A new study in Brain Medicine explores how maternal immune activation (MIA) affects hippocampal neuron function in newborn rat offspring. The research demonstrates that MIA significantly alters neuronal excitability, reducing glutamatergic neurotransmission—a crucial factor in neurodevelopmental disorders. These findings provide critical insights into how prenatal infections may increase the risk of autism, schizophrenia, and depression​.

While some captive birds have been reported to be able to imitate human-made sounds, such as human words and coughs, ornithologists from China first quantitatively described human-made sounds, the sounds of electric mopeds, imitated by Chinese Blackbirds living in the wild.

New research explains why more than 200 weedy seadragons were found dead on beaches in the Sydney, Australia region.

New research from the University of Chicago and University of Missouri shows how physical changes in the skull affected the mechanics of the way birds move and use their beaks to eat and explore their habitats — adaptations that helped them evolve into the extraordinarily diverse winged creatures we see today.

Up to 25% of new mothers suffer from postpartum depression, which can significantly impact their parenting behavior and the wellbeing of their children. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign looks at long-term effects of early maternal depression on children, underscoring the need to provide adequate support for mothers who might be struggling.

Prof. Zilong Zhang,Feifei Cui's team from Hainan University and Quan Zou's team from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China collaborated to build a model that can comprehensively predict the relative abundance of multiple proteins in the protein corona by using machine learning, and provide the corresponding web service, so as to make the established model have practical application value.