Muscles release a protein that fights depression, and a brain implant gave ALS a voice

Researchers at Hong Kong Polytechnic University tested this in mice with depression-like behavior: those given access to a running wheel recovered their normal responses. Those given apelin directly showed the same effect, even without running. On the other side of the same equation, a Virginia Tech team showed that young rats fed a high-fat diet quickly develop the exact same molecular signature in their brains that natural aging produces [94]. The culprit is a protein called K63 polyubiquitination, which blocks the formation of new memories when it stays elevated. Obese young rat brains and old rat brains look identical on this measure. Two studies. One picture of how thoroughly what we do with our bodies shapes what happens inside our skulls.

In the roughly two years since, he has used the device for more than 3,800 hours at home, without any researchers present. He uses it to talk to friends and family, to read to his young daughter, and to do his job. His team at UC Davis calls him the first true "power user" of a speech brain-computer interface. Meanwhile at UCSF, a different team built a brain pacemaker for Parkinson's disease that reads the individual neural signatures of each patient's footsteps, updating its stimulation within fractions of a second to prevent freezing of gait [88]. In home trials, falls dropped dramatically. The device runs entirely from the implanted neurostimulator, no external computer required.

About a third also received a COVID vaccine at the same time. Those who got the COVID vaccine had a 38 percent lower risk of COVID-associated major cardiovascular events, including heart attacks, strokes, and heart failure hospitalization. The surprise was a second finding: COVID vaccination was associated with a nearly 24 percent reduction in all-cause cardiac events, not just those with a documented COVID infection. The researchers estimate this could prevent roughly 3,500 major cardiac events and 2,400 deaths per year per million people [171]. The study used the updated 2024-2025 vaccine, not the original formulation.

By the end, 85 percent of participants had developed multimorbidity, the overlapping chronic conditions, heart disease, kidney disease, diabetes, that dominate the last years of life. Those who got the lifestyle intervention had significantly lower risk than either placebo or metformin. The intervention was entirely behavioral: 150 minutes of physical activity per week, reduced fat and calories, aimed at 7 percent weight loss. Separately, age-adjusted dementia rates across wealthy countries have fallen roughly 13 percent per decade since the late 1980s [138]. A 2024 Lancet commission estimates that up to 45 percent of dementia cases could be prevented or delayed by addressing 14 modifiable risk factors, most of them controllable in midlife.

The policy had the support of 90 percent of parents in public consultation. The UK joins Australia, which implemented a similar ban last December, and a growing list of countries studying comparable measures. In Minneapolis, separately, an AP English teacher named Maureen Mulvaney banned phones and laptops from her class last year, requiring all work to be done with pencil and paper [183]. In September, 46 percent of her students felt confident in their reading ability. By February, the figure was 95 percent.

The goal is to accelerate research in directions that better reflect human biology, where animal models have consistently struggled to translate findings into effective treatments. The same week, The Every Company announced it is quadrupling production capacity for its precision-fermented egg white protein, OvoPro, after orders in the first four months of this year hit 55 percent of its entire 2024 order volume [215]. OvoPro is already sold at Walmart, Target, and Amazon. And in April, the Netherlands cut its national meat recommendations by 40 percent and halved its recommended cheese serving, while increasing the legume recommendation [222].