As neuroscience strives for generalizability and equity, understanding human brain diversity across populations is crucial. To uncover how ethnicity/race-related differences in the brain functional connectome arise without falling into biological essentialism, Prof. Tianyi Yan and Prof. Guoyuan Yang’s team from the Beijing Institute of Technology recently published a study in Research. Using multimodal and behavioral data from the Human Connectome Project (HCP), they constructed a multi-layered framework to systematically reveal the driving mechanisms behind this population diversity.

New research shows that smell loss can affect quality of life as severely as conditions including diabetes, stroke, Parkinson’s and kidney failure. For millions of people, the ability to smell a morning coffee or taste a home‑cooked meal is something they barely think about. But the new study shows that when those senses disappear, life can quickly become bleak - with patients reporting levels of misery comparable to some of the most serious chronic illnesses. The findings challenge the widespread belief that losing smell or taste is merely an inconvenience - and expose what experts say is a dangerous underestimation of just how debilitating these conditions can be.

University of California, Irvine immunologist Lbachir BenMohamed has been awarded a $3.93 million National Institutes of Health grant to develop and test a novel therapeutic vaccine designed to prevent recurrent genital herpes, a lifelong viral infection that affects more than 60 million Americans and over 530 million people worldwide.

Individuals subject to extreme risk protection orders (ERPOs), or “red flag” laws, were significantly less likely to be arrested — including for violent and firearm-related offenses — while the orders were in effect compared to the six months prior. Strikingly, the drop in arrests did not end when the orders expired and continued for months afterward.