Think Twice: How the Gut's "Second Brain" Influences Mood and Well-Being

What stress does to the brain - Neuroscience News

A new study sheds light on how the brain changes as a result of chronic stress. Selective noradrenaline release rewires connectivity patterns between different brain regions. Activity in the amygdala and networks that process sensory stimuli increased.

Scientists reveal foods to eat now to stave off cognitive decline later

Data on over 3,000 people shows only 8 percent with low-quality diets maintained high cognitive abilities into their 70s, a new study reveals.

The Entangled Brain: How Perception, Cognition, and Emotion Are Woven Together

A new vision of the brain as a fully integrated, networked organ.Popular neuroscience accounts often focus on specific mind-brain aspects like addiction, c

Gut Driven Development

How common biases influence development.

Joshua Park on Twitter / X

It’s hard to categorize or evaluate second-brain systems because there’s no single right answer.But I found one useful lens every second brain should be evaluated through: the lifecycle of your data.Collect -> Organize -> Evolve -> Use -> GovernSo I made a curated… pic.twitter.com/GrmBFLwvEW— Joshua Park (@JoshuaIPark) May 31, 2026

How the Brain Uses Glucose to Fuel Self-Control

The brain requires tons of energy—and new experiments show how low glucose levels and self-control issues are connected.

The contribution of gut bacterial metabolites in the human immune signaling pathway of non-communicable diseases

The interaction disorder between gut microbiota and its host has been documented in different non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as metabolic syndrome, neurodegenerative disease, and autoimmune ...

Fecal transplants for autism deliver success in clinical trials

Scientific research continues to uncover interesting connections between the gut microbiome and human health, including everything from depression to PTSD to autoimmune disease. Another example of this are emerging ties between gut health and autism. Exciting new research, now moving to Phase 3 human trials, has found boosting microbial diversity via fecal transplants can dramatically reduce autism symptoms in the long term.

Regulation of Intestinal Barrier Function by Microbial Metabolites

The human gastrointestinal tract (GI) harbors a diverse population of microbial life that continually shapes host pathophysiological responses. Despite readily available abundant metagenomic data, the functional dynamics of gut microbiota remain to be explored in various health and disease conditions. Microbiota generate a variety of metabolites from dietary products that influence host health and pathophysiological functions. Since gut microbial metabolites are produced in close proximity to gut epithelium, presumably they have significant impact on gut barrier function and immune responses.

When We Eat, or Don’t Eat, May Be Critical for Health (Published 2018)

A growing body of research suggests that our bodies function optimally when we align our eating patterns with our circadian rhythms.

How We Pay Attention Changes the Very Shape of Our Brains

Imagine arriving at the airport just in time to catch a plane. Everything in your behavior betrays the heightened concentration of your attention. Your mind on alert, you look for the departures si…

E. coli chemotaxis: the baffling intelligence of a single cell

I want to tell the story of a beautiful phenomenon in biology. In some sense it’s the prototype of much of the activity of life. The phenomenon is the way in which an individual cell of E. coli forages for nutrients. This process, known as “chemotaxis”—the “chemo-” for chemical and the “taxis” from the Greek τάξις, for tactics—is intelligence in one of its most elemental forms. An individual E. coli has no brain, obviously, and is even many orders of magnitude simpler than a human cell, and yet already it possesses something like a sense of smell, drive, even a memory. Chemotaxis recasts E. coli not as some aimless gut-pest but rather as an exquisitely sophisticated physical computer.

Building a Second Brain: The Definitive Introductory Guide

This is an introduction to Building a Second Brain, the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential

The neuroimaging correlates of depression established across six large-scale population datasets

Depression has been linked to reduced size of subcortical regions and abnormal functional connectivity in frontal and default mode networks. However, recent meta-analyses have failed to identify significant converging correlates of depression across the literature such that a conclusive mapping of the neuroimaging correlates of depression remains elusive. We leveraged 23,417 participants across 6 population datasets to comprehensively establish the neuroimaging correlates of depression. We found reductions in gray matter volume/cortical surface area associated with depression in the frontal cortex, anterior cingulate and insula, confirming previous studies showing the importance of prefrontal and default mode regions in depression. Our findings demonstrate multiple surprising results, including a lack of depression correlates in subcortical brain regions and significant depression correlates in somatomotor and visual regions. Overall, these results shed new light on key brain regions involved in the pathophysiology of depression, updating our understanding of the neuroimaging correlates of depression symptoms.

The neuroimaging correlates of depression established across six large-scale population datasets

Depression has been linked to reduced size of subcortical regions and abnormal functional connectivity in frontal and default mode networks. However, recent meta-analyses have failed to identify significant converging correlates of depression across the literature such that a conclusive mapping of the neuroimaging correlates of depression remains elusive. We leveraged 23,417 participants across 6 population datasets to comprehensively establish the neuroimaging correlates of depression. We found reductions in gray matter volume/cortical surface area associated with depression in the frontal cortex, anterior cingulate and insula, confirming previous studies showing the importance of prefrontal and default mode regions in depression. Our findings demonstrate multiple surprising results, including a lack of depression correlates in subcortical brain regions and significant depression correlates in somatomotor and visual regions. Overall, these results shed new light on key brain regions involved in the pathophysiology of depression, updating our understanding of the neuroimaging correlates of depression symptoms.