Florida Bishops Reject Religious Vaccine Exemptions: Florida’s Catholic bishops are pushing back against state Attorney General James Uthmeier, arguing that Catholic schools have both theological and constitutional grounds to reject religious exemptions from vaccination requirements. The Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops said Church teaching supports protecting health and the common good, and that vaccines developed using historical fetal cell lines remain morally permissible because recipients do not cooperate with the original abortions. Uthmeier had warned Catholic schools they could risk state scholarships and vouchers if they refused exemptions. The bishops countered that government officials cannot dictate how religious institutions interpret their own doctrine. They also emphasized that maintaining high vaccination rates protects students and staff, particularly children who cannot receive vaccines for medical reasons and depend on community immunity for protection. (cidrap.umn.edu)

Congo Ebola Outbreak Surpasses 5,500 Cases: The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s rapidly expanding Ebola outbreak has surpassed 5,500 confirmed infections and 2,600 deaths, prompting urgent calls for more resources. Africa CDC officials warn the official count may capture only 30% to 40% of infections, meaning the true total could already exceed 10,000 cases. The Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak has reached six provinces, with Ituri accounting for roughly 85% of cases. Around 90 confirmed infections have been recorded daily during the outbreak’s first three months, a faster pace than comparable periods in previous major Ebola epidemics. About 60% of recent deaths have occurred outside treatment centers, underscoring problems with detection and access to care. WHO officials say substantially greater funding, surveillance and community engagement are urgently needed. (CIDRAP)

Groups Battle Central Africa’s Deadly Ebola Outbreak: Public health organizations are struggling to contain the Democratic Republic of Congo’s second-deadliest Ebola outbreak on record, complicated by conflict, mistrust and the absence of an approved vaccine for the Bundibugyo strain. More than 5,200 cases and 2,500 deaths have been reported, with a fatality rate around 44%. Africa CDC and the World Health Organization are coordinating a regional response, while Congo’s biomedical research institute is expanding laboratory testing and genomic surveillance. Doctors Without Borders has deployed more than 1,400 workers, and International Medical Corps is operating treatment centers, training local clinicians and supporting primary care. Congolese organization SOFEPADI is focusing on women, who face disproportionate exposure as caregivers. Responders say strengthening local health systems will be critical to controlling future outbreaks. (kffhealthnews.org)

High-Dose Vitamin D Linked to Better Cognition: Older adults with both mild cognitive impairment and sleep disturbances performed better on a standard cognitive test when they reported taking relatively high doses of vitamin D, according to preliminary research from Emory University. The study involved 54 participants and found that those consuming at least 5,000 IU daily scored more than 13 percent higher on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment than people taking no vitamin D. Lower doses were not associated with the same benefit, while vitamin D2 and D3 produced similar results. The researchers emphasize that this was an observational analysis, not a randomized trial, so it cannot establish that supplementation caused the improvement. Still, the findings suggest vitamin D deserves closer examination as an inexpensive intervention during early cognitive decline. (ScienceDaily)

Psilocybin Reveals Hidden Organization Inside the Brain: Rather than simply making brain activity more chaotic, psilocybin appears to reorganize neural activity into highly structured patterns shaped by a person’s surroundings and subjective experience. Monash University researchers combined fMRI, EEG and machine-learning analysis in 62 adults, the largest single-site acute psychedelic neuroimaging study yet reported. Participants were examined during rest, meditation, music listening and movie viewing. Psilocybin altered communication between networks normally associated with internal and external processing, creating patterns that became especially organized during positive experiences of self- or boundary-dissolution. The stronger this context-sensitive organization became, the greater participants’ reported psychological change the following day. Published in Nature, the findings suggest future psychedelic therapies may need to treat context and environment as important components of pharmacological action. (Monash University)

Psychiatry Moves Toward More Precisely Targeted Drugs: Psychiatric medicine may be entering a more personalized era in which treatments are chosen according to biological characteristics rather than broad diagnostic categories. A new Nature Reviews Drug Discovery analysis argues that conditions such as depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder encompass multiple biological subtypes that may respond differently to drugs. Researchers are increasingly combining genetics, imaging, biomarkers, digital measurements and machine learning to identify those subtypes and predict treatment response. The approach could help explain why psychiatric drug development has historically produced relatively modest gains despite enormous investment. Major obstacles remain, including inconsistent biomarkers, heterogeneous patient populations and the difficulty of validating predictive models across clinical settings. Nevertheless, precision psychiatry could eventually replace trial-and-error prescribing with more biologically informed decisions about who receives particular therapies. (Nature)

Ketamine’s Effects May Involve Opioid Receptors: New structural evidence is complicating the long-standing explanation of how ketamine works in the brain. Ketamine’s antidepressant and psychoactive effects are usually attributed primarily to blocking NMDA-type glutamate receptors, but researchers have now produced molecular snapshots supporting a significant interaction with opioid receptors. The findings help explain earlier pharmacological observations suggesting that opioid signaling contributes to some of ketamine’s therapeutic and reinforcing effects. Understanding exactly which receptors generate its rapid antidepressant action is important because researchers are trying to design next-generation compounds that retain ketamine’s benefits without dissociation, abuse potential or other adverse effects. The work does not mean ketamine functions simply like a conventional opioid. Instead, it adds another mechanistic layer to an unusually complex drug whose effects apparently emerge from interactions across multiple neurotransmitter systems. (Nature)

