#hippocampus — Public Fediverse posts
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DATE: September 6, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Scientists discover previously unknown brainwave chains that organize memory during REM sleep
A recent study in rats suggests that during the rapid eye movement (REM) phase of sleep, the brain uses repeating chains of rapid electrical waves to organize and replay memories in a highly specific manner. These high-frequency brainwave chains appear to foster communication between different brain regions and help regulate activity in the memory centers of the brain. The research was published in eLife.
Memory consolidation is the biological process of turning fleeting recent experiences into stable long-term memories. This process heavily relies on the interaction between two major brain areas. The hippocampus is a seahorse-shaped structure deep in the brain that initially records new memories, while the prefrontal cortex is a region at the front of the brain responsible for complex thinking and long-term storage.
While scientists have long known that sharp electrical waves coordinate memory replay between the hippocampus and the cortex during deep non-REM (NREM) sleep, how REM sleep contributes to this dialogue remained murky. For instance, a 2016 study covered by PsyPost demonstrated that during deep sleep, sharp-wave ripples in the hippocampus dictate slow brainwave rhythms in the cortex to drive memory replay.
More recently, a 2024 study indicated that rapid ripples of electricity originating in the prefrontal cortex during NREM sleep actually suppress hippocampal activity. Other research, such as a 2012 study, found that REM sleep adjusts the overall excitability of hippocampal neurons.
The new study connects these threads by exploring how rapid-fire brainwave chains in the prefrontal cortex during REM sleep organize a distinct replay of memories and regulate hippocampal brain activity. The research, led by Justin D. Shin and Shantanu P. Jadhav, aimed to determine exactly how prefrontal and hippocampal dynamics differ during high-frequency electrical events across both NREM and REM sleep stages.
“Decades of research has established the role of reactivation in hippocampal and cortical regions of the brain during NREM sleep,” Jadhav, a professor in the Department of Psychology and the Volen Center for Complex Systems at Brandeis University and head of the Jadhav Lab, told PsyPost. “REM sleep stages, which are typically associated with dreaming, are known to be important for memory consolidation, but whether and how memory reactivation occurs in REM sleep is still unknown and debated.”
“The motivation for our study was to address this gap,” Jadhav explained. “We used spatial learning tasks in rodent models to investigate memory reactivation in REM sleep, and its relationship to NREM sleep reactivation, to shed light on sleep memory processes.”
To investigate this, the scientists monitored the brain activity of 10 adult rats as they learned a spatial memory task. The rats navigated a W-shaped maze to receive rewards, an activity that requires active communication between the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex. During the learning phase and the subsequent sleep sessions, the researchers continuously tracked the animals’ brain activity.
They surgically implanted arrays of microelectrodes, known as tetrodes, into both the prefrontal cortex and the CA1 region, a major subfield of the hippocampus that serves as a primary output zone for memory signals. This allowed the team to record both the broad electrical rhythms of the brain and the firing patterns of individual neurons. Using the ratio of different brainwave frequencies, the researchers categorized the rats’ sleep into NREM and REM stages.
During NREM sleep, the prefrontal cortex produces brief, rapid bursts of electrical activity known as ripples. The researchers noticed that these NREM ripples triggered massive, synchronous bursts of firing among prefrontal neurons. During REM sleep, the researchers detected similar rapid events, which they termed high-frequency oscillations (HFOs).
Unlike the single bursts seen in NREM sleep, REM HFOs tended to occur in repeating chains. These chains repeated roughly every 130 milliseconds, a timing that perfectly aligns with a slower, steady brain rhythm called the theta wave, which is highly active during REM sleep.
The neuron firing patterns during these REM HFO chains were highly structured. Instead of the massive bursts of widespread activity seen in NREM sleep, the overall background noise of the prefrontal cortex quieted down. Against this suppressed background, specific small groups of neurons fired in sparse, sequential patterns. This indicates that the prefrontal cortex replays memories in a much more precise and orderly sequence during REM sleep.
“A particularly surprising finding was that neural reactivation in REM sleep is organized differently compared to NREM sleep,” Jadhav said. “REM reactivation was sparse, involving smaller specific subsets of neurons in cortical regions, and temporally extended, lasting on the order of ~1 second. In contrast, NREM reactivation occurs in bursts of activity lasting ~100 msec.”
During these REM HFO chains, the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus showed increased synchronization in the theta frequency range. The REM HFO chains also engaged a specific subset of neurons in the hippocampus. Interestingly, these were the exact same hippocampal neurons that were most strongly silenced during the prefrontal ripples of NREM sleep.
By tracking these specific hippocampal neurons over time, the researchers observed that they gradually increased their baseline firing rates across the sleep session. This provides evidence that the alternating stages of NREM and REM sleep work together to adjust and tune the excitability of memory circuits. The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2025, which similarly found that memory consolidation during REM sleep relies on sparse, highly coordinated neural replay, though that study focused on fear memory rather than spatial learning.
“Our results show clear qualitative as well as quantitative differences in memory reactivation patterns in REM vs. NREM sleep in cortical-hippocampal regions,” Jadhav noted. “These findings suggest new mechanisms for how the two major sleep stages, NREM and REM sleep, together reactivate memories of daily experiences for selectively storing and integrating long-term memories.”
To better understand the biological mechanics driving these differences, the researchers built a computational model of the brain network. They focused on acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter that is highly concentrated in the brain during REM sleep but practically absent during NREM sleep.
“The study also included a modeling component, in which we were able to replicate the experimental results of distinct reactivation patterns in REM and NREM sleep using a model cortical network, based on known differences in the amount of a specific neuromodulator called acetylcholine,” Jadhav explained.
When the model simulated the low acetylcholine levels of NREM sleep, a small input triggered widespread, explosive bursts of neural activity. But when the model simulated the high acetylcholine levels of REM sleep, the network became more restrained. The high acetylcholine limited the spread of activity, perfectly recreating the sparse, sequential firing seen during the actual REM HFO chains.
There are a few things to keep in mind regarding this study. The researchers could not directly link these REM-specific memory replay events to behavioral improvements on the spatial task. Future studies using tasks known to heavily depend on REM sleep might be necessary to map these brainwaves directly to learning outcomes.
“Our study provides phenomenological evidence for distinct physiological signatures of reactivation in REM and NREM sleep, but we have yet to show a direct link between this novel form of REM reactivation and memory consolidation,” Jadhav clarified.
Moving forward, the research team aims to test this direct link. “A major long-term goal is to establish that this REM reactivation process is required for memory consolidation, and dissect the complementary roles of REM and NREM sleep reactivation in long-term memory storage,” Jadhav stated. “Indeed, how these two sleep stages work together to mediate memory consolidation is a major outstanding question in the field.”
Additionally, the researchers could not perfectly separate REM sleep into its more granular sub-stages, known as tonic and phasic REM, because they did not record the rats’ eye movements. The data was also collected over a few hours rather than a full 24-hour cycle, which means the study did not capture how these sleep dynamics might shift over a full day and night.
“A second major line of research is to investigate the role of neuromodulators, chemicals in the brain which are largely responsible for the vastly different activity signatures seen in REM and NREM sleep,” Jadhav added.
The study, “REM sleep prefrontal high-frequency oscillation chains mediate distinct cortical – hippocampal reactivation patterns compared to NREM sleep,” was authored by Justin D. Shin, Michael Satchell, Paul Miller, and Shantanu P. Jadhav.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #REMsleep #memoryconsolidation #hippocampus #prefrontalcortex #neuraloscillations #highfrequencyoscillations #brainwaves #sleepresearch #corticalhippocampalcommunication #neuroscience
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DATE: September 4, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Regular coffee beats decaf in protecting the brain from chronic stress, mouse study finds
Regular coffee consumption might do more than just wake you up; it appears to protect the brain against the damaging effects of chronic stress. A new study in mice found that drinking caffeinated coffee prevented stress-induced memory loss and mood deterioration, while decaffeinated coffee offered no such benefits. The findings, published in Neurobiology of Stress, suggest that caffeine is the primary ingredient responsible for coffee’s mood-protecting properties.
For years, researchers have tried to understand the relationship between dietary habits and mental health. Epidemiological evidence frequently points to coffee as a protective beverage. For example, a study covered by PsyPost in 2026 indicated that moderate coffee consumption is associated with a lower risk of mood and stress disorders. These population studies raised an interesting question about which specific parts of the complex beverage drive these benefits.
Scientific investigations have built a case for caffeine as the active ingredient. As an example, a 2011 study of women found that drinking regular caffeinated coffee was linked to a lower risk of depression, whereas decaffeinated coffee offered no such protection. Following this, a 2015 study in mice demonstrated that pure caffeine prevents the mood and memory problems normally triggered by long-term stress. Yet, a 2018 analysis showed that decaf coffee still contains nearly all of the same healthy antioxidants as regular coffee, leaving scientists wondering if other nutrients in the beverage also played a role.
