Brain vs. Heart - Menopause Brain - Emotional Block - Autism Pill??

[Breedlove, S]

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/heart-attack-brain-damage

The brain’s response to a heart attack may worsen recovery

By Alessio Cozzolino

After a heart attack, the heart “talks” to the brain. And that conversation may make recovery worse.

Shutting down nerve cells that send messages from injured heart cells to the brain boosted the heart’s ability to pump and decreased scarring, experiments in mice show. Targeting inflammation in a part of the nervous system where those “damage” messages wind up also improved heart function and tissue repair, scientists report January 27 in Cell.

“This research is another great example highlighting that we cannot look at one organ and its disease in isolation,” says Wolfram Poller, an interventional cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School who was not involved in the study. “And it opens the door to new therapeutic strategies and targets that go beyond the heart.”

Someone in the United States has a heart attack about every 40 seconds, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That adds up to about 805,000 people each year.

A heart attack is a mechanical problem caused by the obstruction of a coronary artery, usually by a blood clot. If the blockage lasts long enough, the affected cells may start to die. Heart attacks can have long-term effects such as a weakened heart, a reduced ability to pump blood, irregular heart rhythms, and a higher risk of heart failure or another heart attack.

Although experts knew from previous research that the nervous and immune systems could amplify inflammation and slow healing, the key players and pathways involved were unknown, says Vineet Augustine, a neurobiologist at the University of California, San Diego.

© Society for Science & the Public 2000–2026
--------------------


https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/menopause-linked-to-changes-in-brains-gray-matter-new-study-shows/

Menopause linked to changes in brain’s gray matter
By Jackie Flynn Mogensen 

Everyone who menstruates and lives long enough experiences menopause in one form or another. Yet despite that, research into what happens during this natural cessation of menstruation and why is limited. Scientists know that menopause can cause a myriad of neurological symptoms, from hot flashes to poor sleep to depression. But what is going on in people’s brain during this period is still murky. Now new research offers clues to a link between menopause and changes in the brain’s gray matter, as well as anxiety and depression.

Using brain scans from 10,873 people in the U.K., the researchers found that postmenopausal participants showed lower volumes of gray matter in the entorhinal cortex and hippocampus, which are involved in storing and retrieving memories, and in the anterior cingulate, which is involved in emotional regulation.

The researchers also looked at whether hormone replacement therapy (HRT), a frontline but still rarely prescribed treatment for symptoms of menopause, might ameliorate some of these changes.

Barbara Sahakian, a psychiatry professor at the University of Cambridge and an author of the study, explains that she and her colleagues theorized HRT might influence people’s experiences, tamping down their neurological symptoms, for instance. “That was the hypothesis,” she says, “but it didn’t seem to pan out completely that way.”

They found that people who were treated with HRT for menopause showed lower volumes of gray matter in some areas of the brain than those who did not receive HRT. The HRT group also showed higher rates of anxiety and depression—importantly, Sahakian says their work doesn’t find that HRT treatment causes brain changes or menopause symptoms. Previous research suggests HRT prescribed during the run-up to menopause and early postmenopause can reduce anxiety, depending on the kind of HRT and dose, in at least some women. And a subsequent analysis found that participants who were prescribed HRT were more likely to have reported anxiety and depression before HRT treatment, the study explains.

© 2025 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN,
--------------------


https://www.thetransmitter.org/emotion/why-emotion-research-is-stuck-and-how-to-move-it-forward/

Why emotion research is stuck—and how to move it forward

By Joshua P. Johansen

Growing up in the 1980s in Santa Cruz, California, where redwood-covered mountains descend to the rocky edge of the Pacific, might sound idyllic. But in the dark wake of the drug-fueled ’70s, the beach town could also be frightening. There was a bully at my high school who once chased me down the street threatening to hurt me. Unsurprisingly, catching sight of him in the hallways or at the skate park filled me with dread. Just walking past his house would trigger a wave of anxiety. Yet if I saw him in class, with teachers present, I felt more at ease.

How did my brain know to fear him only in specific circumstances? More broadly, how did I infer emotional significance from the world around me? The fact that I or anyone can make these judgments suggests that emotion arises from an internal model in the brain that supports inference, abstraction and flexible, context-dependent evaluations of threat or safety. These model-based emotion systems helped me infer danger from otherwise innocuous features of the environment, such as the bully’s house, or to downgrade my alarm, as I did when an adult was present.

Understanding the neural basis of emotion is a central question in neuroscience, with profound implications for the treatment of anxiety, trauma and mood disorders. Yet the field remains divided over what emotions are and how they should be defined, limiting progress. On one side are neurobiologists focused on the neural underpinnings of simple learned and innate defensive behaviors. On the other are psychological theorists who view emotions as subjective experiences arising from complex conceptual brain models of the world that are unique to humans. 

This divide fuels persistent arguments over whether emotion should be defined primarily as a conscious state or not. Though subjective feelings are undeniably important, limiting our definitions to conscious phenomena prevents us from studying the underlying mechanisms in nonhuman species. To move forward, we need to identify the conserved neural processes that support higher-order, internal-model-based emotional experiences across species, regardless of whether they rise to consciousness.

© 2026 Simons Foundation

--------------------


https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2026/01/22/nx-s1-5684294/leucovorin-autism-folic-folinic-acid-origins-vitamin-b

Can the prescription drug leucovorin treat autism? History says, probably not

Jon Hamilton

At a press conference in late 2025, federal officials made some big claims about leucovorin, a prescription drug usually reserved for people on cancer chemotherapy.

"We're going to change the label to make it available [to children with autism spectrum disorder]," said Dr. Marty Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. "Hundreds of thousands of kids, in my opinion, will benefit."
The Trump administration has suggested that leucovorin, a drug used in cancer treatment, might have some benefit for children with autism. Many researchers and families aren't so sure.

The FDA still hasn't made that label change.

Since Makary's remarks, though, more than 25,000 people have joined a Facebook group called Leucovorin for Autism. Most members appear to be parents seeking the drug for their autistic children.

Also since the press conference, some doctors have begun writing off-label prescriptions for autistic children, against the advice of medical groups including the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The buzz about leucovorin has led to a shortage of the drug. In response, the FDA is temporarily allowing imports of tablets that are made in Spain and sold in Canada, but not approved in the U.S.

All of this is part of a familiar cycle for Dr. Paul Offit, who directs the vaccine education center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Offit says he realized years ago that leucovorin's popularity was far ahead of the science.
Jason Mazzola walks to work at The Residence at Natick South, an LCB Senior Living community in Natick, MA. August 22, 2024.

    © 2026 npr
--------------------