Category Health/Medical

Researchers have a better understanding of the nocebo effect and the neuroscience behind it all. Opposite of the better-known placebo effect, where positive expectations trigger genuine pain relief, the nocebo effect is the experience from negative expectations, created by prior experience, verbal suggestion, or social observation, which can drive anxiety and make pain worse.

A new study published in Nature Communications, by researchers at the University of Toronto Mississauga and McGill University, identified a brain pathway through which negative expectations can amplify pain. The findings, generated independently by the two labs without prior coordination, converged on the neurochemical cholecystokinin (CCK), which has previously been linked to nocebo pain responses in humans.

Forgiving someone might not erase painful memories, but it can subtly update them, making past hurts feel less upsetting. It’s less “forgive and forget,” and more “forgive and update.”

Psychologists have long known that forgiveness is crucial for healing rifts and keeping social bonds strong. Folk wisdom even advises us to “forgive and forget” after a wrong, implying that saying you forgive someone should make the bad memory vanish.

But forgiving doesn’t actually make you forget, notes Duke neuroscientist Felipe de Brigard: “When you forgive someone for a wrongdoing, you don’t forget the event. But once you forgive, the memory doesn’t hurt as much...

While many American adults are trying to reduce cholesterol levels, certain cancerous tumors have a relentless appetite for the metabolite. Some tumor cells use as much cholesterol as they can access to accelerate their growth beyond the capabilities of normal cells.

Turning tumors’ cholesterol cravings into weakness
Scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute and their collaborators at the University of Illinois Chicago have published findings in Science Advances regarding a potential method for turning the tables on these tumors by subverting their cholesterol cravings. The researchers revealed new insights into enzymes that help move cholesterol around cells...

Why do cells age—and why do we lose our energy and vitality as we get older? This question is one of the central challenges of modern biomedicine. The focus is particularly on mitochondria—tiny cellular organelles long known as the cell’s powerhouses but now understood as dynamic control centers that not only produce energy, but also coordinate cellular communication, adaptation, and many of the processes essential for life.

They supply us with the energy that our body needs for movement, growth, and re...