To settle whether caffeine is truly the essential ingredient for stress resilience, Ângelo R. Tomé and Rodrigo A. Cunha of the University of Coimbra led a research team to directly compare the effects of regular and decaffeinated coffee. They focused on how these beverages affected mice exposed to chronic unpredictable stress.
Chronic unpredictable stress is a laboratory model used to mimic human depression and anxiety. By exposing animals to mild, changing stressors over a period of several weeks, scientists can observe the resulting emotional and cognitive decline. The research team also wanted to look closely at changes in the brain, specifically measuring long-term potentiation and brain-derived neurotrophic factor.
Long-term potentiation is a process where the connections between neurons strengthen, serving as a cellular foundation for learning and memory. This activity is heavily concentrated in the hippocampus, a brain region dedicated to forming memories. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor is a protein that acts like a fertilizer for the brain, helping neurons grow and survive. The researchers measured this protein in the frontal cortex, an area heavily involved in complex behaviors and emotional regulation.
The research team studied 24 adult mice, dividing them into four groups. One group drank water and experienced no stress. The other three groups underwent three weeks of chronic unpredictable stress. During this time, they experienced random daily stressors, such as damp bedding, a brief cold bath, or having their cage tilted. One of the stressed groups drank regular water, another drank a caffeinated coffee extract, and the final group drank a decaffeinated coffee extract.
The mice received their respective beverages during their active nighttime hours, starting a week before the stress protocol began and continuing throughout the experiment. The amount of coffee the mice voluntarily drank roughly translated to an adult human consuming about 350 milligrams of caffeine a day, or roughly two to three standard cups of coffee.
Following the three weeks of stress, the researchers put the mice through a series of behavioral tests. They used an open field arena to measure spontaneous movement and general anxiety. They also evaluated anxiety by seeing how much time the mice spent in the unprotected open arms of an elevated maze. To assess depressive-like behaviors, the team observed the mice in a forced swimming test, recording how quickly they gave up struggling and simply floated.
The team sprayed a sticky sugar solution on the mice for a splash test, measuring how quickly they cleaned themselves as a sign of motivation and self-care. They also tracked whether the mice lost their natural preference for drinking a sweet sugar water solution. A loss of this preference serves as an indicator of anhedonia, which is the inability to feel pleasure.
Finally, the researchers tested spatial memory. They watched whether the mice could recognize when a familiar object had been moved to a new location in a testing arena. They also tested whether the mice preferred to explore a newly opened arm of a maze they had previously navigated.
The results showed that chronic unpredictable stress took a heavy toll on the mice drinking plain water. Compared to the unstressed controls, these mice lost weight, displayed heightened anxiety, and showed a pronounced lack of self-care. They also exhibited severe anhedonia, drinking much less sugar water than usual. Their spatial memory suffered, as they struggled to notice moved objects or explore new areas of the maze.
However, the mice that drank caffeinated coffee weathered the stress remarkably well. Their behavioral patterns were nearly identical to the control mice that experienced no stress at all. The caffeinated coffee prevented the weight loss, the anxiety, the despair in the swimming test, and the loss of motivation for self-care. It also fully protected their spatial memory.
The decaffeinated coffee failed to provide these robust protections. The stressed mice drinking decaf exhibited almost all the same behavioral deficits as the stressed mice drinking water. They failed to recover their body weight, remained anxious in the open field and maze tests, and showed persistent memory issues. While the decaf group showed very slight improvements in a few areas, these small changes were not statistically meaningful.
The brain tissue analysis provided a biological explanation for the behavioral differences. In the stressed mice drinking water, the magnitude of long-term potentiation in the hippocampus dropped from a roughly 61 percent baseline increase down to just 25 percent, indicating a severe disruption in memory-forming capacity. The levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor in their frontal cortex also plummeted.
Drinking caffeinated coffee completely prevented these neurological declines. The mice in this group maintained normal long-term potentiation and normal levels of the neurotrophic protein, keeping their brain networks highly functional despite the chronic stress. Just as with the behavioral tests, decaffeinated coffee offered no protection for the brain, leaving the mice with diminished synaptic plasticity and depleted protein levels.
The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2024, which found that caffeine protects rodents from stress-induced spatial memory deficits and hippocampal impairment. They also align with a study covered by PsyPost in 2025, which demonstrated that caffeine prevents stress-induced depressive-like behaviors and preserves neurochemical balance in mice.
However, the results are in tension with another study covered by PsyPost in 2024. That study found that non-caffeine compounds in coffee protected against stress-induced cognitive deficits. It is worth noting that the earlier research tested isolated coffee polyphenols during early development, rather than using whole decaffeinated coffee in adult mice exposed to chronic stress, which likely explains the differing outcomes.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study did not measure the exact circulating levels of caffeine or other specific compounds in the blood or tissues of the mice. Because the animals were housed in small groups during the fluid consumption phase to avoid the added stress of isolation, the researchers could not track the precise individual intake for every single mouse.
The testing was also performed on a mixed group of male and female mice without isolating sex as a variable. Past studies suggest there may be discrete differences in how coffee impacts mood in males compared to females, which this study design could not explore. Finally, translating behavioral and brain changes from mice to humans always requires caution, as human diets, stress factors, and brain chemistry are far more complex.
The study, “Regular intake of caffeinated but not decaffeinated coffee attenuates behavioral modifications in mice subject to chronic unpredictable stress,” was authored by Ângelo R. Tomé, Nuno J. Machado, Ana Paula Ardais, Ana Nunes, Henrique B. Silva, Manuella P. Kaster, Paula Agostinho, and Rodrigo A. Cunha.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #coffee #caffeine #stressrelief #brainhealth #memory #mousestudy #neuroplasticity #hippocampus #anxiety #moodboost
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DATE: September 4, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Regular coffee beats decaf in protecting the brain from chronic stress, mouse study finds
Regular coffee consumption might do more than just wake you up; it appears to protect the brain against the damaging effects of chronic stress. A new study in mice found that drinking caffeinated coffee prevented stress-induced memory loss and mood deterioration, while decaffeinated coffee offered no such benefits. The findings, published in Neurobiology of Stress, suggest that caffeine is the primary ingredient responsible for coffee’s mood-protecting properties.
For years, researchers have tried to understand the relationship between dietary habits and mental health. Epidemiological evidence frequently points to coffee as a protective beverage. For example, a study covered by PsyPost in 2026 indicated that moderate coffee consumption is associated with a lower risk of mood and stress disorders. These population studies raised an interesting question about which specific parts of the complex beverage drive these benefits.
Scientific investigations have built a case for caffeine as the active ingredient. As an example, a 2011 study of women found that drinking regular caffeinated coffee was linked to a lower risk of depression, whereas decaffeinated coffee offered no such protection. Following this, a 2015 study in mice demonstrated that pure caffeine prevents the mood and memory problems normally triggered by long-term stress. Yet, a 2018 analysis showed that decaf coffee still contains nearly all of the same healthy antioxidants as regular coffee, leaving scientists wondering if other nutrients in the beverage also played a role.
To settle whether caffeine is truly the essential ingredient for stress resilience, Ângelo R. Tomé and Rodrigo A. Cunha of the University of Coimbra led a research team to directly compare the effects of regular and decaffeinated coffee. They focused on how these beverages affected mice exposed to chronic unpredictable stress.
Chronic unpredictable stress is a laboratory model used to mimic human depression and anxiety. By exposing animals to mild, changing stressors over a period of several weeks, scientists can observe the resulting emotional and cognitive decline. The research team also wanted to look closely at changes in the brain, specifically measuring long-term potentiation and brain-derived neurotrophic factor.
Long-term potentiation is a process where the connections between neurons strengthen, serving as a cellular foundation for learning and memory. This activity is heavily concentrated in the hippocampus, a brain region dedicated to forming memories. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor is a protein that acts like a fertilizer for the brain, helping neurons grow and survive. The researchers measured this protein in the frontal cortex, an area heavily involved in complex behaviors and emotional regulation.
The research team studied 24 adult mice, dividing them into four groups. One group drank water and experienced no stress. The other three groups underwent three weeks of chronic unpredictable stress. During this time, they experienced random daily stressors, such as damp bedding, a brief cold bath, or having their cage tilted. One of the stressed groups drank regular water, another drank a caffeinated coffee extract, and the final group drank a decaffeinated coffee extract.
The mice received their respective beverages during their active nighttime hours, starting a week before the stress protocol began and continuing throughout the experiment. The amount of coffee the mice voluntarily drank roughly translated to an adult human consuming about 350 milligrams of caffeine a day, or roughly two to three standard cups of coffee.
