Category Health/Medical

Finding a better route to treating social anxiety disorder may lie in another part of the brain, researchers suggest. The findings of the study show that oxytocin produced in the BNST increases stress-induced social anxiety behaviors in mice. This may provide an explanation as to why oxytocin can sometimes have antisocial effects.

Studies have long suggested that oxytocin – a hormone that can also act as a neurotransmitter – regulates prosocial behavior such as empathy, trust and bonding, which led to its popular labeling as the “love hormone...

Injuries to peripheral nerves – tissues that transmit bioelectrical signals from the brain to the rest of the body – often result in chronic pain, neurologic disorders, paralysis or disability. Now, researchers have developed a stretchable conductive hydrogel that could someday be used to repair these types of nerves when there’s damage. They report their results in ACS Nano.

Injuries in which a peripheral nerve has been completely severed, such as a deep cut from an accident, are difficult to treat...

Study suggests EMFs alter redox signaling to improve insulin sensitivity. Researchers from the University of Iowa may have discovered a safe new way to manage blood sugar non-invasively. Exposing diabetic mice to a combination of static electric and magnetic fields for a few hours per day normalizes two major hallmarks of type 2 diabetes, according to new findings published Oct. 6 in Cell Metabolism.

“We’ve built a remote control to manage diabetes,” says Calvin Carter, PhD, one of the study’s lead authors and a postdoc in the lab of senior author Val Sheffield, MD, PhD, professor of pediatrics, and of ophthalmology and visual sciences at the UI Carver College of Medicine...

Chemistry experiments show potential to power fuel cells. Spinach, when converted from its leafy, edible form into carbon nanosheets, acts as a catalyst for an oxygen reduction reaction in fuel cells and metal-air batteries.

An oxygen reduction reaction is one of two reactions in fuel cells and metal-air batteries and is usually the slower one that limits the energy output of these devices. Researchers have long known that certain carbon materials can catalyze the reaction. But those carbon-based catalysts don’t always perform as good or better than the traditional platinum-based catalysts...