These dreamlike images offer a view into one person’s experience with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Last year, one week before visual artist turned 40, he received a diagnosis of ADHD. Soon after, he started taking the ADHD medication lisdexamfetamine. The drug transformed his experience of the world, helping to ease his symptoms, such as being easily distracted. “I tend to describe [ADHD] like you’re watching five projected films in your mind, all over the top of each other, and they all have their own soundtrack, and they all have their own subtitles,” says Regan.

“The medication is like turning down the volume on that, so it’s like you’re just watching one film or two films at the same time,” he says. “It means that I’m much calmer and more present.”

As Regan experienced these changes, he used a Polaroid camera to photograph himself and his surroundings while hiking in Australia. He then submerged the images in varying ratios of his ADHD medication and water for up to three months, distorting the original images. “It felt very natural for me to start processing this kind of new experience of a diagnosis, of taking medication, by engaging with the medication as a kind of creative collaborator,” he says.

In one self-portrait (main image), Regan’s body appears to be wrapped in a silk shroud. “There’s something really beautiful in that image of being held by this very sort of fragile texture and material,” he says.

Another image (above) captures greenery in the Australian bush, surrounded by bubble-like structures. “What I really like about this particular image is that it is very chaotic, so as I was describing earlier, it captures how all the dials and sliders are turned up [when experiencing symptoms of ADHD],” says Regan.

This vivid blue image (above) was originally a self-portrait, but submerging it in the medication and water has given it a “kind of biological, cellular and molecular effect, which I find interesting considering I’m putting a chemical into my body that affects the neurotransmitters in my brain”, says Regan. Lisdexamfetamine works by raising levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain.

Silhouettes of leaves and trees are enveloped by luminous yellows and greens in the final two images, above and below. The last picture, below, also reminds Regan of his late mother. “I often look at it, and I wonder what she would have made of the late diagnosis and whether she would have thought that explained previous difficulties that I’d had in the past,” says Regan.

The images, collectively titled “C₁₅H₂₅N₃O”, which is the molecular formula for the medication, will be displayed as part of Regan’s at Bethlem Gallery, London, between 22 April and 11 July 2026. His work comes amid growing awareness of ADHD. There are multiple types of ADHD, but it commonly involves persistently experiencing symptoms such as being forgetful, finding it hard to manage time or follow tasks, and being impulsive, with these .

“It’s kind of hard sometimes to describe or find the right analogies for people to get what an internal experience is like, but I think that the images represent some of that internal kind of chaos and layering,” Regan says.

Just one weekly puff from an asthma-like inhaler might one day protect you from the viral infections that make winters miserable – and could even save your life in the event of another pandemic.

That is the tantalising prospect raised by promising animal tests of an mRNA treatment that turns on our built-in viral defences. “You can think about this as a universal antiviral,” says at Columbia University in New York.

Realising the full promise of this approach will require further development of the mRNA technology used in vaccines – but last week the US slashed funding for mRNA vaccine development. “I would be surprised if it didn’t have knock-on effects on efforts like this,” says Bogunovic.

In addition to our body learning to recognise and target viruses with antibodies, it has lots of built-in defences. For instance, when a viral infection is detected, cells release a key signalling molecule called interferon. This turns on around 1000 genes, triggering the production of a wide array of antiviral proteins that work in many different ways: some block viral entry to cells, others inhibit the release of new viral particles.

Not all of these proteins work against all viruses, but in combination they can make a big difference. “Our innate immune system is extremely powerful,” says Bogunovic.

The problem is that viruses, especially respiratory ones, replicate really fast, says Bogunovic, so can outpace the body’s ability to ramp up its innate defences. But if the body gets a head start on preparing these defences, this can limit viral replication and keep infections mild, even before the rest of the immune system kicks in.

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There were hopes that interferon could be used as a general antiviral, but it can have serious side effects. So Bogunovic and his colleagues are instead developing antivirals consisting of subsets of the 1000 proteins whose production is triggered by interferon.