Following the three weeks of stress, the researchers put the mice through a series of behavioral tests. They used an open field arena to measure spontaneous movement and general anxiety. They also evaluated anxiety by seeing how much time the mice spent in the unprotected open arms of an elevated maze. To assess depressive-like behaviors, the team observed the mice in a forced swimming test, recording how quickly they gave up struggling and simply floated.
The team sprayed a sticky sugar solution on the mice for a splash test, measuring how quickly they cleaned themselves as a sign of motivation and self-care. They also tracked whether the mice lost their natural preference for drinking a sweet sugar water solution. A loss of this preference serves as an indicator of anhedonia, which is the inability to feel pleasure.
Finally, the researchers tested spatial memory. They watched whether the mice could recognize when a familiar object had been moved to a new location in a testing arena. They also tested whether the mice preferred to explore a newly opened arm of a maze they had previously navigated.
The results showed that chronic unpredictable stress took a heavy toll on the mice drinking plain water. Compared to the unstressed controls, these mice lost weight, displayed heightened anxiety, and showed a pronounced lack of self-care. They also exhibited severe anhedonia, drinking much less sugar water than usual. Their spatial memory suffered, as they struggled to notice moved objects or explore new areas of the maze.
However, the mice that drank caffeinated coffee weathered the stress remarkably well. Their behavioral patterns were nearly identical to the control mice that experienced no stress at all. The caffeinated coffee prevented the weight loss, the anxiety, the despair in the swimming test, and the loss of motivation for self-care. It also fully protected their spatial memory.
The decaffeinated coffee failed to provide these robust protections. The stressed mice drinking decaf exhibited almost all the same behavioral deficits as the stressed mice drinking water. They failed to recover their body weight, remained anxious in the open field and maze tests, and showed persistent memory issues. While the decaf group showed very slight improvements in a few areas, these small changes were not statistically meaningful.
The brain tissue analysis provided a biological explanation for the behavioral differences. In the stressed mice drinking water, the magnitude of long-term potentiation in the hippocampus dropped from a roughly 61 percent baseline increase down to just 25 percent, indicating a severe disruption in memory-forming capacity. The levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor in their frontal cortex also plummeted.
Drinking caffeinated coffee completely prevented these neurological declines. The mice in this group maintained normal long-term potentiation and normal levels of the neurotrophic protein, keeping their brain networks highly functional despite the chronic stress. Just as with the behavioral tests, decaffeinated coffee offered no protection for the brain, leaving the mice with diminished synaptic plasticity and depleted protein levels.
The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2024, which found that caffeine protects rodents from stress-induced spatial memory deficits and hippocampal impairment. They also align with a study covered by PsyPost in 2025, which demonstrated that caffeine prevents stress-induced depressive-like behaviors and preserves neurochemical balance in mice.
However, the results are in tension with another study covered by PsyPost in 2024. That study found that non-caffeine compounds in coffee protected against stress-induced cognitive deficits. It is worth noting that the earlier research tested isolated coffee polyphenols during early development, rather than using whole decaffeinated coffee in adult mice exposed to chronic stress, which likely explains the differing outcomes.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study did not measure the exact circulating levels of caffeine or other specific compounds in the blood or tissues of the mice. Because the animals were housed in small groups during the fluid consumption phase to avoid the added stress of isolation, the researchers could not track the precise individual intake for every single mouse.
The testing was also performed on a mixed group of male and female mice without isolating sex as a variable. Past studies suggest there may be discrete differences in how coffee impacts mood in males compared to females, which this study design could not explore. Finally, translating behavioral and brain changes from mice to humans always requires caution, as human diets, stress factors, and brain chemistry are far more complex.
The study, “Regular intake of caffeinated but not decaffeinated coffee attenuates behavioral modifications in mice subject to chronic unpredictable stress,” was authored by Ângelo R. Tomé, Nuno J. Machado, Ana Paula Ardais, Ana Nunes, Henrique B. Silva, Manuella P. Kaster, Paula Agostinho, and Rodrigo A. Cunha.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #coffee #caffeine #stressrelief #brainhealth #memory #mousestudy #neuroplasticity #hippocampus #anxiety #moodboost
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DATE: September 4, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Regular coffee beats decaf in protecting the brain from chronic stress, mouse study finds
Regular coffee consumption might do more than just wake you up; it appears to protect the brain against the damaging effects of chronic stress. A new study in mice found that drinking caffeinated coffee prevented stress-induced memory loss and mood deterioration, while decaffeinated coffee offered no such benefits. The findings, published in Neurobiology of Stress, suggest that caffeine is the primary ingredient responsible for coffee’s mood-protecting properties.
For years, researchers have tried to understand the relationship between dietary habits and mental health. Epidemiological evidence frequently points to coffee as a protective beverage. For example, a study covered by PsyPost in 2026 indicated that moderate coffee consumption is associated with a lower risk of mood and stress disorders. These population studies raised an interesting question about which specific parts of the complex beverage drive these benefits.
Scientific investigations have built a case for caffeine as the active ingredient. As an example, a 2011 study of women found that drinking regular caffeinated coffee was linked to a lower risk of depression, whereas decaffeinated coffee offered no such protection. Following this, a 2015 study in mice demonstrated that pure caffeine prevents the mood and memory problems normally triggered by long-term stress. Yet, a 2018 analysis showed that decaf coffee still contains nearly all of the same healthy antioxidants as regular coffee, leaving scientists wondering if other nutrients in the beverage also played a role.
To settle whether caffeine is truly the essential ingredient for stress resilience, Ângelo R. Tomé and Rodrigo A. Cunha of the University of Coimbra led a research team to directly compare the effects of regular and decaffeinated coffee. They focused on how these beverages affected mice exposed to chronic unpredictable stress.
Chronic unpredictable stress is a laboratory model used to mimic human depression and anxiety. By exposing animals to mild, changing stressors over a period of several weeks, scientists can observe the resulting emotional and cognitive decline. The research team also wanted to look closely at changes in the brain, specifically measuring long-term potentiation and brain-derived neurotrophic factor.
Long-term potentiation is a process where the connections between neurons strengthen, serving as a cellular foundation for learning and memory. This activity is heavily concentrated in the hippocampus, a brain region dedicated to forming memories. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor is a protein that acts like a fertilizer for the brain, helping neurons grow and survive. The researchers measured this protein in the frontal cortex, an area heavily involved in complex behaviors and emotional regulation.
The research team studied 24 adult mice, dividing them into four groups. One group drank water and experienced no stress. The other three groups underwent three weeks of chronic unpredictable stress. During this time, they experienced random daily stressors, such as damp bedding, a brief cold bath, or having their cage tilted. One of the stressed groups drank regular water, another drank a caffeinated coffee extract, and the final group drank a decaffeinated coffee extract.
The mice received their respective beverages during their active nighttime hours, starting a week before the stress protocol began and continuing throughout the experiment. The amount of coffee the mice voluntarily drank roughly translated to an adult human consuming about 350 milligrams of caffeine a day, or roughly two to three standard cups of coffee.
Following the three weeks of stress, the researchers put the mice through a series of behavioral tests. They used an open field arena to measure spontaneous movement and general anxiety. They also evaluated anxiety by seeing how much time the mice spent in the unprotected open arms of an elevated maze. To assess depressive-like behaviors, the team observed the mice in a forced swimming test, recording how quickly they gave up struggling and simply floated.
The team sprayed a sticky sugar solution on the mice for a splash test, measuring how quickly they cleaned themselves as a sign of motivation and self-care. They also tracked whether the mice lost their natural preference for drinking a sweet sugar water solution. A loss of this preference serves as an indicator of anhedonia, which is the inability to feel pleasure.
Finally, the researchers tested spatial memory. They watched whether the mice could recognize when a familiar object had been moved to a new location in a testing arena. They also tested whether the mice preferred to explore a newly opened arm of a maze they had previously navigated.
The results showed that chronic unpredictable stress took a heavy toll on the mice drinking plain water. Compared to the unstressed controls, these mice lost weight, displayed heightened anxiety, and showed a pronounced lack of self-care. They also exhibited severe anhedonia, drinking much less sugar water than usual. Their spatial memory suffered, as they struggled to notice moved objects or explore new areas of the maze.
However, the mice that drank caffeinated coffee weathered the stress remarkably well. Their behavioral patterns were nearly identical to the control mice that experienced no stress at all. The caffeinated coffee prevented the weight loss, the anxiety, the despair in the swimming test, and the loss of motivation for self-care. It also fully protected their spatial memory.
