A new study was released in the journal Nature indicating that dopamine plays a crucial role in teaching young male mice to fight, with the chemical’s influence diminishing as they gain experience. 

In experiments in rodents, a team led by researchers at NYU Langone Health boosted activity in dopamine-releasing cells in a part of the brain called the ventral tegmental area. Their findings revealed that in inexperienced male fighters, this led the animals to attack for twice as long as they would have fought naturally. When the cells were blocked, the novice mice would not fight at all.

By contrast, this pattern did not hold true in males that had extensive fighting experience. Whether or not dopamine-releasing cells were boosted or blocked, the duration of attack did not change. Notably, though, the more clashes a mouse won, the more fights it would start in the future. 

The results of this study may offer new insight into addressing mental health conditions marked by intense shifts in mood and behavior, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and borderline personality disorder.

You can access the details of this study here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08459-w

A team of researchers announced that a 69-year-old paralyzed man has flown a virtual drone using a brain-computer interface (BCI) implant that allowed him to complete this task using only his thoughts. 

The BCI decoded the man’s brain activity as he imagined moving three groups of digits in real time. By associating neural signals with the movements of multiple fingers, the work built on previous BCI research that focused on moving a single computer cursor or whole virtual hand. Here’s more: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00167-3

New findings, which were published in the journal Nature, suggest that the parental origin of the X chromosome influences brain aging and may explain individual differences in cognitive decline and susceptibility to brain diseases. 

UC San Francisco researchers have found that when the brain cells of female mice express only a maternal X chromosome, their memory and cognitive skills deteriorate faster than female mice that express both maternal and paternal X chromosomes. According to the authors of the study, this discovery could explain the variation in brain aging between the sexes, since males inherit only a maternal X, as well as the variation between individual women. Check it out: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08457-y

Did you know that the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche consumed large amounts of psychoactive drugs, including potassium bromide and the hallucinogen chloral hydrate? 

This little factoid was brought to life in a paper entitled: Antichrist Psychonaut: Nietzsche and Psychedelics, written by philosopher and lecturer at the University of Exeter, Dr. Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes.

In this paper, Dr. Sjöstedt-Hughes investigates whether or not this drug use inspired his philosophy, and how philosophy potentially inspired this use, writing …

Holy dread: the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche took opium, this milk of Paradise,

sometimes confessedly in dangerously high doses. He was also a heavy user of other

psychoactive drugs including potassium bromide, a mysterious ‘Javanese narcotic’, and most unremittingly, chloral hydrate, a known hallucinogen. This narcotic aspect of Nietzsche’s life is neglected; it is the aim of this text to reveal the extent of his drug use and its effects, including a report of one of Nietzsche’s psychedelic trips. ‍

You can see what Dr. Sjöstedt-Hughes discovered here: https://philpapers.org/archive/SJSAPN.pdf