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The opioid epidemic in the United States has exacted an incalculable toll on individuals and communities, creating an urgent need for alternative painkillers. The search for non-opioid treatments is crucial, not only to mitigate the risks of addiction and overdose, but also to develop pain management tools that remain effective without inducing tolerance and other challenging side effects in patients.

New research from the University of Chicago identified an alternative signaling pathway in the brain of mice that relieves pain, even in animals that have developed tolerance to opioids.

The study, titled “A Cholinergic Circuit That Relieves Pain, Despite Opioid Tolerance” and published in Neuron, also showed that pain relief through this route did not induce tolerance, did not create withdrawals symptoms after treatment was stopped, and did not activate reward systems, limiting risk for addiction and making it a viable path to developing effective, non-opioid pain relief.

You’re looking at a truck. You’re with a young child and he follows your gaze. He’s interested in the object you’re looking at without you pointing at it. This is called joint attention and it is one of the primary ways children learn to connect words with objects and acquire language.

Lack of joint attention is a core feature of autism. Until now, it was thought that stimulating joint attention in people with autism would help them express themselves verbally. But a meta-analysis of 71 studies on autism challenges this assumption and suggests that people with autism spectrum disorders may acquire language differently.

The study—by Laurent Mottron, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Addiction at Université de Montréal and a psychiatrist at the Hôpital en santé mentale Rivière-des-Prairies of the CIUSSS du Nord-de-l’Île-de-Montréal; Mikhail Kissine, a professor of linguistics at Université Libre de Bruxelles; and Ariane St-Denis, a medical student at McGill University—is published in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.

Fresh from solving the protein structure challenge, Google’s deep-learning outfit is moving on to the human genome.

With advanced technology and proper medical care, one can live without pancreas and lead a normal lifestyle.

“We’re all familiar with the Freudian idea that if we suppress our feelings or thoughts, then these thoughts remain in our unconscious, influencing our behaviour and wellbeing perniciously,” said Anderson. “The whole point of psychotherapy is to dredge up these thoughts so one can deal with them and rob them of their power.” It had become dogma in clinical psychology that efforts to banish thoughts or memories of a particular subject were counterproductive and made people think more about them, he said. “We challenge the view that thought suppression worsens mental illness.” https://www.ft.com/content/5495b3ee-6c08-4d89-a614-c0acb83aa9a6

The commonly-held belief that attempting to suppress negative thoughts is bad for our mental health could be wrong, a new study from scientists at the University of Cambridge suggests.

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“Beginning September 25, every U.S. household can again place an order to receive four more free COVID-19 rapid tests delivered directly to their home.”

Every U.S. household is eligible to order 4 free at-home COVID-19 tests.

The company hasn’t performed well in the past five years, but things could change.

In the incredibly small world of molecules, the elementary building blocks—the atoms—join together in a very regular pattern. In contrast, in the macroscopic world with its larger particles, there is much greater disorder when particles connect.

A research team at the University of Göttingen has now succeeded in achieving the same precise arrangement of atoms shown in molecules, but using nanometer-sized particles, known as “plasmonic molecules”—combinations of nanoscale metallic structures that have unique properties. The results were published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition, which has classified the article as a “very important paper.”

There is a transition area between molecular and macroscopic levels, an in-between zone called the nanometer range, where there is often a disordered aggregation of particles. Precise arrangement of nanometer-sized structures is one of the major challenges in the ongoing miniaturization in electronics, optics and medicine.