Technology

MIND? BODY? NO PROBLEM:

A study hints positive thinking could strengthen vaccine immunity (Simon Makin, 1/30/26, Science News)

Increasing activity in a brain region that controls motivation and expectation, specifically the brain’s reward system, is linked with making more antibodies after receiving a vaccine. The finding suggests these boosts were related to the placebo effect, researchers report January 19 in Nature Medicine.

“Placebo is a self-help mechanism, and here we actually harness it,” says Talma Hendler, a neuroscientist at Tel Aviv University. “This suggests we could use the brain to help the body fight illness.”

NOT JUST SHOWER CURTAIN RINGS?:

US projects to 3D bioprint livers, hearts and kidneys using immune-matched cells (Mrigakshi Dixit, Jan 13, 2026, Interesting Engineering)

The project targets patients suffering from acute liver failure. These are people caught in a race against the clock.

In the human body, the liver is the only organ capable of complete regeneration, but it needs time to heal. Usually, the time runs out before the healing begins.

“The goal is to create a piece of liver tissue that you can use as an alternative to transplant,” explained Adam Feinberg, professor of biomedical engineering at CMU and the project’s principal investigator. “The liver we are creating would last for about two to four weeks.”

That month-long window will allow the patient’s own liver to reboot.

If successful, the patient keeps their original organ, and a precious donor liver — currently a rare and finite resource — becomes available for someone else.

KNOWN KNOWNS:

Why sports stars who head the ball are much more likely to die of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and motor neurone disease (Jasmin Fox-Skelly, 1/06/26, BBC)

The dangers of contact sports have actually been known about for almost 100 years. In 1928, US pathologist Harrison Martland published a scientific article arguing that, “for some time, fight fans and promoters have recognised a peculiar condition occurring among prize fighters which, in ring parlance, they speak of as ‘punch drunk’.”

Symptoms included a staggering gait and mental confusion, and were most common in “fighters of the slugging type, who are usually poor boxers and who take considerable head punishment”. In some cases, punch-drunkenness progressed to dementia, later classed as “dementia pugilistica” – a type of dementia occurring in boxers who have experienced repeated head injury.

At first, it was thought the problem was confined to boxing. But in recent decades that understanding has changed. In 2002, West Bromwich Albion and England soccer player Jeff Astle died at the age of 59 following a diagnosis of early onset dementia. In the US meanwhile, American football player Mike Webster died suddenly age 50 after experiencing cognitive decline and other Parkinson’s-like symptoms. In both cases, examination of the sports stars’ brains showed they had died from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) – a more modern term replacing the diagnosis of dementia pugilistica.

Always fun when tobacco advocates claim no one knew the cancer risks of smoking and then you read an old novel referring to cigarettes as coffin nails.

THE PHYSICAL IS MENTAL:

Illness is more than just biological – medical sociology shows how social factors get under the skin and cause disease (Jennifer Singh, January 8, 2026 , The Conversation)

Modern medical sociology ultimately considers all societal issues to be health issues. Improving people’s health and well-being requires improving education, employment, housing, transportation and other social, economic and political policies.