The decaffeinated coffee failed to provide these robust protections. The stressed mice drinking decaf exhibited almost all the same behavioral deficits as the stressed mice drinking water. They failed to recover their body weight, remained anxious in the open field and maze tests, and showed persistent memory issues. While the decaf group showed very slight improvements in a few areas, these small changes were not statistically meaningful.
The brain tissue analysis provided a biological explanation for the behavioral differences. In the stressed mice drinking water, the magnitude of long-term potentiation in the hippocampus dropped from a roughly 61 percent baseline increase down to just 25 percent, indicating a severe disruption in memory-forming capacity. The levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor in their frontal cortex also plummeted.
Drinking caffeinated coffee completely prevented these neurological declines. The mice in this group maintained normal long-term potentiation and normal levels of the neurotrophic protein, keeping their brain networks highly functional despite the chronic stress. Just as with the behavioral tests, decaffeinated coffee offered no protection for the brain, leaving the mice with diminished synaptic plasticity and depleted protein levels.
The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2024, which found that caffeine protects rodents from stress-induced spatial memory deficits and hippocampal impairment. They also align with a study covered by PsyPost in 2025, which demonstrated that caffeine prevents stress-induced depressive-like behaviors and preserves neurochemical balance in mice.
However, the results are in tension with another study covered by PsyPost in 2024. That study found that non-caffeine compounds in coffee protected against stress-induced cognitive deficits. It is worth noting that the earlier research tested isolated coffee polyphenols during early development, rather than using whole decaffeinated coffee in adult mice exposed to chronic stress, which likely explains the differing outcomes.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study did not measure the exact circulating levels of caffeine or other specific compounds in the blood or tissues of the mice. Because the animals were housed in small groups during the fluid consumption phase to avoid the added stress of isolation, the researchers could not track the precise individual intake for every single mouse.
The testing was also performed on a mixed group of male and female mice without isolating sex as a variable. Past studies suggest there may be discrete differences in how coffee impacts mood in males compared to females, which this study design could not explore. Finally, translating behavioral and brain changes from mice to humans always requires caution, as human diets, stress factors, and brain chemistry are far more complex.
The study, “Regular intake of caffeinated but not decaffeinated coffee attenuates behavioral modifications in mice subject to chronic unpredictable stress,” was authored by Ângelo R. Tomé, Nuno J. Machado, Ana Paula Ardais, Ana Nunes, Henrique B. Silva, Manuella P. Kaster, Paula Agostinho, and Rodrigo A. Cunha.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #coffee #caffeine #stressrelief #brainhealth #memory #mousestudy #neuroplasticity #hippocampus #anxiety #moodboost
-
DATE: September 4, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Regular coffee beats decaf in protecting the brain from chronic stress, mouse study finds
Regular coffee consumption might do more than just wake you up; it appears to protect the brain against the damaging effects of chronic stress. A new study in mice found that drinking caffeinated coffee prevented stress-induced memory loss and mood deterioration, while decaffeinated coffee offered no such benefits. The findings, published in Neurobiology of Stress, suggest that caffeine is the primary ingredient responsible for coffee’s mood-protecting properties.
For years, researchers have tried to understand the relationship between dietary habits and mental health. Epidemiological evidence frequently points to coffee as a protective beverage. For example, a study covered by PsyPost in 2026 indicated that moderate coffee consumption is associated with a lower risk of mood and stress disorders. These population studies raised an interesting question about which specific parts of the complex beverage drive these benefits.
Scientific investigations have built a case for caffeine as the active ingredient. As an example, a 2011 study of women found that drinking regular caffeinated coffee was linked to a lower risk of depression, whereas decaffeinated coffee offered no such protection. Following this, a 2015 study in mice demonstrated that pure caffeine prevents the mood and memory problems normally triggered by long-term stress. Yet, a 2018 analysis showed that decaf coffee still contains nearly all of the same healthy antioxidants as regular coffee, leaving scientists wondering if other nutrients in the beverage also played a role.
To settle whether caffeine is truly the essential ingredient for stress resilience, Ângelo R. Tomé and Rodrigo A. Cunha of the University of Coimbra led a research team to directly compare the effects of regular and decaffeinated coffee. They focused on how these beverages affected mice exposed to chronic unpredictable stress.
Chronic unpredictable stress is a laboratory model used to mimic human depression and anxiety. By exposing animals to mild, changing stressors over a period of several weeks, scientists can observe the resulting emotional and cognitive decline. The research team also wanted to look closely at changes in the brain, specifically measuring long-term potentiation and brain-derived neurotrophic factor.
Long-term potentiation is a process where the connections between neurons strengthen, serving as a cellular foundation for learning and memory. This activity is heavily concentrated in the hippocampus, a brain region dedicated to forming memories. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor is a protein that acts like a fertilizer for the brain, helping neurons grow and survive. The researchers measured this protein in the frontal cortex, an area heavily involved in complex behaviors and emotional regulation.
The research team studied 24 adult mice, dividing them into four groups. One group drank water and experienced no stress. The other three groups underwent three weeks of chronic unpredictable stress. During this time, they experienced random daily stressors, such as damp bedding, a brief cold bath, or having their cage tilted. One of the stressed groups drank regular water, another drank a caffeinated coffee extract, and the final group drank a decaffeinated coffee extract.
The mice received their respective beverages during their active nighttime hours, starting a week before the stress protocol began and continuing throughout the experiment. The amount of coffee the mice voluntarily drank roughly translated to an adult human consuming about 350 milligrams of caffeine a day, or roughly two to three standard cups of coffee.
Following the three weeks of stress, the researchers put the mice through a series of behavioral tests. They used an open field arena to measure spontaneous movement and general anxiety. They also evaluated anxiety by seeing how much time the mice spent in the unprotected open arms of an elevated maze. To assess depressive-like behaviors, the team observed the mice in a forced swimming test, recording how quickly they gave up struggling and simply floated.
The team sprayed a sticky sugar solution on the mice for a splash test, measuring how quickly they cleaned themselves as a sign of motivation and self-care. They also tracked whether the mice lost their natural preference for drinking a sweet sugar water solution. A loss of this preference serves as an indicator of anhedonia, which is the inability to feel pleasure.
Finally, the researchers tested spatial memory. They watched whether the mice could recognize when a familiar object had been moved to a new location in a testing arena. They also tested whether the mice preferred to explore a newly opened arm of a maze they had previously navigated.
The results showed that chronic unpredictable stress took a heavy toll on the mice drinking plain water. Compared to the unstressed controls, these mice lost weight, displayed heightened anxiety, and showed a pronounced lack of self-care. They also exhibited severe anhedonia, drinking much less sugar water than usual. Their spatial memory suffered, as they struggled to notice moved objects or explore new areas of the maze.
However, the mice that drank caffeinated coffee weathered the stress remarkably well. Their behavioral patterns were nearly identical to the control mice that experienced no stress at all. The caffeinated coffee prevented the weight loss, the anxiety, the despair in the swimming test, and the loss of motivation for self-care. It also fully protected their spatial memory.
The decaffeinated coffee failed to provide these robust protections. The stressed mice drinking decaf exhibited almost all the same behavioral deficits as the stressed mice drinking water. They failed to recover their body weight, remained anxious in the open field and maze tests, and showed persistent memory issues. While the decaf group showed very slight improvements in a few areas, these small changes were not statistically meaningful.
The brain tissue analysis provided a biological explanation for the behavioral differences. In the stressed mice drinking water, the magnitude of long-term potentiation in the hippocampus dropped from a roughly 61 percent baseline increase down to just 25 percent, indicating a severe disruption in memory-forming capacity. The levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor in their frontal cortex also plummeted.
Drinking caffeinated coffee completely prevented these neurological declines. The mice in this group maintained normal long-term potentiation and normal levels of the neurotrophic protein, keeping their brain networks highly functional despite the chronic stress. Just as with the behavioral tests, decaffeinated coffee offered no protection for the brain, leaving the mice with diminished synaptic plasticity and depleted protein levels.
The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2024, which found that caffeine protects rodents from stress-induced spatial memory deficits and hippocampal impairment. They also align with a study covered by PsyPost in 2025, which demonstrated that caffeine prevents stress-induced depressive-like behaviors and preserves neurochemical balance in mice.
However, the results are in tension with another study covered by PsyPost in 2024. That study found that non-caffeine compounds in coffee protected against stress-induced cognitive deficits. It is worth noting that the earlier research tested isolated coffee polyphenols during early development, rather than using whole decaffeinated coffee in adult mice exposed to chronic stress, which likely explains the differing outcomes.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study did not measure the exact circulating levels of caffeine or other specific compounds in the blood or tissues of the mice. Because the animals were housed in small groups during the fluid consumption phase to avoid the added stress of isolation, the researchers could not track the precise individual intake for every single mouse.