They selected 10 of these proteins and delivered them to cells in the form of mRNAs coding for them. mRNA delivery means the proteins are temporarily produced inside cells where they are needed, whereas ready made proteins are too large to get inside cells in sufficient quantities.

Tests involving infecting human cells with a range of viruses, including flu and Zika, showed that this combination successfully boosted viral defences. In the body, this should provide a crucial head start.

Next, the team then delivered these mRNAs to the lungs of golden hamsters. The mRNA cocktail successfully protected the hamsters against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes covid-19, with a dramatic reduction in viral numbers compared with untreated animals. “I was like, ‘wow, this actually might be a universal antiviral’,” says Bogunovic.

Existing antiviral drugs work only against specific viruses, so having a treatment that acts more broadly would be extremely valuable. The development of antibiotics like penicillin that can kill a broad range of bacteria revolutionised medicine.

What’s more, some combinations of interferon-triggered proteins might be especially effective against specific viruses, says Bogunovic. So the same approach could also be used to develop more specific antivirals.

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Delivering the mRNAs to a high-enough proportion of the specific cells at risk of infection will be crucial. This is where further development is needed, as it is still difficult to deliver mRNAs to specific cell types.

“This is certainly exciting and could lead to very promising advances, but we are several steps down the line away from talking about a deployable, versatile countermeasure,” says at the University of Oxford. “The research highlights the potential of mRNA technology beyond vaccines. The current trajectory in the US with mRNA vaccines will certainly and tragically slow down progress on both of these fronts.”

While antibiotic resistance is now a major problem, Bogunovic thinks viruses are unlikely to evolve resistance to this kind of antiviral as long as they include a range of interferon-triggered proteins targeting different aspects of the viral lifecycle. This combination approach has proved successful with HIV treatments, for instance.

A medication commonly prescribed for migraines actually seems to do little to ease vestibular ones, which cause vertigo, along with more typical symptoms like headache and sensitivity to light. This is despite the drug, called rizatriptan, sometimes being .

Research on vestibular migraine treatment has been largely inconsistent, showing mixed results for a range of drugs, says at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. A few newer medications like galcanezumab might , but, until now, no randomised trial had tested whether migraine drugs relieve vestibular symptoms during an episode itself.

To address that gap, Staab and his colleagues recruited 134 adults with vestibular migraine who were told to take either 10 milligrams of rizatriptan or a placebo at the onset of vestibular symptoms, such as balance problems or the sensation of spinning, during a total of 307 moderate-to-severe episodes. They then rated their symptoms on a scale from 0 to 3 at multiple points in time until the episode resolved.

One hour after taking the medication – when rizatriptan in the bloodstream – it was no more effective than a placebo for relieving any symptoms, despite . People in both groups were also just as likely to turn to a backup medication after the required 1-hour wait.

After 24 hours, rizatriptan appeared to provide slightly better relief for sensitivity to motion, light and sound, but not for vertigo. Participants also reported marginally higher scores for physical well-being – such as their energy levels and ability to carry out daily tasks – compared with the placebo, but with no difference in mental well-being or side-effect acceptance.

Rizatriptan belongs to a class of drugs called triptans, which are generally effective for treating migraine headaches, but may not work for vestibular symptoms, says Staab.

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The findings suggest that the brain pathways involved in vestibular migraines – the vestibular systems, which are “quite primitive” from an evolutionary perspective – lack sensitivity to triptans, for reasons yet to be explored, says at King’s College London. But vestibular migraines shouldn’t be classified as a separate condition from other migraines, he says. Rather, their symptoms represent “small twists” in migraine pathology that warrant their own targeted treatment strategy.

“It says to fellow clinicians that you need to ask about these symptoms,” says Goadsby. “And if you treat someone with vestibular migraine – for example, with a triptan – you need to be prepared for it not to work, and to understand that this doesn’t mean the patient is being difficult or unreasonable.”