An NVIDIA powered farming machine uses Al vision and precision lasers to eliminate weeds in milliseconds without herbicides and without harming crops, a potential shift toward chemical free agriculture.
Functional neuroimaging demonstrates that the brain adapts to degraded visual navigation inputs by rigidly activating primary motor areas and explicitly amplifying the functional connection between executive cognitive control and physical motor execution centers. Credit: Neuroscience News
Brain Rewires to Stabilize Walking During Visual Impairment
Summary: A new study has deciphered how the human brain dynamically remodels its neural circuitry to maintain walking stability when visual input is compromised. By using specialized occlusion foils to simulate low vision in healthy adults, researchers combined visual evoked potentials (PR-VEPs) and resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI) to track brain changes immediately following locomotion.
The data reveals that the brain compensates for degraded sight through a dual-action survival strategy: rigidly activating primary sensorimotor loops while aggressively boosting functional connectivity between motor execution and higher-order cognitive control networks. This discovery provides a concrete neurological blueprint for designing advanced, personalized multimodal mobility rehabilitation for low-vision individuals.
Key Facts
The Low-Vision Simulation: Investigators utilized Bangerter™ occlusion foils to model stable, low-quality visual input, confirming a significant reduction in signal-processing efficiency along primary visual pathways.
Paracentral Lobule Rebound: Under normal sight, walking naturally downregulates the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFF) in the right paracentral lobule compared to rest. When vision is blocked, this localized neural activity slightly rebounds, signaling a rapid, adaptive functional adjustment.
Rigid Path Activation: Navigating with impaired vision triggers widespread baseline activation across multiple interconnected sensorimotor pathways, including the bilateral calcarine gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, supplementary motor area (SMA), cuneus, precentral gyrus, and cerebellar lobule VI.
The Core Compensatory Switch: The most critical neuroplastic adjustment discovered was a powerful spike in functional connectivity between the right precentral gyrus (motor execution) and the middle frontal gyrus (cognitive control), serving as the brain’s main workaround for missing sight.
Clinical Translation Matrix: The study advocates for a shift toward visual-somatosensory multimodal integrated training, actively stimulating these target pathways to build personalized, brain-level rehabilitation programs for low-vision populations.
Source: Chinese Medical Journal
Vision acts as the navigation radar for human locomotion, transmitting environmental information to the brain and regulating motor decisions through sensorimotor integration. When visual input is impaired, how does the brain maintain walking stability via functional remodeling?
Deciphering this neural mechanism can provide a brand-new brain function regulation approach for motor rehabilitation in low-vision populations.
The present study adopted Bangerter™ occlusion foils to simulate visual impairment, combined with pattern-reversal visual evoked potentials (PR-VEPs) and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI). It comparatively analyzed the visual electrophysiological characteristics and post-walking brain function changes of healthy young adults under normal vision and visual occlusion conditions.
This study was published in Volume 139, Issue 06 on March 20, 2026, in the Chinese Medical Journal.
The results demonstrated that the simulated visual impairment significantly reduced the signal-processing efficiency of the visual pathway, verifying the stability of the low-quality visual input model. Further rs-fMRI analysis revealed that the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFF) in the right paracentral lobule decreased after walking under normal vision compared with the resting state. In contrast, the ALFF of this region slightly rebounded after walking under visual occlusion, reflecting the adaptive adjustment of local brain functional activities.
Meanwhile, walking activated functional connectivity in multiple sensorimotor pathways that support basic locomotion. These pathways included the bilateral calcarine and middle temporal gyrus, bilateral supplementary motor area and right cuneus, as well as bilateral precentral gyrus and right cerebellar lobule VI.
Most crucially, visual occlusion further strengthened the functional connectivity between the right precentral gyrus and middle frontal gyrus, which may serve as the core compensatory mechanism to make up for insufficient visual input.
