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A study has found that adolescents become highly motivated to seek rewards after just a few hours of social isolation. This may be beneficial in driving them towards social interaction, but when opportunities for connection are limited could lead them to pursue less healthy rewards like alcohol or drugs.

Immune cells released from bone marrow in the skull in response to chronic stress and adversity could play a key role in symptoms of depression and anxiety, say researchers. There's a significant proportion of people for whom antidepressants don't work.

The brain holds a 'map' of the body that remains unchanged even after a limb has been amputated, contrary to the prevailing view that it rearranges itself to compensate for the loss, according to new research from scientists in the UK and US.

Researchers have captured the first clear view of the hidden architecture that helps shape a simple multicellular organism, showing how cells work together to build complex life forms. In a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS ) , a team of British and German scientists revealed the structure of the extracellular matrix in Volvox carteri, a type of green algae that is often used to study how multicellular organisms evolved from single-celled ancestors.

Researchers have found why common cuff-based blood pressure readings are inaccurate and how they might be improved, which could improve health outcomes for patients. High blood pressure, or hypertension, is the top risk factor for premature death, associated with heart disease, strokes and heart attacks.

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have found strong evidence of a giant planet orbiting a star in the stellar system closest to our own Sun. At just four light-years away from Earth, the Alpha Centauri triple star system has long been a target in the search for worlds beyond our solar system.

Cicadas coordinate their early morning choruses with remarkable precision, timing their singing to a specific level of light during the pre-dawn hours. In a study published in the journal Physical Review E , researchers have found that these insects begin their loud daily serenades when the sun is precisely 3.8 degrees below the horizon: a consistent marker of early morning light known as civil twilight.

Cambridge scientists have developed and tested a new drug in mice that has the potential to reduce damage to the brain when blood flow is restored following a stroke. Stroke is a devastating disease. Even for those who survive, there is a significant risk of damage to the brain that can lead to disabilities and a huge impact on an individual's life Thomas Krieg As many as one in four people will have a stroke during their lifetime.

Cambridge researchers are leading drug discovery to develop safer, more effective treatments for the millions of people affected by Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases. According to Alzheimer's Research UK, if nothing changes one in two of us will be affected by dementia in our lifetime, either by caring for someone with the condition, developing it ourselves, or worse, both.

In the largest ever survey of rainforest birdlife, scientists have discovered that deforestation to create pastureland in Colombia is causing around 60% more damage to biodiversity than previously estimated. The food we eat comes with a much great environmental cost than we thought. We need policy makers to think much more about the larger scale biodiversity impact of deforestation.

Scientists have used AI to re-analyse a clinical trial for an Alzheimer's medicine, and identified a group of patients who responded to treatment. The work demonstrates that AI can inform the design of future clinical trials to make them more effective and efficient, accelerating the search for new medicines.

Astronomers have detected a giant exoplanet - between three and ten times the size of Jupiter - hiding in the swirling disc of gas and dust surrounding a young star. Earlier observations of this star, called MP Mus, suggested that it was all'alone without any planets in orbit around it, surrounded by a featureless cloud of gas and dust.

Researchers have mapped the spread of infectious diseases in humans across millennia, to reveal how human-animal interactions permanently transformed our health today. We've long suspected that the transition to farming and animal husbandry opened the door to a new era of disease - now DNA shows us that it happened at least 6,500 years ago Eske Willerslev A new study suggests that our ancestors' close cohabitation with domesticated animals and large-scale migrations played a key role in the spread of infectious diseases.

Scientists have discovered that certain species of microbe found in the human gut can absorb PFAS - the toxic and long-lasting 'forever chemicals.' They say boosting these species in our gut microbiome could help protect us from the harmful effects of PFAS.

Understanding how the universe transitioned from darkness to light with the formation of the first stars and galaxies is a key turning point in the universe's development, known as the Cosmic Dawn. However, even with the most powerful telescopes, we can't directly observe these earliest stars, so determining their properties is one of the biggest challenges in astronomy.

Researchers have found that chunks of 'flipped' DNA can help fish quickly adapt to new habitats and evolve into new species, acting as evolutionary 'superchargers'. Why are there so many different kinds of animals and plants on Earth? One of biology's big questions is how new species arise and how nature's incredible diversity came to be.

An 'AI scientist', working in collaboration with human scientists, has found that combinations of cheap and safe drugs - used to treat conditions such as high cholesterol and alcohol dependence - could also be effective at treating cancer, a promising new approach to drug discovery. The research team, led by the University of Cambridge, used the GPT-4 large language model (LLM) to identify hidden patterns buried in the mountains of scientific literature to identify potential new cancer drugs.

Adolescents with mental health conditions use social media differently than their peers, study suggests One of the first studies in this area to use clinical-level diagnoses reveals a range of differences between young people with and without mental health conditions when it comes to social media - from changes in mood to time spent on sites.

Adolescents who sleep for longer - and from an earlier bedtime - than their peers tend to have improved brain function and perform better at cognitive tests, researchers from the UK and China have shown. Even though the differences in the amount of sleep that each group got was relatively small, we could still see differences in brain structure and activity and in how well they did at tasks Barbara Sahakian But the study of adolescents in the US also showed that even those with better sleeping habits were not reaching the amount of sleep recommended for their age group.

Metformin, a widely used and affordable diabetes drug, could prevent a form of acute myeloid leukaemia in people at high risk of the disease, a study in mice has suggested. Further research in clinical trials will be needed to confirm this works for patients. We've done the extensive research all the way from cell-based studies to human data, so we're now at the point where we have a made a strong case for moving ahead with clinical trials Brian Huntly Around 3,100 people are diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) each year in the UK.