therapy targeting riboflavin and biotin holds promise as a potential therapeutic avenue for alleviating Parkinson’s symptoms and slowing disease progression,” said medical researcher Hiroshi Nishiwaki from Nagoya University in Japan, when the paper was published in May 2024.

New Dementia Pill Clears First Major Safety Hurdle, Trial Reports

A new pill for treating dementia is delivering promising “topline” results in early-stage clinical trials, according to a recent press release by its makers.

The treatment, called VES001 after its developer Vesper Bio, is designed to tackle frontotemporal dementia (FTD) – the most common type of dementia in the under-60s.

In a two-part preliminary safety trial at two medical centres in the Netherlands and the UK, VES001 was given to people showing no signs of FTD, including six volunteers with an increased genetic risk for the condition.

GLP-1 Drug Side Effects May Be Tackled with More Mechanistic Studies

GLP-1 drugs have been transformative for treating obesity, but about 50 percent of patients who were prescribed this treatment ended up stopping due to severe side effects, such as nausea.

At the 2025 Society for Neuroscience meeting, experts presented new findings on how GLP-1 agonists’ action in the brain produced unwanted side effects and how these discoveries can guide future research.

Read more.

At the 2025 Society for Neuroscience meeting, scientists discussed the adverse side effects of GLP-1 agonists and new directions for future research.

New possible treatment pathway for Shank3-related autism discovered

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by differences in communication, behavior and the processing of sensory information. Past research has shown that some individuals diagnosed with ASD exhibit specific genetic variants or differences in the regulation of genes.

In some patients, the Shank3 gene was found to be mutated, partially or fully deleted, or not expressed as much. This gene is known to support the creation of junctions at which connected neurons communicate with each other, known as synapses.

Past findings suggest that people diagnosed with ASD who exhibit variants in Shank3 also present abnormalities in the volume, structure and function of white matter. White matter is a brain region filled with a fatty substance known as myelin, which insulates nerves and allows signals to travel faster within the nervous system.

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