The findings suggest that the brain achieves walking function compensation under low-quality visual input through a strategy of rigid activation of sensorimotor pathways combined with targeted enhancement of local functional connectivity.
This study provides a new way to enhance motor rehabilitation in low-vision populations. In the future, we can adopt visual-somatosensory multimodal integrated training. This training would be designed to strengthen the functional connectivity of key brain regions, such as the right precentral gyrus and middle frontal gyrus. On this basis, we will develop personalized motor rehabilitation programs for low-vision patients at the brain function level.
Funding information: This work was supported by a grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number: 81600760).
Key Questions Answered:
Q: How does the brain act like a “navigation radar” when we are just taking a casual walk?
A: Your eyes are continuously streaming real-time spatial and environmental data directly into your brain, which processes this visual information to regulate split-second motor adjustments. This seamless sensorimotor integration acts as an internal radar. When that radar is suddenly blinded or degraded, the brain loses its primary mapping tool and is forced to structurally remodel how it processes movement to keep you upright and stable.
Q: What makes the connection between the right precentral gyrus and the middle frontal gyrus so special?
A: This specific link is the crown jewel of the study’s findings. The precentral gyrus is primarily responsible for physically executing motor movements, while the middle frontal gyrus handles higher-level executive cognitive functions and decision-making. When sight fails, the brain hooks these two regions together in an aggressive compensatory handshake, essentially relying on conscious cognitive control to carefully guide and steady mechanical stepping.
Q: How can we use this data to help blind or visually impaired individuals walk more confidently?
A: Currently, a lot of mobility rehabilitation focuses purely on physical practice and external cues. This study allows us to design therapy from the brain level downward. By using targeted visual-somatosensory multimodal training—like combining tactile or balance exercises with residual visual inputs—clinicians can purposefully fire up and reinforce the precentral-to-frontal pathways, training the brain to rewire itself for maximum stability faster.
Editorial Notes:
This article was edited by a Neuroscience News editor.
Journal paper reviewed in full.
Additional context added by our staff.
About this visual neuroscience research news
Author: Tingting Yang Source: Chinese Medical Journal Contact: Tingting Yang – Chinese Medical Journal Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
The Rundown: China has begun full commercial operation of what it says is the world’s first offshore wind-powered underwater data center, a $226M facility sitting more than 30 feet beneath the East China Sea off Shanghai’s Lingang Special Area.
The details:The data center sits between two phases of an offshore wind farm, drawing 95% of its electricity from wind generation while using seawater for passive cooling.The 24 MW facility houses nearly 2K servers, including GPU clusters from China Telecom and LinkWise, and is designed to handle AI workloads. Developers say the system cuts electricity consumption by 22.8%, eliminates freshwater use entirely, and reduces land use by more than 90%. Microsoft’s Project Natick previously proved submerged servers can be up to 8x more reliable than land-based ones, but the company shelved the program.
Why it matters: By ditching industrial chillers for passive seawater cooling, China says it has built a data center that runs at a PUE of 1.15 — while powering it almost entirely from wind.
The catch is the same one that sank Microsoft’s Project Natick: when a server fails 30 feet underwater, maintenance is a costly feat.
More news on everybody’s favourite cute-hoor. New Freedom of Information requests by the Irish Times just showed Michael Healy-Rae has pocketed over €370,000 from Kerry County Council since 2020 for leasing properties and providing homes under the Rental Accommodation Scheme. Payments rose from €55,566 in 2020 to €71,785 last year. But shure luk, it’s not like when he was making all that he was in a position to influence the goverment on accommodation laws during a housing crisis, to be shure. Ah isnt it grand that landlords like him, who was until recently a TD, that under schemes like RAS and HAP he received his guaranteed rent paid directly from the local authorities he represents, with no need for rent collectors and full mortgage interest relief available as an expense.
Ah tis grand like! Oh and thats just the Kerry end of it. He also receives payments under the Housing Assistance Payment scheme, administered nationally by Limerick City and County Council. That council refused to say how much, citing his privacy as a private individual engaged in a commercial arrangement. Aul Bertie taught him somethin!
