A little girl has just been diagnosed with cancer, and her parents are facing a new and terrifying reality. Whys and what-ifs dominate their thoughts, and a feeling of helplessness threatens to overwhelm them. They would suffer the disease for her if they could, but they can’t. They would do anything for this to be over, for her to be OK.

Children as young as 3 can be clinically depressed, and often that depression recurs as kids get older and go to school. It also can reappear during adolescence and throughout life.

But it is possible to effectively treat depression in these children. New research demonstrates that an interactive therapy involving parents and their depressed children can reduce rates of depression and lower the severity of children’s symptoms.

Antibiotic drugs are lethal to bacteria. And they can be lifesaving for people suffering from serious bacterial infections such as pneumonia and meningitis. But some bacteria are fighting back by developing resistance to antibiotics. And a few of these determined bugs manage to not only resist death by antibiotics, but also turn the lethal drugs into food.

My story is about neuroplasticity and mayonnaise. I spent the greater part of my 20s living in Dublin, where I was working on a doctoral thesis in history and where mayonnaise comes in glass jars. While growing up, I had lived in just one St. Louis house. In Dublin, I was on the move, quite literally, living in three different apartments and one guest bedroom over four years, thanks to Dublin’s turbulent rental market. For the most part, I did my moving on my back and on my own.

The American Academy of Neurology (AAN) has released a new practice guideline intended to help clinicians make decisions about disease-modifying therapies for people with multiple sclerosis, or MS.

The new guideline updates a previous set of treatment recommendations released by the AAN in 2002. Since that time, many new medications have been approved for MS, and accumulating evidence has pointed to the benefits of beginning treatment as soon after diagnosis as possible.