For people with traumatic brain injury and their caregivers, recovery of basic communication is an “acceptable” outcome

Mass General Brigham co-led surveys identify basic communication as the minimum acceptable outcome after TBI, despite the milestone being considered below the typical threshold for a “favorable” recovery outcome

Mass General Brigham

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A federally funded study of more than 500 people living with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and their caregivers, co-led by researchers at Mass General Brigham, found that survey participants viewed the ability to regain basic communication as the minimum acceptable outcome after severe brain injury. The study, published in Critical Care Medicine, shows that many individuals living with TBIs consider outcomes involving significant disability to be acceptable. These results challenge longstanding assumptions by TBI researchers and providers about what constitutes a “favorable” outcome after a severe brain injury, and should inform future care discussions and clinical trials, according to the authors. 

“Medical decisions such as withdrawal of life support often rely on research-guided predictions of whether a patient will achieve a ‘favorable’ outcome after TBI,” said senior study author Joseph Giacino, PhD, director of the Spaulding-Harvard Traumatic Brain Injury Model System at Mass General Brigham. “Our findings show that recovery of basic yes/no communication can hold profound value for people living with TBIs and their caregivers.” 

The study highlights a gap between assumptions held by TBI clinicians and researchers and what patients and families actually find meaningful.Among measures used most frequently to assess TBI outcome, none evaluate recovery of basic communication.    

The study surveyed 252 individuals with TBI and 256 caregivers. They rated 11 TBI outcomes on a five-point scale ranging from “unacceptable to acceptable,” and then selected one minimally acceptable outcome. Respondents also rated the importance of 29 personal values that might influence decision-making after severe TBI.  

The survey revealed 65% of individuals with TBI and 72% of caregivers rated recovery of basic communication as being “acceptable” or “somewhat acceptable”. Outcomes ranging from “alive, but permanently unconscious” to partially independent in the home” were selected significantly more frequently as the minimally acceptable outcome than “completely independent in the home,” which is a common cut-off for a “favorable” outcome in TBI research studies. 

Study limitations include the inability to confirm TBI injury severity and level of disability of the respondents due to the survey methodology. In addition, the study did not include individuals who could not respond to surveys.  

The authors call for more person-centered approaches to TBI outcome research and say these findings should be considered in the design of future TBI clinical trials. 

“Our field has historically relied on outcome measures that don’t capture the full spectrum of TBI recovery or the milestones that matter most to patients and families,” said first study author Yelena Bodien, PhD, a clinical neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, formerly of Spaulding Rehabilitation. “These findings should guide the development of new outcome measures that better reflect the priorities of individuals with lived experience.” 

Authorship: In addition to Bodien and Giacino, study co-authors include Lydia Borsi, Ellyn Pier, Samantha Kanny, Lillian Droscha, William Choi, Ryan Filoramo, Danielle Burnetta, Kathleen McColgan, Bhumi Patel, Mallory Spring, Jean Paul Vazquez Rivera, Jessica Wolfe, Enrico Quilico, Tiffany Campbell, Amanda R. Merner, Gabriel Lázaro-Muñoz, and Lindsay Wilson.  

Disclosures: The authors declare no competing interests. 

Funding: This research was funded by a National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research grant (90DPTB0027) to Spaulding-Harvard TBI Model System. 

Paper cited: Bodien Y, et al. “Perspectives of persons with lived experience on acceptable outcome after severe acute traumatic brain injury.” Critical Care Medicine, DOI:10.1097/CCM.0000000000007017 

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About Mass General Brigham 

Mass General Brigham is an integrated academic health care system, uniting great minds to solve the hardest problems in medicine for our communities and the world. Mass General Brigham connects a full continuum of care across a system of academic medical centers, community and specialty hospitals, a health insurance plan, physician networks, community health centers, home care, and long-term care services. Mass General Brigham is a nonprofit organization committed to patient care, research, teaching, and service to the community. In addition, Mass General Brigham is one of the nation’s leading biomedical research organizations with several Harvard Medical School teaching hospitals. For more information, please visit massgeneralbrigham.org. 

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Journal

Critical Care Medicine

DOI

10.1097/CCM.0000000000007017 

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Perspectives of persons with lived experience on acceptable outcome after severe acute traumatic brain injury.

