For years, antioxidants have been marketed as tiny defenders that protect our bodies, and especially our brains, from damage and ageing. Since berries are packed with colourful antioxidant compounds, it seems logical that eating more of them should improve our brain health. But does the science actually support the hype? The answer is more complicated than wellness culture would suggest. While berries are undeniably nutritious, the idea that they are magically improving our brain...

In a previous blog (How Pregnancy Reshapes the Brain: A Groundbreaking Study), we explored one of the first studies to map the brain across an entire pregnancy. That research followed a single participant in extraordinary detail, revealing widespread reductions in grey matter and cortical thickness alongside increases in white matter integrity as pregnancy progressed. Importantly, that study established a key idea: pregnancy does not damage the brain; it reshapes it in ways that likely...

Imagine two children born in the same year, into families with similar incomes, but living in US states where income is distributed very differently. One grows up where income is fairly evenly distributed; the other where a small portion of people hold most of the wealth. According to a new analysis of brain scans from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, this broader social environment — measured with each state’s Gini coefficient — is linked to notable differences in...