The testing was also performed on a mixed group of male and female mice without isolating sex as a variable. Past studies suggest there may be discrete differences in how coffee impacts mood in males compared to females, which this study design could not explore. Finally, translating behavioral and brain changes from mice to humans always requires caution, as human diets, stress factors, and brain chemistry are far more complex.
The study, “Regular intake of caffeinated but not decaffeinated coffee attenuates behavioral modifications in mice subject to chronic unpredictable stress,” was authored by Ângelo R. Tomé, Nuno J. Machado, Ana Paula Ardais, Ana Nunes, Henrique B. Silva, Manuella P. Kaster, Paula Agostinho, and Rodrigo A. Cunha.
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DATE: August 25, 2026 at 01:06AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHOLOGY FEEDTITLE: Depression may shut down the brain’s ability to make new neurons
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260823094135.htm
A major study found that adults with depression show disrupted production of new neurons in the hippocampus, potentially weakening the brain’s ability to separate new experiences from painful memories. The researchers also identified broad molecular changes that could open the door to new treatments tailored to different biological forms of depression.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260823094135.htm
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-
DATE: August 25, 2026 at 01:06AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHOLOGY FEEDTITLE: Depression may shut down the brain’s ability to make new neurons
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260823094135.htm
A major study found that adults with depression show disrupted production of new neurons in the hippocampus, potentially weakening the brain’s ability to separate new experiences from painful memories. The researchers also identified broad molecular changes that could open the door to new treatments tailored to different biological forms of depression.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260823094135.htm
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-
DATE: August 25, 2026 at 01:06AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHOLOGY FEEDTITLE: Depression may shut down the brain’s ability to make new neurons
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260823094135.htm
A major study found that adults with depression show disrupted production of new neurons in the hippocampus, potentially weakening the brain’s ability to separate new experiences from painful memories. The researchers also identified broad molecular changes that could open the door to new treatments tailored to different biological forms of depression.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260823094135.htm
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-
DATE: August 25, 2026 at 07:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Neuroscientists map how early-life scent memories evolve and move through the brain
The scent of a particular perfume or a childhood home can often bring back vivid, emotionally charged memories from a person’s earliest years. A recent study on mice suggests that these early-life scent memories are initially stored by specific neurons that develop just after birth, but as time passes and the scent is encountered again, the memory trace relocates to broader networks in the brain. The research, published in PLOS Biology, provides evidence for how the brain encodes, sustains, and eventually reorganizes our most cherished childhood memories.
Scent-triggered memories are a well-documented psychological phenomenon, famously described by Marcel Proust as a flood of vivid nostalgic feelings brought on by the smell of a madeleine cake. In humans, autobiographical memories linked to scents tend to originate from the first decade of life. These memories also tend to carry a much stronger, more positive emotional tone than memories triggered by sights or sounds.
Supporting this idea, a 2016 review indicated that scents tied to positive personal memories have a uniquely powerful impact on a person’s mood, often increasing positive emotions and reducing physiological signs of stress. Despite this well-known emotional potency, the exact ways the brain creates and stores these long-lasting scent memories have remained somewhat mysterious.
When a person or animal smells something, the information first enters the olfactory bulb, a small structure at the front of the brain. Within this structure, specific neurons called granule cells help process the scent. In rodents, a massive wave of these granule cells is born on the very first day of life. Because these neonatal neurons are highly active during childhood and tend to survive for a long time, scientists suspected they might be ideal candidates for storing early-life scent memories.
Memory researchers also know that the brain’s storage systems do not remain static. According to a framework discussed in a 2018 review, memories often shift between different brain areas as time passes. A memory might initially rely on specific regions, like the hippocampus, before being reorganized and transferred to broader networks in the brain’s outer layers.
“I have been interested in odor perception and in the mechanisms of brain plasticity underlying olfactory learning since my PhD in Lyon, and later during my postdoctoral research at Cornell University,” said study author Nathalie Mandairon, a director of research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) based at the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center. “This study therefore follows naturally from my previous research.”
“The question that particularly intrigued me was this: during childhood, we are exposed to a multitude of odors,” Mandairon continued. “Why do some of them remain embedded in our memory for decades, while others disappear? And what brain mechanisms allow these very early olfactory memories to persist or resurface later in life?”
To find out, the research team began by surveying 647 adults about their earliest scent-based memories. “We found that this memory generally dated back to childhood, before the age of 10,” Mandairon explained. “They were most often associated with a pleasant odor, but also with a particularly positive, sometimes joyful, context.”
“In most cases, the experience had also been repeated several times during childhood,” she added. “Based on these observations, we developed a mouse model to investigate the brain mechanisms involved in the formation and long-term maintenance of this early olfactory memory.”
During the mouse equivalent of childhood, the researchers placed the animals in a large, enriched cage filled with toys, tunnels, and opportunities for social interaction. They paired this playful environment with a specific attractive odorant over five separate sessions. Microphones recorded the mice emitting a higher number and frequency of high-pitched squeaks, known as ultrasonic vocalizations, which indicates a positive emotional state.
When the mice reached young adulthood, at two months of age, the researchers tested their reactions to the childhood odorant. The mice that had experienced the scent in the playful environment spent more time investigating it compared to a control group that had smelled the same scent in a standard, non-playful cage.
To understand what was happening in the brain at this two-month mark, the researchers looked at granule cells born on the mice’s first day of life. “Our results revealed an important role for neurons in the olfactory bulb that are generated at birth,” Mandairon said. “These neurons are highly plastic and, together with the brain’s reward system, contribute to the memory of an odor learned very early in life.”
To test whether these neurons were strictly necessary for the memory, the scientists used optogenetics, a technique that allows researchers to turn specific brain cells on or off using light. When they used light to temporarily silence these early-born granule cells, the mice no longer showed a preference for the childhood scent.
The researchers also examined broader brain activity in the young adult mice. They found that smelling the childhood odorant triggered highly synchronized activity between the brain’s reward centers and memory systems. This network included areas like the dorsal hippocampus, which is involved in detailed memories, and the medial prefrontal cortex, which handles complex decision-making.
Next, the team investigated how this memory held up as the mice aged into later adulthood, at six months old. “We also found that, later in life, mice retained the memory of this odor only if they had been occasionally re-exposed to it during adulthood,” Mandairon told PsyPost. “Without such re-exposure, their preference for that particular odor disappeared.”
However, if the researchers briefly re-exposed the mice to the scent every three weeks, the positive memory persisted at six months of age. Surprisingly, this long-lasting memory no longer relied on the neonatal granule cells in the olfactory bulb. The light-based silencing technique that worked at two months had no effect at six months.
The researchers had expected a brain structure so directly involved in processing odors to continue playing a central role in olfactory memory. “Instead, over time, other brain circuits, particularly those associated with emotions, seem to take over,” Mandairon said.
“What is particularly interesting is that the brain circuits supporting the memory appear to change over time,” she explained. “In adulthood, the contribution of the olfactory bulb and the reward system decreases, while regions of the limbic system, which is strongly involved in emotions, become more important. In other words, the memory can persist, but the brain mechanisms supporting it seem to evolve throughout life.”
These network shifts are in line with a study covered by PsyPost in 2016, which found that early-life memories in young rats persist into adulthood as latent traces that can be reactivated by later reminder cues. The findings also align with another 2016 study covered by PsyPost, which found that worms form lifelong olfactory memories using specialized neural circuits. It is worth noting, however, that both of those previous studies examined the formation of aversive memories in response to threats, whereas the current study measured the development of positive odor associations in mice.
One detail to keep in mind is that modeling human autobiographical memory in rodents comes with inherent limitations. “Although the anatomical and functional organization of the olfactory system shares many similarities between mice and humans, the study was conducted using a mouse model,” Mandairon cautioned. “Our study primarily allows us to identify general principles and brain mechanisms that can then be investigated further in humans.”
Moving forward, the research team hopes to uncover the specific conditions that make some scent associations permanent while others fade. “We would like to determine whether there is a common ‘recipe’ that allows an odor encountered during childhood to become a memory that stays with us for a lifetime: what the odor was, the context in which it was encountered, who we were with, the emotions we experienced,” Mandairon said.
The study, “Positive early-life olfactory memory is rooted in the olfactory bulb and triggers large-scale changes beyond the olfactory system,” was authored by Jules Dejou, Anna Athanassi, Théo Brunel, Marc Thevenet, Anne Didier, and Nathalie Mandairon.
