Wisdom About the Good Life from the Global Flourishing Study
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Our 2026 Frontiers season opens with Byron Johnson, PhD, and Matthew Lee, PhD, from Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion, delivering key insights from "The Global Flourishing Study" including analysis of sociodemographic patterns and predictors of flourishing across 20+ culturally and geographically diverse countries.
From Data to Diagnosis: Computational Psychiatry and Brain Imaging in the Age of AI
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Computational psychiatry is reshaping our understanding of mental illness by integrating data-driven modeling with neurobiological insights. At the heart of this transformation lies brain imaging, which enables noninvasive, in vivo exploration of the brain's structure and function. Increasingly, AI is amplifying these capabilities, enabling the discovery of patterns invisible to traditional analysis. After contextualizing the burden of mental illness and the urgent need for more precise diagnostic tools, this talk will examine the evolving role of brain imaging and AI in computational psychiatry, emphasizing their transformative promise, pitfalls, and path forward.
Sleepless and Alone: The Impact of Sleep Loss on Human Social Behavior
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Research from Dr. Eti Ben Simon suggests insufficient sleep may be an under-appreciated contributing factor. Even modest sleep loss can erode social connections, hamper altruistic behavior, and heighten subjective anxiety, revealing the transformative impact of insufficient sleep on healthy adults. Sleep is thus a critical and causal factor for sustaining emotional health, social connectedness, and broader societal well-being.
Neural Substrates Underlying Effortful Behavior in Animal Models
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UTD neuroscience professor Puja K. Parekh, PhD, highlights recent work into how the brain processes information to inform goal-directed actions, decision-making and task disengagement, combining behavioral measurements with in vivo neurophysiological recordings to identify circuit mechanisms of effortful motivation and the effects of stress. The goal of these studies is to identify mechanisms to enhance therapeutic development for stress-related disorders.
Science Summit
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Discover "Breakthroughs in Precision Brain Health" with this lunchtime event, held at Center for BrainHealth in partnership with UT Dallas' School of Brain and Behavioral Sciences. Featuring discussions with leading scientists, talks explore recent research breakthroughs, like news from The BrainHealth Project and the recently established BrainHealth Research Network, a national collaborative led by Mark D'Esposito, MD. Please register to attend.
An Entorhinal Cortex Circuit in Cocaine Memories
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Drug-associated memories can be a major driver of relapse in addiction. UTD neuroscience professor Dr. Andrew Eagle focuses on researching how the brain encodes and retrieves drug-cue memories that promote maladaptive behavior. He presents preliminary findings demonstrating that the entorhinal cortex (EC) plays a critical role in this process and explores the broader research goal of defining the neural mechanisms by which memory shapes motivation in addiction.
MRI Biomarkers for Vascular Cognitive Impairment and Dementia
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Brain imaging provides an important opportunity for diagnosis, prognosis and treatment monitoring in vascular cognitive impairment and dementia (VCID). In this talk, Dr. Hanzhang Lu discusses a potential framework of biomarkers for the classification of vascular cognitive impairment and dementia (VCID), specifically describing cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR), an important physiological parameter of vascular health, as a candidate biomarker in small vessel disease related VCID.