 

“I see a rubber duck” – neuroscientists use AI to discover babies categorize objects in the brain at just two months old

Trinity College Dublin

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video: 

Baby Eli attentively watches the Foundcog pictures at his 2-month scan. 

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Credit: Cusack Lab. © 2026. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

Babies as young as two months old are able to categorise distinct objects in their brains – much earlier than previously thought – according to new research from neuroscientists in Trinity College Dublin. 

The research, which combined brain imaging with artificial intelligence models, enriches our understanding of what babies are thinking and how they learn in the earliest months of life.

The study has been just published in the journal Nature Neuroscience by a team from Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience (TCIN) and the School of Psychology. 

“Parents and scientists have long wondered what goes on in a baby’s mind and what they actually see when they view the world around them. This research highlights the richness of brain function in the first year of life,” explains Dr. Cliona O’Doherty, lead author on the study who conducted the research while in Trinity’s Cusack Lab. 

“Although at two months, infants’ communication is limited by a lack of language and fine motor control, their minds were already not only representing to how things look, but figuring out to which category they belonged. This shows that the foundations of visual cognition are already in place from very early on and much earlier than expected.”

With the assistance of the Coombe and Rotunda Hospitals in Dublin, the FOUNDCOG team recruited 130 two-month-old infants. Lying on a comfy beanbag and wearing sound-cancelling headphones, the babies were shown bright, colourful images which kept them engaged for 15-20 minutes. This provided the team with enough time to use functional MRI (fMRI) to measure their patterns of brain activity in response to pictures representing 12 common visual categories such as cat, bird, rubber duck, shopping cart and tree.

Artificial intelligence models were then used to characterise how the babies’ brains represented different visual categories by comparing activity patterns along the pathways for visual recognition between the models and the brains.

“This study represents the largest longitudinal study with functional magnetic resonance imaging  (fMRI) of awake infants. The rich dataset capturing brain activity opens up a whole new way to measure what babies are thinking at a very early age. It also highlights the potential for neuroimaging and computational models to be used as a diagnostic tool in very young infants,” explains team lead Rhodri Cusack, the Thomas Mitchell Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Trinity’s School of Psychology and Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience. 

“Babies learn much more quickly than today’s AI models and by studying how they do this, we hope to inspire a new generation of AI models that learn more efficiently, so reducing their economic and environmental costs.”

Dr. Anna Truzzi, who now works at Queen’s University Belfast, is also a co-author on the paper. She added: “Until recently, we could not reliably measure how specific areas of the infant brain interpreted visual information. By combining AI and neuroimaging, our study offers a very unique insight, which helps us to understand much more about how babies learn in their first year of life.

“The first year is a period of rapid and intricate brain development. This study provides new foundational knowledge which will help guide early-years education, inform clinical support for neurodevelopmental conditions and inspire more biologically-grounded approaches in artificial intelligence.”

Professor Eleanor Molloy, a neonatologist from Children’s Health Ireland and co-author emphasised the potential of the study’s high success rates for awake neuroimaging: “There is a pressing need for greater understanding of how neurodevelopmental disorders change early brain development, and awake fMRI has considerable potential to address this.”

Dr. O’Doherty is now based in Stanford University and Dr. Anna Truzzi is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Psychology of Queen’s University Belfast.

Art work was produced by artist Cian McLoughlin inspired by this research while he was Artist in Residence at the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience in 2024, as well as an exhibition essay.

 

Baby Sadie attends her 2-month Foundcog scan with her mum, Donna.

Credit

Cusack Lab. © 2026. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

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Journal

Nature Neuroscience

DOI

10.1038/s41593-025-02187-8 

 

Pink noise reduces REM sleep and may harm sleep quality

Earplugs were found more effective than pink noise for protecting sleep quality

University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine

PHILADELPHIA—Pink noise—often used to promote sleep—may reduce restorative REM sleep and interfere with sleep recovery. In contrast, earplugs were found to be significantly more effective in protecting sleep against traffic noise, according to new study published in the journal Sleep from the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.  

The findings challenge the widespread use of ambient sound machines and apps marketed as sleep aids. 

