Many people with major depressive disorder get no relief from current treatments. Newer combinations of existing medications might help, researchers report in JAMA Psychiatry.

Yawning is incredibly contagious, and more often than not, seeing someone yawn right in front of us makes us instinctively do the same. It is often tied to social and emotional connection and brain mirroring, where we automatically align and simulate the emotions and actions of the people around us. A recent study published in Current Biology has found that this behavior begins even before birth.

Every year, about 3 to 5 million people in the EU and the U.S. suffer a traumatic brain injury (TBI). In most cases, it is a mild brain injury (mTBI) due to a closed head injury (CHI) caused by falls, traffic accidents, contact sports, or violence. Although the symptoms of mTBI may resolve within days or weeks, up to 20% of those affected suffer from persistent physical, cognitive, and behavioral impairments, leading to a reduced quality of life and an increased risk of neuropsychiatric disorders, including mood disorders and dementia.

Long before the telltale signs of Parkinson's disease appear, including tremors and muscle stiffness, there are other, more subtle signs of the disease.

Dementia affects over 57 million people worldwide, a number expected to nearly double in the next 20 years. This permanent loss of cognitive abilities affects daily function and can be caused by multiple brain pathologies, including well-known ones like Alzheimer's disease (AD). Right now, biomarkers permit diagnosis of AD, but not rarer pathologies like frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) or its subtypes.

The deaths of three people aboard a small cruise ship during a suspected outbreak of hantavirus demonstrate the potential deadliness of the rodent-borne illness. "Once somebody gets sick, once somebody comes in contact with hantavirus, they can develop severe illness fairly quickly," said Neil Maniar, director of Northeastern's master of public health program.

A research team from Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacy at the LKS Faculty of Medicine, the University of Hong Kong (HKUMed), in collaboration with the InnoHK Advanced Biomedical Instrumentation Centre (ABIC), has developed the world's first "NanoPowder nasal spray." This innovation successfully overcomes the challenge of crossing the blood-brain barrier (BBB), enabling the delivery of medication to the brain without the need for injections or surgery. When used promptly at the early onset of stroke, the nasal spray provides prehospital emergency treatment, helping to save time, thus protecting brain cells and reducing complications. In the long term, it has the potential to become a community-based emergency rescue tool.

Search the web, and you'll find any number of biohacking techniques for promoting healthy lifespan, from taking cold baths to breathing pressurized oxygen to sleeping under a red light.

A hantavirus-stricken cruise ship with more than 140 people on board has arrived at Tenerife, the largest of Spain's Canary Islands, off the coast of West Africa, where the passengers and some of the crew are to disembark.

New research to be presented at this year's European Congress on Obesity (ECO 2026, Istanbul, Turkey, 12-15 May) shows that, following treatment for obesity or diabetes or both using incretin-based drugs, losing more weight versus less weight, and losing a little weight versus gaining weight, both lead to relatively lower risk of obesity-related conditions.