Family dogs boost adolescent mental health through the microbiome
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 4-Jan-2026 00:11 ET (4-Jan-2026 05:11 GMT/UTC)
It’s no surprise that dogs benefit people’s mental health. In a paper publishing in the Cell Press journal iScience on December 3, researchers point to a reason as to why: dogs prompt changes in the collection of microbes that live in and on our bodies, resulting in an increase in mental health.
A new study of 2,000 U.S. adults shows dark web users report much higher rates of depression, paranoia, suicidal thoughts, self-injury and digital self-harm than surface web users. People with suicidal thoughts were nearly three times more likely to use the dark web, while those engaging in self-injury or digital self-harm were up to five and 19 times more likely, respectively. Researchers suggest dark web use may reflect underlying mental health struggles and urge professionals to reach vulnerable users in these hidden spaces.
College students who binge drink may be acting on influences they brought from home, a new Washington State University-led study suggests.
A recent survey shows that students who binge drink more than other students tend to have grown up in a home with more permissive attitudes toward drinking. Those students are also more likely to join Greek-affiliated organizations like fraternities or sororities.
With a new $2.3 million, four-year grant from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, part of the National Institutes of Health, researchers at Virginia Tech’s Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC are developing tools and techniques for gathering high-quality brain function data during during parent-child interactions.
Kyoto, Japan -- Shisei Tei claims he is clumsy with technology and doesn't even own a smartphone, yet he has found himself thinking a lot about what we call generative AI.
Tei is cautious rather than optimistic about AI. As a researcher, he uses it to help with analyzing psychiatric data, and outside work it helps him plan personalized hikes. But Tei is concerned that AI will change how we think about death, which he discusses in a chapter he wrote for the book SecondDeath: Experiences of Death Across Technologies.
"Today, I often see how AI reframes grief and remembrance," says Tei. Though he thinks mental health chatbots have the potential to lower barriers to care, maladaptive use of chatbots that reconstruct deceased individuals can distort our perceptions of death and existence.