Obviously all this social housing income is on top of €1.33 million his company Roughty Properties has received for housing Ukrainian refugees since 2022, as well as a modest €1,027.50 from Kerry County Council for diesel. Diesel….oh did I mention he resigned last month as Minister of State at Agriculture over the Government’s handling of fuel protests? Tis a grand aul cap on him.
Ah but shure with currently 14 houses, three guest houses, a commercial unit, an apartment, and various unspecified rooms and apartments declared in the register of interest he needs a lot of diesel! That aul hat won’t keep him warm. Make sure you pay your television licence and don’t complain about housing or immigration you jackeens. And if you do, don’t ask TDs any questions! Blame the innocent taking advantage of these laws and benefits, as they in turn are taken advantage of. And shure your paying for it all. Grand stuff to be shure!
China is building a 10,000-km rail link to Iran to secure oil supplies. But with far less capacity than tankers, it won’t replace sea routes. Instead, it highlights Beijing’s long-term strategy to boost energy security.
China is expanding a 10,000-kilometer (about 6,200-mile) railway link to Iran to diversify oil supply routes and reduce reliance on vulnerable sea lanes like the Strait of Hormuz.
But experts say trains cannot match the capacity of oil tankers, limiting its impact.
Instead, the project underlines China’s long-term approach to strengthening its energy security and developing resilience against global crises through diversification, infrastructure investment and reduced dependence on Middle Eastern oil.
San Diego mosque shooting to be investigated as hate crime
Timothy Jones with AP, Reuters, AFP2 hours ago 2 hours ago
Teenage gunmen have shot dead three men at the Islamic Center of San Diego before killing themselves. The incident is being treated as a hate crime by investigators.
The shooting is being investigated as a hate crime, with the two suspects reported by police to have engaged in “generalized hate rhetoric.”
The shooting triggered a large police deploymentImage: Mike Blake/REUTERS
What happened in the attack?
Police said the shooting at the mosque was preceded by a call by the mother of one of the shooters to police in the morning saying that the boy had run away with her weapons and vehicle and that she feared he was suicidal.
As police were searching for the boy, additionally alarmed by information that he was dressed in camouflage and had a companion, reports arrived of a shooting at theIslamic Center of San Diego, some 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the city center.
When police arrived, more shots were fired a few blocks away.
The shooters were then found dead with apparently self-inflicted gunwounds in a vehicle stopped in the middle of a road nearby, according to San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl.
Wahl said no officers fired their weapons at the scene.
Police stood guard as emergency workers attended the sceneImage: Mike Blake/REUTERS
‘Heroic’ security guard among the victims
Wahl said a security guard at the mosque was among the three people killed in the attack and that his response had helped prevent more deaths.
“His actions were heroic and he undoubtedly saved lives today,” Wahl said.
The identities of the other two victims were not immediately clear.
The Islamic center also houses a school, but its director, Imam Taha Hassane, said none of the students was harmed.
“We have never experienced tragedy like this before,” Hassane said.
“And at this moment all that I can say is, sending our prayers and standing in solidarity with all the families in our community here,” he said.
Hassane said the center promoted interfaith relations and that a group of non-Muslims had been visiting it earlier on Monday to learn more about Islam.
Police Chief Scott Wahl held a press conference after the shootingImage: Mike Blake/REUTERS
Hate crime investigation
Wahl told reporters that police were, for the moment, “actively investigating this as a hate crime,” saying that there “was definitely hate rhetoric that was involved.”
“Islamophobia endangers Muslim communities across this country,” he posted on X, adding that New York police were boosting deployments to mosques “out of an abundance of caution.”
US President Donald Trump said the shooting was a “terrible situation.”
State Governor Gavin Newsom also voiced dismay at the attack.