-------------------------------------------------
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Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #OlfactoryMemory #EarlyLifeScent #Neuroscience #MemoryFormation #OlfactoryBulb #NeuralPlasticity #Hippocampus #LimbicSystem #MoodAndMemory #PLOSBiology
-
DATE: August 25, 2026 at 07:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Neuroscientists map how early-life scent memories evolve and move through the brain
The scent of a particular perfume or a childhood home can often bring back vivid, emotionally charged memories from a person’s earliest years. A recent study on mice suggests that these early-life scent memories are initially stored by specific neurons that develop just after birth, but as time passes and the scent is encountered again, the memory trace relocates to broader networks in the brain. The research, published in PLOS Biology, provides evidence for how the brain encodes, sustains, and eventually reorganizes our most cherished childhood memories.
Scent-triggered memories are a well-documented psychological phenomenon, famously described by Marcel Proust as a flood of vivid nostalgic feelings brought on by the smell of a madeleine cake. In humans, autobiographical memories linked to scents tend to originate from the first decade of life. These memories also tend to carry a much stronger, more positive emotional tone than memories triggered by sights or sounds.
Supporting this idea, a 2016 review indicated that scents tied to positive personal memories have a uniquely powerful impact on a person’s mood, often increasing positive emotions and reducing physiological signs of stress. Despite this well-known emotional potency, the exact ways the brain creates and stores these long-lasting scent memories have remained somewhat mysterious.
When a person or animal smells something, the information first enters the olfactory bulb, a small structure at the front of the brain. Within this structure, specific neurons called granule cells help process the scent. In rodents, a massive wave of these granule cells is born on the very first day of life. Because these neonatal neurons are highly active during childhood and tend to survive for a long time, scientists suspected they might be ideal candidates for storing early-life scent memories.
Memory researchers also know that the brain’s storage systems do not remain static. According to a framework discussed in a 2018 review, memories often shift between different brain areas as time passes. A memory might initially rely on specific regions, like the hippocampus, before being reorganized and transferred to broader networks in the brain’s outer layers.
“I have been interested in odor perception and in the mechanisms of brain plasticity underlying olfactory learning since my PhD in Lyon, and later during my postdoctoral research at Cornell University,” said study author Nathalie Mandairon, a director of research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) based at the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center. “This study therefore follows naturally from my previous research.”
“The question that particularly intrigued me was this: during childhood, we are exposed to a multitude of odors,” Mandairon continued. “Why do some of them remain embedded in our memory for decades, while others disappear? And what brain mechanisms allow these very early olfactory memories to persist or resurface later in life?”
To find out, the research team began by surveying 647 adults about their earliest scent-based memories. “We found that this memory generally dated back to childhood, before the age of 10,” Mandairon explained. “They were most often associated with a pleasant odor, but also with a particularly positive, sometimes joyful, context.”
“In most cases, the experience had also been repeated several times during childhood,” she added. “Based on these observations, we developed a mouse model to investigate the brain mechanisms involved in the formation and long-term maintenance of this early olfactory memory.”
During the mouse equivalent of childhood, the researchers placed the animals in a large, enriched cage filled with toys, tunnels, and opportunities for social interaction. They paired this playful environment with a specific attractive odorant over five separate sessions. Microphones recorded the mice emitting a higher number and frequency of high-pitched squeaks, known as ultrasonic vocalizations, which indicates a positive emotional state.
When the mice reached young adulthood, at two months of age, the researchers tested their reactions to the childhood odorant. The mice that had experienced the scent in the playful environment spent more time investigating it compared to a control group that had smelled the same scent in a standard, non-playful cage.
To understand what was happening in the brain at this two-month mark, the researchers looked at granule cells born on the mice’s first day of life. “Our results revealed an important role for neurons in the olfactory bulb that are generated at birth,” Mandairon said. “These neurons are highly plastic and, together with the brain’s reward system, contribute to the memory of an odor learned very early in life.”
To test whether these neurons were strictly necessary for the memory, the scientists used optogenetics, a technique that allows researchers to turn specific brain cells on or off using light. When they used light to temporarily silence these early-born granule cells, the mice no longer showed a preference for the childhood scent.
The researchers also examined broader brain activity in the young adult mice. They found that smelling the childhood odorant triggered highly synchronized activity between the brain’s reward centers and memory systems. This network included areas like the dorsal hippocampus, which is involved in detailed memories, and the medial prefrontal cortex, which handles complex decision-making.
Next, the team investigated how this memory held up as the mice aged into later adulthood, at six months old. “We also found that, later in life, mice retained the memory of this odor only if they had been occasionally re-exposed to it during adulthood,” Mandairon told PsyPost. “Without such re-exposure, their preference for that particular odor disappeared.”
However, if the researchers briefly re-exposed the mice to the scent every three weeks, the positive memory persisted at six months of age. Surprisingly, this long-lasting memory no longer relied on the neonatal granule cells in the olfactory bulb. The light-based silencing technique that worked at two months had no effect at six months.
The researchers had expected a brain structure so directly involved in processing odors to continue playing a central role in olfactory memory. “Instead, over time, other brain circuits, particularly those associated with emotions, seem to take over,” Mandairon said.
“What is particularly interesting is that the brain circuits supporting the memory appear to change over time,” she explained. “In adulthood, the contribution of the olfactory bulb and the reward system decreases, while regions of the limbic system, which is strongly involved in emotions, become more important. In other words, the memory can persist, but the brain mechanisms supporting it seem to evolve throughout life.”
These network shifts are in line with a study covered by PsyPost in 2016, which found that early-life memories in young rats persist into adulthood as latent traces that can be reactivated by later reminder cues. The findings also align with another 2016 study covered by PsyPost, which found that worms form lifelong olfactory memories using specialized neural circuits. It is worth noting, however, that both of those previous studies examined the formation of aversive memories in response to threats, whereas the current study measured the development of positive odor associations in mice.
One detail to keep in mind is that modeling human autobiographical memory in rodents comes with inherent limitations. “Although the anatomical and functional organization of the olfactory system shares many similarities between mice and humans, the study was conducted using a mouse model,” Mandairon cautioned. “Our study primarily allows us to identify general principles and brain mechanisms that can then be investigated further in humans.”
Moving forward, the research team hopes to uncover the specific conditions that make some scent associations permanent while others fade. “We would like to determine whether there is a common ‘recipe’ that allows an odor encountered during childhood to become a memory that stays with us for a lifetime: what the odor was, the context in which it was encountered, who we were with, the emotions we experienced,” Mandairon said.
The study, “Positive early-life olfactory memory is rooted in the olfactory bulb and triggers large-scale changes beyond the olfactory system,” was authored by Jules Dejou, Anna Athanassi, Théo Brunel, Marc Thevenet, Anne Didier, and Nathalie Mandairon.
-------------------------------------------------
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #OlfactoryMemory #EarlyLifeScent #Neuroscience #MemoryFormation #OlfactoryBulb #NeuralPlasticity #Hippocampus #LimbicSystem #MoodAndMemory #PLOSBiology
-
DATE: August 25, 2026 at 07:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Neuroscientists map how early-life scent memories evolve and move through the brain
The scent of a particular perfume or a childhood home can often bring back vivid, emotionally charged memories from a person’s earliest years. A recent study on mice suggests that these early-life scent memories are initially stored by specific neurons that develop just after birth, but as time passes and the scent is encountered again, the memory trace relocates to broader networks in the brain. The research, published in PLOS Biology, provides evidence for how the brain encodes, sustains, and eventually reorganizes our most cherished childhood memories.
Scent-triggered memories are a well-documented psychological phenomenon, famously described by Marcel Proust as a flood of vivid nostalgic feelings brought on by the smell of a madeleine cake. In humans, autobiographical memories linked to scents tend to originate from the first decade of life. These memories also tend to carry a much stronger, more positive emotional tone than memories triggered by sights or sounds.
Supporting this idea, a 2016 review indicated that scents tied to positive personal memories have a uniquely powerful impact on a person’s mood, often increasing positive emotions and reducing physiological signs of stress. Despite this well-known emotional potency, the exact ways the brain creates and stores these long-lasting scent memories have remained somewhat mysterious.
When a person or animal smells something, the information first enters the olfactory bulb, a small structure at the front of the brain. Within this structure, specific neurons called granule cells help process the scent. In rodents, a massive wave of these granule cells is born on the very first day of life. Because these neonatal neurons are highly active during childhood and tend to survive for a long time, scientists suspected they might be ideal candidates for storing early-life scent memories.
Memory researchers also know that the brain’s storage systems do not remain static. According to a framework discussed in a 2018 review, memories often shift between different brain areas as time passes. A memory might initially rely on specific regions, like the hippocampus, before being reorganized and transferred to broader networks in the brain’s outer layers.
