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Heavy alcohol consumption has been associated with brain structural changes. Here, using data from the UK biobank, the authors report associations between alcohol intake and brain macrostructure and microstructure.

Abstract Research in the field of multisensory perception shows that what we hear can influence what we see in a wide range of perceptual tasks. It is however unknown whether this extends to the visual perception of risk, despite the importance of the question in many applied domains where properly assessing risk is crucial, starting with financial trading. To fill this knowledge gap, we ran interviews with professional traders and conducted three laboratory studies using judgments of financial asset risk as a testbed. We provide evidence that the presence of ambient sound impacts risk perception, possibly due to the combination of facilitatory and synesthetic effects of general relevance to the perception of risk in many species as well as humans. We discuss the implications of our findings for various applied domains (e.g., financial, medical, and military decision-making), and raise new questions for future research.

Here, using pattern-learning analyses of structural, functional, and diffusion brain scans in ~40,000 UK Biobank participants, the authors provide population-scale evidence that the default network is associated with perceived social isolation.