“Worshippers anywhere should not have to fear for their lives,” he wrote on X.
“Hate has no place in California, and we will not tolerate acts of terror or intimidation against communities of faith,” he said, adding, “To the San Diego Muslim community: California stands with you.”
The study highlights that combining tobacco and cannabis triggers a synergistic effect in the brain, increasing the biological absorption of psychoactive THC and significantly accelerating the long-term transition into full psychotic disorders. Credit: Neuroscience News
Combining Cannabis and Tobacco Triples Psychosis Risk
Summary: A multi-site study reveals that combining cannabis and tobacco, a trend known as “co-use”, significantly increases the long-term risk of developing full psychotic disorders like schizophrenia. The study tracked over 1,000 participants from the North American Prodrome Longitudinal Study, specifically focusing on adolescents and young adults already at “clinical high risk” for psychosis.
The data shows that while isolated or combined use both aggravate short-term psychiatric symptoms, the long-term trajectory differs drastically: individuals heavily using cannabis while concurrently using tobacco face a nearly threefold increased risk of transitioning into a full psychotic disorder.
Key Facts
A Threefold Risk Surge: Co-use of cannabis and tobacco is associated with a nearly threefold increased risk of developing full-blown psychosis in individuals who already exhibit early or mild clinical warning signs.
The Synergistic THC Effect: Biologically, smoking tobacco and cannabis together increases the human body’s absorption of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the primary psychoactive component of cannabis, potentially altering brain chemistry more intensely than cannabis alone.
Short-Term vs. Long-Term Trajectories: Regular use of either substance independently induces immediate symptoms of anxiety, depression, and early psychotic experiences. However, the devastating impact of combining the two compounds manifests as a delayed, cumulative risk over time rather than worse short-term symptom scores.
Drastic Mortality Reality: For individuals who have already progressed into full psychosis, ongoing tobacco use is linked to a staggering 20-year decrease in life expectancy due to secondary cardiovascular diseases, heart attacks, strokes, and lung cancer.
Source: Vanderbilt University
A new multisite study published in Nature Mental Health found that using cannabis and tobacco together increases the risk of developing psychotic disorders like schizophrenia among those considered high risk.
Researchers led by Heather Ward, MD, assistant professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and director of Neuromodulation Research at Vanderbilt Health, analyzed data from more than 1,000 participants in the North American Prodrome Longitudinal Study, which tracks individuals at “clinical high risk” for psychosis. These individuals often experience mild or early symptoms but have not yet developed a full psychotic disorder.
“The prevalence of cannabis and tobacco use, known as ‘co-use,’ has been rising in the general population for the past several decades, while exclusive tobacco use has declined and exclusive cannabis use has been on the rise,” Ward said. “However, little is known about cannabis and tobacco co-use in adolescents at risk for psychosis.”
Substance use patterns — tobacco only, cannabis only, co-use, other substances and no substance use — were assessed over a two-year period in 734 individuals at clinical high risk for psychosis and 278 healthy controls.
“People with psychosis are much more likely to use cannabis and tobacco than the general population. Because of their heavy cannabis and tobacco use, people with psychosis are also disproportionately affected by the negative consequences of cannabis and tobacco use,” said Ward, who recently presented study findings at the Society of Biological Psychiatry Annual Meeting in an oral session titled, “High Stakes: Consequences of Cannabis Use in Vulnerable Populations.”
According to Ward, in people with psychosis, tobacco use is associated with a 20-year decreased life expectancy compared to the general population, that is attributable to the medical consequences of tobacco use, such as cardiovascular disease, heart attack, stroke and lung cancer.
“In people in their first episode of psychosis, it is estimated that 25%-50% use cannabis. Cannabis use is associated with more severe psychosis symptoms, poor response to treatment and psychiatric hospitalizations. There is even evidence that cannabis use may cause psychosis in people who are already at risk,” Ward said.