“I have been interested in odor perception and in the mechanisms of brain plasticity underlying olfactory learning since my PhD in Lyon, and later during my postdoctoral research at Cornell University,” said study author Nathalie Mandairon, a director of research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) based at the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center. “This study therefore follows naturally from my previous research.”
“The question that particularly intrigued me was this: during childhood, we are exposed to a multitude of odors,” Mandairon continued. “Why do some of them remain embedded in our memory for decades, while others disappear? And what brain mechanisms allow these very early olfactory memories to persist or resurface later in life?”
To find out, the research team began by surveying 647 adults about their earliest scent-based memories. “We found that this memory generally dated back to childhood, before the age of 10,” Mandairon explained. “They were most often associated with a pleasant odor, but also with a particularly positive, sometimes joyful, context.”
“In most cases, the experience had also been repeated several times during childhood,” she added. “Based on these observations, we developed a mouse model to investigate the brain mechanisms involved in the formation and long-term maintenance of this early olfactory memory.”
During the mouse equivalent of childhood, the researchers placed the animals in a large, enriched cage filled with toys, tunnels, and opportunities for social interaction. They paired this playful environment with a specific attractive odorant over five separate sessions. Microphones recorded the mice emitting a higher number and frequency of high-pitched squeaks, known as ultrasonic vocalizations, which indicates a positive emotional state.
When the mice reached young adulthood, at two months of age, the researchers tested their reactions to the childhood odorant. The mice that had experienced the scent in the playful environment spent more time investigating it compared to a control group that had smelled the same scent in a standard, non-playful cage.
To understand what was happening in the brain at this two-month mark, the researchers looked at granule cells born on the mice’s first day of life. “Our results revealed an important role for neurons in the olfactory bulb that are generated at birth,” Mandairon said. “These neurons are highly plastic and, together with the brain’s reward system, contribute to the memory of an odor learned very early in life.”
To test whether these neurons were strictly necessary for the memory, the scientists used optogenetics, a technique that allows researchers to turn specific brain cells on or off using light. When they used light to temporarily silence these early-born granule cells, the mice no longer showed a preference for the childhood scent.
The researchers also examined broader brain activity in the young adult mice. They found that smelling the childhood odorant triggered highly synchronized activity between the brain’s reward centers and memory systems. This network included areas like the dorsal hippocampus, which is involved in detailed memories, and the medial prefrontal cortex, which handles complex decision-making.
Next, the team investigated how this memory held up as the mice aged into later adulthood, at six months old. “We also found that, later in life, mice retained the memory of this odor only if they had been occasionally re-exposed to it during adulthood,” Mandairon told PsyPost. “Without such re-exposure, their preference for that particular odor disappeared.”
However, if the researchers briefly re-exposed the mice to the scent every three weeks, the positive memory persisted at six months of age. Surprisingly, this long-lasting memory no longer relied on the neonatal granule cells in the olfactory bulb. The light-based silencing technique that worked at two months had no effect at six months.
The researchers had expected a brain structure so directly involved in processing odors to continue playing a central role in olfactory memory. “Instead, over time, other brain circuits, particularly those associated with emotions, seem to take over,” Mandairon said.
“What is particularly interesting is that the brain circuits supporting the memory appear to change over time,” she explained. “In adulthood, the contribution of the olfactory bulb and the reward system decreases, while regions of the limbic system, which is strongly involved in emotions, become more important. In other words, the memory can persist, but the brain mechanisms supporting it seem to evolve throughout life.”
These network shifts are in line with a study covered by PsyPost in 2016, which found that early-life memories in young rats persist into adulthood as latent traces that can be reactivated by later reminder cues. The findings also align with another 2016 study covered by PsyPost, which found that worms form lifelong olfactory memories using specialized neural circuits. It is worth noting, however, that both of those previous studies examined the formation of aversive memories in response to threats, whereas the current study measured the development of positive odor associations in mice.
One detail to keep in mind is that modeling human autobiographical memory in rodents comes with inherent limitations. “Although the anatomical and functional organization of the olfactory system shares many similarities between mice and humans, the study was conducted using a mouse model,” Mandairon cautioned. “Our study primarily allows us to identify general principles and brain mechanisms that can then be investigated further in humans.”
Moving forward, the research team hopes to uncover the specific conditions that make some scent associations permanent while others fade. “We would like to determine whether there is a common ‘recipe’ that allows an odor encountered during childhood to become a memory that stays with us for a lifetime: what the odor was, the context in which it was encountered, who we were with, the emotions we experienced,” Mandairon said.
The study, “Positive early-life olfactory memory is rooted in the olfactory bulb and triggers large-scale changes beyond the olfactory system,” was authored by Jules Dejou, Anna Athanassi, Théo Brunel, Marc Thevenet, Anne Didier, and Nathalie Mandairon.
-------------------------------------------------
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #OlfactoryMemory #EarlyLifeScent #Neuroscience #MemoryFormation #OlfactoryBulb #NeuralPlasticity #Hippocampus #LimbicSystem #MoodAndMemory #PLOSBiology
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DATE: August 25, 2026 at 07:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Neuroscientists map how early-life scent memories evolve and move through the brain
The scent of a particular perfume or a childhood home can often bring back vivid, emotionally charged memories from a person’s earliest years. A recent study on mice suggests that these early-life scent memories are initially stored by specific neurons that develop just after birth, but as time passes and the scent is encountered again, the memory trace relocates to broader networks in the brain. The research, published in PLOS Biology, provides evidence for how the brain encodes, sustains, and eventually reorganizes our most cherished childhood memories.
Scent-triggered memories are a well-documented psychological phenomenon, famously described by Marcel Proust as a flood of vivid nostalgic feelings brought on by the smell of a madeleine cake. In humans, autobiographical memories linked to scents tend to originate from the first decade of life. These memories also tend to carry a much stronger, more positive emotional tone than memories triggered by sights or sounds.
Supporting this idea, a 2016 review indicated that scents tied to positive personal memories have a uniquely powerful impact on a person’s mood, often increasing positive emotions and reducing physiological signs of stress. Despite this well-known emotional potency, the exact ways the brain creates and stores these long-lasting scent memories have remained somewhat mysterious.
When a person or animal smells something, the information first enters the olfactory bulb, a small structure at the front of the brain. Within this structure, specific neurons called granule cells help process the scent. In rodents, a massive wave of these granule cells is born on the very first day of life. Because these neonatal neurons are highly active during childhood and tend to survive for a long time, scientists suspected they might be ideal candidates for storing early-life scent memories.
Memory researchers also know that the brain’s storage systems do not remain static. According to a framework discussed in a 2018 review, memories often shift between different brain areas as time passes. A memory might initially rely on specific regions, like the hippocampus, before being reorganized and transferred to broader networks in the brain’s outer layers.
“I have been interested in odor perception and in the mechanisms of brain plasticity underlying olfactory learning since my PhD in Lyon, and later during my postdoctoral research at Cornell University,” said study author Nathalie Mandairon, a director of research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) based at the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center. “This study therefore follows naturally from my previous research.”
“The question that particularly intrigued me was this: during childhood, we are exposed to a multitude of odors,” Mandairon continued. “Why do some of them remain embedded in our memory for decades, while others disappear? And what brain mechanisms allow these very early olfactory memories to persist or resurface later in life?”
To find out, the research team began by surveying 647 adults about their earliest scent-based memories. “We found that this memory generally dated back to childhood, before the age of 10,” Mandairon explained. “They were most often associated with a pleasant odor, but also with a particularly positive, sometimes joyful, context.”
“In most cases, the experience had also been repeated several times during childhood,” she added. “Based on these observations, we developed a mouse model to investigate the brain mechanisms involved in the formation and long-term maintenance of this early olfactory memory.”
During the mouse equivalent of childhood, the researchers placed the animals in a large, enriched cage filled with toys, tunnels, and opportunities for social interaction. They paired this playful environment with a specific attractive odorant over five separate sessions. Microphones recorded the mice emitting a higher number and frequency of high-pitched squeaks, known as ultrasonic vocalizations, which indicates a positive emotional state.
When the mice reached young adulthood, at two months of age, the researchers tested their reactions to the childhood odorant. The mice that had experienced the scent in the playful environment spent more time investigating it compared to a control group that had smelled the same scent in a standard, non-playful cage.
To understand what was happening in the brain at this two-month mark, the researchers looked at granule cells born on the mice’s first day of life. “Our results revealed an important role for neurons in the olfactory bulb that are generated at birth,” Mandairon said. “These neurons are highly plastic and, together with the brain’s reward system, contribute to the memory of an odor learned very early in life.”
To test whether these neurons were strictly necessary for the memory, the scientists used optogenetics, a technique that allows researchers to turn specific brain cells on or off using light. When they used light to temporarily silence these early-born granule cells, the mice no longer showed a preference for the childhood scent.