“REM sleep is important for memory consolidation, emotional regulation and brain development, so our findings suggest that playing pink noise and other types of broadband noise during sleep could be harmful—especially for children whose brains are still developing and who spend much more time in REM sleep than adults,” said study lead author Mathias Basner, MD, PhD, professor of Sleep and Chronobiology in Psychiatry.  

What was tested 

Researchers observed 25 healthy adults, ages 21 to 41, in a sleep laboratory during eight-hour sleep opportunities over seven consecutive nights. The participants reported not previously using noise to help them sleep or having any sleep disorders. Participants slept under different conditions, including being exposed to aircraft noise, pink noise, aircraft noise with pink noise and aircraft noise with earplugs. Each morning, they completed tests and surveys to measure sleep quality, alertness, and other health effects. 

When we sleep, we cycle multiple times through periods of deep sleep and REM sleep. Deep sleep is important for physical restoration, for memory consolidation, and for clearing toxins from the brain. REM sleep, also called dream sleep, is important for emotional regulation, for motor skills, and for brain development. 

This way, deep and REM sleep complement each other, and collectively guarantee that we wake up restored in the morning, ready for the next day. 

What is pink noise? 

Pink noise is a type of broadband noise—a continuous sound spread across a wide range of frequencies—that sounds uniform and static-like. Broadband noise also includes the well-known white noise and other noise colors like brown and blue noise.  

The different noise colors differ in their energy content across the audible spectrum which determines whether they sound high-pitched or low-pitched. Nature sounds like ocean or rainfall sounds are also broadband sounds, and many household appliances like air conditioning units and fans produce broadband sounds. 

Eye-opening results 

Exposure to aircraft noise—compared to none—was associated with about 23 fewer minutes per night spent in “N3,” the deepest sleep stage. Earplugs prevented this drop in deep sleep to a large extent. Pink noise alone at 50 decibels (often compared to the sound of a “moderate rainfall”) was associated with a nearly 19-minute decrease in REM sleep.  

If pink noise was combined with aircraft noise, both deep sleep and REM sleep were significantly shorter compared to noise-free control nights, and time spent awake was now also 15 minutes longer, which had not been observed in aircraft noise only or pink noise only nights.  

Participants also reported that their sleep felt lighter, they woke up more frequently, and their overall sleep quality was worse when exposed to aircraft noise or pink noise, compared to nights without noise—unless they used earplugs. 

Habits of millions may lead to bad sleep 

The results, the researchers said, suggest not only that earplugs—which are used by as many as 16 percent of Americans to sleep—are likely effective, but also that the overall health effects of pink noise and other types of broadband noise “sleep aids” need to be studied more thoroughly. 

Millions of people play back broadband noise during sleep every night. For example, white noise and ambient podcasts accounted for three million daily hours on the Spotify platform, and the top five videos on YouTube to the prompt “white noise” have been watched more than 700 million times. Even so, research on the effects of broadband noise on sleep remains scarce and inconclusive, according to a recent review by Basner and colleagues.  

REM sleep disruption is a common feature of disorders such as depression, anxiety, and Parkinson’s disease. Basner noted that young children, compared to adults, spend much more time in REM sleep—and thus may be particularly vulnerable to the ill effects of pink noise. Yet, it is common that parents place sound machines next to the bed of their newborns or toddlers, with the good intention to help them fall and stay asleep.  

“Overall, our results caution against the use of broadband noise, especially for newborns and toddlers, and indicate that we need more research in vulnerable populations, on long-term use, on the different colors of broadband noise, and on safe broadband noise levels in relation to sleep,” Basner said.  

This research was funded by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration Office of Environment and Energy through ASCENT, the FAA Center of Excellence for Alternative Jet Fuels and the Environment, project 86 through FAA Award Number 13-C-AJFE-UPENN under the supervision of Susumu Shirayama. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the investigators and do not necessarily reflect the views of the FAA. 

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Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school. 

Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS) and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school. 

The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $580 million awarded in the 2023 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts,” Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries that have shaped modern medicine, including CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the Nobel Prize-winning mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines. 

