Weekly Roundup: Stress the Immune System and the Brain, Wonderful Benefits of Music, Social Rejection in the Brain, Sharing Your Secrets

Weekly round up of recent research into the brain, psychology, and behaviour.

Some themes have come up a few times recently in the research such as that on music and its stress-relieving impacts. But let’s start off on how stress can impact the immune system, which in turn impacts the brain, before we look again at some of the positive benefits of music — which in this case includes better brain health in old age.

Stress Impacts the Immune System and This Impacts the Brain

On one hand we could argue that stress begins in the brain — as I reported last week, perceptions of stress change the stress response. Similarly the stress response begins in the brain. However, this stimulates a whole bodily response and an international collaboration has now uncovered the mechanisms of how chronic stress impacts the brain to change neuronal responses that can lead to symptoms such as social withdrawal — which in turn can be a major contributor to developing mental illness.

Flurin Cathomas of the University of Zurich, here in Switzerland, and research colleagues…