The researchers also examined broader brain activity in the young adult mice. They found that smelling the childhood odorant triggered highly synchronized activity between the brain’s reward centers and memory systems. This network included areas like the dorsal hippocampus, which is involved in detailed memories, and the medial prefrontal cortex, which handles complex decision-making.
Next, the team investigated how this memory held up as the mice aged into later adulthood, at six months old. “We also found that, later in life, mice retained the memory of this odor only if they had been occasionally re-exposed to it during adulthood,” Mandairon told PsyPost. “Without such re-exposure, their preference for that particular odor disappeared.”
However, if the researchers briefly re-exposed the mice to the scent every three weeks, the positive memory persisted at six months of age. Surprisingly, this long-lasting memory no longer relied on the neonatal granule cells in the olfactory bulb. The light-based silencing technique that worked at two months had no effect at six months.
The researchers had expected a brain structure so directly involved in processing odors to continue playing a central role in olfactory memory. “Instead, over time, other brain circuits, particularly those associated with emotions, seem to take over,” Mandairon said.
“What is particularly interesting is that the brain circuits supporting the memory appear to change over time,” she explained. “In adulthood, the contribution of the olfactory bulb and the reward system decreases, while regions of the limbic system, which is strongly involved in emotions, become more important. In other words, the memory can persist, but the brain mechanisms supporting it seem to evolve throughout life.”
These network shifts are in line with a study covered by PsyPost in 2016, which found that early-life memories in young rats persist into adulthood as latent traces that can be reactivated by later reminder cues. The findings also align with another 2016 study covered by PsyPost, which found that worms form lifelong olfactory memories using specialized neural circuits. It is worth noting, however, that both of those previous studies examined the formation of aversive memories in response to threats, whereas the current study measured the development of positive odor associations in mice.
One detail to keep in mind is that modeling human autobiographical memory in rodents comes with inherent limitations. “Although the anatomical and functional organization of the olfactory system shares many similarities between mice and humans, the study was conducted using a mouse model,” Mandairon cautioned. “Our study primarily allows us to identify general principles and brain mechanisms that can then be investigated further in humans.”
Moving forward, the research team hopes to uncover the specific conditions that make some scent associations permanent while others fade. “We would like to determine whether there is a common ‘recipe’ that allows an odor encountered during childhood to become a memory that stays with us for a lifetime: what the odor was, the context in which it was encountered, who we were with, the emotions we experienced,” Mandairon said.
The study, “Positive early-life olfactory memory is rooted in the olfactory bulb and triggers large-scale changes beyond the olfactory system,” was authored by Jules Dejou, Anna Athanassi, Théo Brunel, Marc Thevenet, Anne Didier, and Nathalie Mandairon.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #OlfactoryMemory #EarlyLifeScent #Neuroscience #MemoryFormation #OlfactoryBulb #NeuralPlasticity #Hippocampus #LimbicSystem #MoodAndMemory #PLOSBiology
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https://www.europesays.com/at/277589/ Schnelles Gehen und KI-gestützte Frühtests: Weniger Demenzrisiko ab 30 Minuten #AI #ARTIFICIALINTELLIGENCE #AT #Austria #Biomarker #Bluttest #Demenz #Diagnostik #Gehen #Gesundheit #Health #Hippocampus #KI #Kognitiv #KünstlicheIntelligenz #Medikation #Österreich #PTau #Prävention #Risiko #Schlaf #Stoffwechsel #WHO
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Sea Animals Figurine Playset (Toymany)Before I start my review I would again like to thank our friends at Toymany for providing this review sample for the Blog. I have really enjoyed being a Toymany collaborator for the past two years!
Marine animals include some of the most popular animals in our hobby, from sharks, to whales and dolphins, to sea turtles. It’s no wonder that many of the more well-known companies have lines and […]
Buy on Ebay Buy on Amazon Buy on HHT Read more... https://animaltoyforum.com/blog/sea-animals-figurine-playset-toymany/ #Aetobatus #AetobatusNarinari #Amphiprion #AmphiprionOcellaris #Arctocephalus #belugaWhale #birdbeakBurrfish #blotchedFantailRay #bowmouthGuitarfish #Coenobita #CoenobutaPerlatus #commonBottlenoseDolphin #commonSeahorse #CownoseRay #Cyclichthys #CyclichthysOrbicularis #Delphinapterus #DelphinapterusLeucas #giantOceanicMantaRay #greenMoray #Gymnothorax #GymnothoraxFunebris #Hippocampus #HippocampusKuda #IndoPacificSailfish #Istiophorus #IstiophorusPlatypterus #killerWhale #Mobula #MobulaBirostris #ocellarisClownfish #Orcinus #OrcinusOrca #Pristis #PristisPectinata #Rhina #RhinaAncylostoma #Rhinoptera #RhinopteraBonasus #sharkRay #smalltoothSawfish #spottedEagleRay #strawberryHermitCrab #Taeniurops #TaeniuropsMeyeni #Tursiops #TursiopsTruncatus -
Very cool retrospective AND review of the hippocampal #SpatialCognition field from Neil Burgess:
Oscillations and Boundaries in My Route Through the Hippocampal Cognitive MapMentions @adredish @tom_hartley and many others, unfortunately not on Mastodon I think
#Neuroscience #PlaceCells #GridCells #Hippocampus #ThetaRhythm -
Poll for #Hippocampus #Neuroscientists:
Do you think that ripples (#SWRs) and #ThetaRhythm can co-occur?
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"We now leave #navigation to our #phones. The result: more of us are getting hopelessly lost." #JohnHarris
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/27/smartphone-apps-gps-mountain-rescues-rise
"#GPS has cut us off from a basic human skill. It’s no wonder #mountain #rescuers are being called out so often. [...] Between 2019 and 2024, the total number of #rescues had increased by 24%, and there was a marked jump among the 18 to 24 age group, among whom callouts almost doubled. [...] across #Britain, there is evidently a mounting problem about the gap between people’s urge to experience wild and open spaces, and their ability to cope when they actually get there. [...] research suggesting that “people with greater lifetime GPS experience have worse #spatialmemory during self-guided navigation”. [...] retested 3 years after the initial research, when they found that “greater GPS use since initial testing was associated with a steeper decline in hippocampal-dependent spatial memory”. The #hippocampus is the part of the brain that deals with navigation: among London taxi drivers, the need to memorise so many geographical details was found to cause it to increase in size. But here were findings that suggested the opposite: reliance on automated #directions reducing people’s capacity to navigate for themselves." #cartography
Thx #SophieBerrebi -
Today #Bandcamp Friday supports #LA fire recovery
90 song 'today only' compilation:
https://goodmusiccomp.bandcamp.com/album/good-music-to-lift-los-angelesFeaturing tracks by: #PerfumeGenius
#KFlay
#REM
#FayeWebster
#Dawes
#DeathCabforCutie #PostalService
#MacDeMarco
#NekoCase
#TVOnTheRadio
#Blondshell
#JeffTweedy
#TheWaronDrugs
#ToroyMoi
#TenaciousD
#ModestMouse
#LittleDragon
#LALOM
#MJLenderman
#CourtneyBarnett
#RealEstate
#MyMorningJacket
#HurrayForTheRiffRaff
#JasonIsbellandThe400Unit
#SoccerMommy
#AnimalCollective
#ColdWarKids
#RickyMontgomery
#Lucius
#TheMidnight
#SpiritualCramp
#KingGizzardAndTheLizardWizard
#MadiDiaz
#Interpol
#MilitarieGun
#ChelseaWolfe
#iRo
#DirtyProjectorsAndStargaze
#PUP
#Porches
#AnnieDiRusso
#HippoCampus
#NewPornographers
#TySegall
#NealFrancis
#MikiRatsula
#Dr.Dog
#TheDip
#LocalNatives
#TundeAdebimpe
#Gustaf
#WaterFromYourEyes
#Mudhoney
#Centro
#SilversunPickups
#RYX
#ManchesterOrchestra
#PoolKids
#FIDLAR
#TheArmed
#HEALTH
#Momma
#SYML
#MiyaFolick
#JoshRitter
#TheHeavyHeavy
#Pachyman
#NickThune
#SoulAsylum
#HotlineTNT
#BEL
#Sycco
#TheHoldSteady
#cumgirl8
#RichyMitchAndTheCoalMiners
#CunninghamBird
#LalaLala
#TheoKatzman
#CassandraJenkins
#brotherkenzie
#ImWithHer
#ChrisCohen
#FlockofDimes
#Friko
#GeorgeAlice
#ThisIsLorelei
#ShannonLay
#Eggy
#AlyciaLang
#JamesHenryJr
#WatkinsFamilyHour