Alzheimer’s Blood Test Expands Earlier Diagnostic Access: The FDA has cleared C2N Diagnostics’ PrecivityAD2 blood test to help clinicians evaluate people experiencing cognitive symptoms for Alzheimer’s disease. The assay measures blood biomarkers associated with amyloid and tau pathology, potentially allowing physicians to identify biological signs of Alzheimer’s without immediately relying on more expensive PET imaging or invasive cerebrospinal-fluid testing. The technology originated from research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and is intended to complement, rather than replace, a broader clinical evaluation. Its availability could become particularly important as disease-modifying Alzheimer’s treatments increasingly require confirmation of underlying pathology before patients are considered for therapy. Faster and more accessible biomarker testing could therefore affect not only diagnosis but drug eligibility, clinical-trial recruitment and the ability to intervene earlier in the course of cognitive deterioration. (News-Medical)

Personalized Brain Stimulation Eases Chronic Pain: Brain stimulation tailored to an individual patient’s neural activity may provide long-lasting relief from severe chronic pain. Researchers first spent about a week mapping pain-related brain signals in three patients, then used those patterns to determine personalized stimulation targets. The resulting therapy reduced pain substantially, with benefits persisting beyond individual stimulation sessions. Although the case series is extremely small and needs confirmation in larger controlled studies, it illustrates an emerging approach to neurotechnology: rather than stimulating the same anatomical location in everyone, clinicians can potentially target the specific neural circuitry underlying symptoms in each person. The strategy resembles precision pharmacology applied electrically to the brain. Similar closed-loop and personalized stimulation approaches are increasingly being explored for depression, epilepsy, movement disorders and cognitive impairment. (Science News)

Brain Waves May Perform Analog Computations: A new theory from MIT neuroscientists proposes that cognition depends not only on neurons communicating through synaptic circuits but also on traveling electrical waves performing analog computations across the cortex. Earl Miller and colleagues argue that fixed neural connections provide the brain’s underlying infrastructure, while rhythmic waves dynamically organize which neuronal groups can communicate at particular moments. Beta-frequency waves, for example, could temporarily suppress or release neural populations, allowing information to move between sensory processing and working memory without requiring synapses to be physically rewired. The researchers suggest these spatial and temporal patterns may help explain the brain’s remarkable ability to rapidly shift between thoughts while maintaining a unified conscious experience. The theory remains a framework requiring further experimental testing, but it offers a striking alternative to purely circuit-based models of cognition. (Picower Institute)

Human Neurons Show Context-Dependent Mirroring: Scientists have recorded mirror-like activity from individual human neurons, providing rare cellular-level evidence for a phenomenon previously associated mainly with studies of monkeys and large-scale human brain imaging. Caltech researchers monitored neurons in people undergoing neurological procedures and found cells that responded both when participants performed actions and when they observed other people performing them. Crucially, the effect was not automatic. Mirroring appeared in higher-order brain regions involved in planning and depended strongly on the observer’s intentions and task context. Some neurons even suppressed their mirror response when circumstances changed. The findings challenge simplified versions of the mirror-neuron theory in which observing another person automatically triggers an internal simulation of their actions. Instead, human action understanding may involve flexible neural representations shaped by goals, expectations and context. (California Institute of Technology)

Brain Blood Vessels Form Specialized Supply Networks: The brain may regulate blood flow with substantially greater precision than previously appreciated. Researchers studying mice found that small arteries penetrating the cortex form layer-specific networks capable of directing oxygen and nutrients toward different populations of active neurons. This neurovascular coupling allows blood delivery to change rapidly when neurons become active, but the Science study indicates the system is not simply a generalized increase in circulation around busy tissue. Instead, distinct vascular pathways appear organized according to cortical layers and sensory modalities. The findings could improve interpretation of functional MRI, which indirectly measures neural activity through changes in blood oxygenation. They may also matter for cognitive aging and neurological disease, where vascular dysfunction can impair brain performance even when neurons themselves initially remain intact. (Science)

Common Drugs May Reshape the Gut for Years: The effects of medications on the human microbiome may persist long after people stop taking them. Researchers studying more than 2,500 individuals found associations between previous drug exposure and gut bacterial composition, including signatures linked to medications taken years earlier. The findings add to growing evidence that pharmaceuticals can influence biological systems far beyond their intended molecular targets. Antibiotics are the obvious example, but other commonly prescribed drug classes also appeared capable of leaving lasting microbial footprints. Because gut microbes influence metabolism, immune signaling and potentially communication along the gut-brain axis, these long-term changes could help explain some delayed or poorly understood effects of medication. The researchers caution that observational associations cannot prove that particular drugs directly caused every microbiome difference, but the results argue for considering medication history in microbiome research. (ScienceDaily)