@adytum_official: This is Zipple et al. (December 2025) published in Current Biology out of Cornell University. They took lab mice that had lived their entire lives in a cage the size of a shoebox. These mice had deeply established anxiety responses confirmed through repeated testing. They moved them to large outdoor field enclosures where the mice could dig, climb, find food, navigate weather and other mice for the first time. After one week the anxiety behaviors dropped dramatically. The lead researcher Matthew Zipple said the change is about agency, the ability of an animal to change its experiences through its own behavior. The bigger environment gave them more experiences to calibrate against so new things stopped registering as threats. Senior author Michael Sheehan said this has implications for how sheltered lives may be increasing anxiety in young people. The study suggests your nervous system needs novelty and challenge to properly calibrate what’s actually dangerous vs what’s just unfamiliar. #MentalHealth #neuroscience #lonliness #anxiety #nervoussystem

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Saturday 28 March 2026 21:52:07 GMT