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The authors survey teenagers within the United States regarding the effect of social media use on sleep quality and attention span.

The authors compared the short-term effects of processed versus unprocessed food on spatial learning and survival in zebrafish, given the large public concern regarding processed foods. By randomly assigning zebrafish to a diet of brine shrimp flakes (processed) or live brine shrimp (unprocessed), the authors show while there is no immediate effect on a fish's decision process between the two diets, there are significant correlations between improved learning and stress response with the unprocessed diet.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder and is difficult to diagnose in young children. Here magnetoencephalography was used to compare the brain activity in patients with ASD to patients in a control group. The results show that patients with ASD have a high level of activity in different areas of the brain than those in the control group.

While remarkable in its ability to mirror human cognition, machine learning and its associated algorithms often require extensive data to prove effective in completing tasks. However, data is not always plentiful, with unpredictable events occurring throughout our daily lives that require flexibility by artificial intelligence utilized in technology such as personal assistants and self-driving vehicles. Driven by the need for AI to complete tasks without extensive training, the researchers in this article use fluid intelligence assessments to develop an algorithm capable of generalization and abstraction. By forgoing prioritization on skill-based training, this article demonstrates the potential of focusing on a more generalized cognitive ability for artificial intelligence, proving more flexible and thus human-like in solving unique tasks than skill-focused algorithms.

Here, recognizing the difficulty associated with tracking the progression of dementia, the authors used machine learning models to predict between the presence of cognitive normalcy, mild cognitive impairment, and Alzheimer's Disease, based on blood DNA methylation levels, sex, and age. With four machine learning models and two dataset dimensionality reduction methods they achieved an accuracy of 53.33%.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a type of dementia that affects more than 5.5 million Americans, and there are no approved treatments that can delay the advancement of the disease. In this work, Xu and Mitchell test the effects of various herbal extracts (bugleweed, hops, sassafras, and white camphor) on Aβ_1-40 peptide levels in human neuroblastoma cells. Their results suggest that bugleweed may have the potential to reduce Aβ_1-40 levels through its anti-inflammatory properties.