A 2026 scoping review screened 956 systematic reviews/guidelines and 604 original studies on cancer-survivor neuropathic pain, but only 11 pharmacological, 2 psychological, and 3 exercise studies were eligible.1 The practical signal is narrow: duloxetine and some exercise programs have the clearest support, while psychological and interdisciplinary evidence is still too thin for confident treatment ranking. …
A 2026 Nature Communications mouse study tested 7,736 possible connections in the hippocampal CA3 memory circuit and found a developmental shift from dense early wiring toward sparse structured adult wiring: corrected CA3-to-CA3 connection probability fell from 6.37% at P7-8 to 2.17% at P45-50.1 The finding supports a circuit-level version of memory maturation, not a claim …
A matched case-control study of 50 children with autism spectrum disorder and 50 controls found that newborn amino acid metabolism overlapped with both later autism diagnosis and prenatal air-pollution exposure.1 The central pathway, aspartate and asparagine metabolism, was associated with autism (p = 0.01), pregnancy PM2.5 (p < 0.001), first-trimester PM2.5 (p < 0.001), and …
Sexual fantasies are not distributed randomly, but the pattern is subtler than popular personality stereotypes imply. In 5,225 adults, conscientiousness and agreeableness tracked lower fantasy frequency, while negative emotionality—especially the depression facet—tracked higher fantasy frequency across multiple fantasy domains.1 Research Highlights 5,225-person sample: Cannoot et al. analyzed adults with mean age 58.30 years; 56.5% were …
A 2026 mechanistic review linked microplastics to 6 proposed Alzheimer’s disease pathways and 6 proposed Parkinson’s disease pathways.1 The calibrated interpretation is that microplastics are biologically plausible brain stressors, but the human evidence does not yet prove that they cause Parkinson’s disease or Alzheimer’s disease. Research Highlights Exposure is widespread: the review cited an estimate …
A 36-person Parkinson’s disease balance study found that perturbation-evoked muscle activity could be split into brainstem-latency LLR1 responses around 116-119 ms, cortical-latency LLR2 responses around 200-215 ms, and an antagonist destabilizing component around 173-181 ms.1 Parkinson’s disease lowered clinical balance scores, but the broad claim that Parkinson’s patients had higher cortical-latency LLR2 responses than older …
A 2026 mouse study found that Theiler’s murine encephalomyelitis virus (TMEV) injected into the substantia nigra produced persistent Parkinson’s-like motor signals through 20 weeks, including apomorphine-induced rotations at every measured post-injection timepoint.1 The finding makes TMEV a useful viral-neuroinflammation model of dopamine-neuron injury, but it does not show that Theiler’s virus causes human Parkinson’s disease. …