“Tobacco and cannabis use in isolation have devastating consequences for people with psychosis, so we wanted to see if people who co-use cannabis and tobacco had more severe psychiatric symptoms and if they were at greater risk for developing psychosis in the first place.”
The study found that regular use of either cannabis or tobacco was linked to anxiety, depression and early psychotic experiences. However, people who used cannabis and tobacco together did not show worse short-term symptoms than those using just one.
The biggest difference appeared over time. Those who used cannabis heavily and tobacco lightly were almost three times more likely to develop psychosis compared to those who used neither substance.
The results highlight concern about co-use, a growing trend that has been understudied until now. Researchers defined co-use in the study as “using substances at the same time, on the same occasion, or within a defined time frame where their effects may overlap.”
“We found that cannabis and tobacco co-use was associated with a nearly threefold increased risk of developing psychosis in people who were already at risk,” Ward said. “There is evidence to suggest that using tobacco and cannabis together may have synergistic effects on the brain.
“Smoking tobacco and cannabis together increases absorption of THC, the psychoactive component of cannabis. It is possible that co-use itself is contributing to the development of psychosis. However, it is also possible that the people who are going to develop psychosis anyway have an underlying predisposition to using both cannabis and tobacco.”
Ward said it is important for both patients and clinicians to know that cannabis and tobacco co-use is a risk factor for psychosis. Stopping use of cannabis and tobacco may improve mental health symptoms, and it is possible that stopping cannabis and tobacco co-use could reduce risk of developing psychosis in the first place.
The next step is to replicate this finding in other groups of people at risk for psychosis, and “we need to test if stopping cannabis and tobacco use reduces risk of developing a psychotic disorder,” Ward said.
Funding: The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grants U01MH066134, P50MH066286, U01MH081944, U01MH081902, U01MH081857, R01MH076989, U01MH066069, U01MH081928, U01MH081988, U01MH082022, R01MH116170 and K23DA059690).
Key Questions Answered:
Q: Why does mixing tobacco with weed make it so much more dangerous for the brain?
A: It comes down to a biological magnifying glass. Smoking tobacco and cannabis together directly increases the body’s absorption of THC, the main psychoactive component in weed. This joint delivery system can cause synergistic, overlapping effects in the brain, changing neural chemistry far more aggressively than using either substance by itself.
Q: Who exactly is considered “clinical high risk” in this study?
A: These are individuals, often teenagers or young adults—who are currently experiencing mild, early warning signs of psychiatric distress but have not yet developed a full-blown psychotic disorder like schizophrenia. They are highly vulnerable, meaning external triggers like substance co-use can fundamentally push their nervous system over the edge.
Q: If someone at risk stops using both substances entirely, can they prevent psychosis?
A: Quitting both cannabis and tobacco is known to quickly improve day-to-day mental health symptoms like anxiety and depression. Because co-use acts as such a potent long-term catalyst, researchers believe that stopping completely could very well reduce the initial risk of developing a psychotic disorder in the first place.
Editorial Notes:
This article was edited by a Neuroscience News editor.
Journal paper reviewed in full.
Additional context added by our staff.
About this psychosis and addiction research news
Author: Craig Boerner Source: Vanderbilt University Contact: Craig Boerner – Vanderbilt University Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access. “Cannabis and tobacco co-use predicts psychosis in clinical high risk cohorts” by Daniel Bello, Sophia H. Blyth, Rachel A. Rabin, Jean Addington, Carrie E. Bearden, Kristin Cadenhead, Tyrone D. Cannon, Ricardo E. Carrión, Barbara Cornblatt, Matcheri Keshavan, Daniel H. Mathalon, Diana O. Perkins, Larry Seidman, William S. Stone, Ming T. Tsuang, Elaine F. Walker, Scott Woods, Roscoe O. Brady Jr & Heather Burrell Ward. Nature Mental Health DOI:10.1038/s44220-026-00648-y
Image source: Shanghai Hailanyun Technology
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