The University of Pennsylvania Health System cares for patients in facilities and their homes stretching from the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania to the New Jersey shore. UPHS facilities include the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Chester County Hospital, Doylestown Health, Lancaster General Health, Princeton Health, and Pennsylvania Hospital—the nation’s first hospital, chartered in 1751. Additional facilities and enterprises include Penn Medicine at Home, GSPP Rehabilitation, Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital, and Princeton House Behavioral Health, among others. 

Penn Medicine is an $11.9 billion enterprise powered by nearly 49,000 talented faculty and staff. 

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Journal

SLEEP

DOI

10.1093/sleep/zsag001 

Article Title

Efficacyofpinknoiseandearplugsformitigatingtheeffectsofintermittentenvironmentalnoiseexposureonsleep

Article Publication Date

2-Feb-2026

 

Scientists unravel vines’ parasitic nature

New study unlocks formula that explains vines’ ability to search for and attach to host plants

New York University

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A climbing vine in Oaxaca, Mexico.

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Credit: Lena Hunt/New York University

Twisting upwardly on trees and other plants—along with houses and even lampposts—vines are a wonder of nature. However, their marvels mask their parasitic behavior: in attaching to other life forms, vines block sunlight necessary for growth and strangle their hosts, preventing the flow of water and other nutrients.

While these threats were widely known, less clear is what gives vines their searching, attaching, and climbing capabilities. 

An international team of scientists has now unlocked a formula that enables vines to search for and attach to host plants—rapid elongation, directional movement, and the production of specialized contacting cells—and identified the gene family that engineers this formula. 

“Our research shows how molecular mechanisms are linked to plant movement—something we haven’t clearly understood,” explains Joyce Onyenedum, an assistant professor of environmental studies at New York University and an author of the study, which appears in the journal the New Phytologist. “Crucially, it gives us greater insight into these ropey parasites. They pose an ongoing menace to trees and other plants—among nature’s best tools for storing atmospheric carbon dioxide.”

It has been well-established that large tree branches bend through the production of fiber cells, called “G-fibers”, which are specialized cells that contract. In a study published last year, Onyenedum and her colleagues reported that G-fibers were common within the stems of vines. But the actual role of these cells was unclear.

In the New Phytologist study, Onyenedum and her colleagues, who included Lena Hunt, an NYU postdoctoral researcher, and Charles Anderson, a Penn State biologist, sought to address this question. 

To do so, the scientists studied common bean vines, which are cultivated globally, often seen in home gardens, and grow vertically. Specifically, they studied the role of a particular hormone, brassinosteroid, which is known to regulate plants’ developmental processes, including elongation, by comparing growth in a normal bean vine to one that was engineered to produce an excess amount of this hormone. 

These excess hormones repressed the development of G-fiber cells and produced “lazy vines” that elongate too fast and move in directionless manner.

This timelapse video shows the two bean vines—the left plant has hormone levels typically found in vines and climbs normally; the right plant, by contrast, has an excess amount of hormones, creating an imbalance that stifles climbing (video courtesy of the Onyenedum Lab/New York University).

The researchers also identified a candidate gene, XTH5, which is fundamental in plants’ structural growth and is specifically expressed during G-fiber development—thus potentially spotting the key actor supporting the coiling and gripping of vines.

“Genes like XTH5 allow plants to remodel their cell walls, which are complex structures that provide strength and flexibility to plants. This study demonstrates that cell wall remodeling is a critical component of plant movements such as twining,” says Anderson. 

“Our work shows that rapid elongation, directional movement, and the production of certain cells facilitates the maneuvering and eventual attachment of vines upon their host, thus unlocking the secrets to their behavior,” concludes Onyenedum. 

The study also included researchers from the New York Botanical Garden, Brazil’s Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, and the University of Michigan.

This research was supported by an CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (240167).

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Timelapse video shows the two bean vines [VIDEO] 

This timelapse video shows two bean vines—the left plant has hormone levels typically found in vines and climbs normally; the right plant, by contrast, has an excess amount of hormones, creating an imbalance that stifles climbing.

Credit

The Onyenedum Lab/New York University

Journal

New Phytologist

DOI

10.1111/nph.70935 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Article Title

XTH genes impact growth habit determination of twiningcommon bean vine revealed by brassinosteroid treatment

Article Publication Date

28-Jan-2026