Mental Illness

A study in people fails to detect differences in the brain’s response to fear or anxiety, long thought to be controlled by different neural circuits.

Absence of human contact is associated with declines in cognitive function. But as the COVID-19 pandemic brings concerns about the potential harms of isolation to the fore, researchers are still hunting for concrete evidence of a causal role as well as possible mechanisms.

Bury your nose in tales of neurosyphilis, gender identity, the medical mysteries of sleep disorders, and more.

A meta-analysis of more than 80 studies from the past four decades finds weak evidence to support the use of medicinal cannabis to treat anxiety, depression, and other mental health disorders.

Some variants implicated in the disease are also linked to other psychiatric disorders.

The UCSD psychiatry researcher championed the concept of mental illness as a neurobiological condition and helped form the US government’s Decade of the Brain initiative.

Some academic institutions are beginning to complement the work of student organizations in addressing mental health problems in graduate school.

Complications during pregnancy may act via the placenta to magnify the effects of genetic risk factors.

The neuronal coverings that mediate synaptic changes are involved in everything from memory to psychiatric disorders, affecting autism, Alzheimer’s, and addiction.

See the web of proteins that make up these neuronal wrappings.

Presentations at the Society for Neuroscience meeting point to changes in neurons and connectivity between brain regions as potential components of the enigmatic condition.

Researchers are piecing together the links between the gut microbiome and mental health.

The brains of primates and mice follow the same exponential rule of connectivity, according to a study.

The same genes can make people more sensitive to their experiences, “for better of for worse,” psychologists argue.

Virus found in amniotic fluid; scientists consider links to mental illness, global warming, dengue, and Guillain-Barré syndrome

The most bizarre behaviors often make perfect sense in the minds of the mentally ill.

In the introduction to the book, author Eliezer J. Sternberg illustrates what can happen when the brain’s processing centers are damaged.

Thomas Insel, the director for the National Institute of Mental Health, will work for Google Life Sciences on the prevention and detection of mental diseases.

The neurologist and author had written about his recent experiences being “face to face with dying.”