University students with subthreshold depression, meaning real depressive symptoms that fall short of a major depression diagnosis, had stronger connections in 3 cingulate brain circuits and slightly higher levels of 3 inflammatory proteins than healthy students, according to a 2026 brain-imaging study from China.1 Research Highlights Stronger cingulate connections: resting brain scans of 126 students …
About 2 months after a concussion, adults had lower fiber density in a few white matter tracts linking the thalamus to the top of the brain, even though their thinking test scores looked normal. A 2026 study compared 39 people with mild traumatic brain injury to 28 people hurt in accidents without a head injury.1 …
A 2026 meta-analysis of 7 small Chinese trials found that adding herbal patches on acupuncture points to usual stroke care improved self-rated sleep in 608 stroke survivors with sleep problems.1 The researchers rated that evidence as very low certainty, and safety was barely reported. Research Highlights Better sleep scores: across 6 trials (536 people), Pittsburgh …
Researchers aimed repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), which uses magnetic pulses to stimulate brain cells, at a spot chosen from each person’s own brain scan. In a small Columbia University pilot, 6 of 11 adults with treatment-resistant depression ended with low depression scores that met the trial’s remission threshold.1 Research Highlights Symptoms improved at the …
A 2026 PROTECT study involving 174 older adults found that self-administered fingerprick p-tau217 correlated with episodic memory (r = 0.299, p < 0.001) and GFAP correlated with working memory (r = 0.183, p = 0.034), supporting remote Alzheimer's risk triage rather than a stand-alone dementia diagnosis. Research Highlights Fingerprick sampling reached 77% completion: 174 of …
A 2026 PLOS Biology study using 256-electrode EEG and 1,024 NREM2 awakenings found that immersive dreaming predicted deeper subjective sleep, beta = 0.277, while reflective thought predicted shallower subjective sleep, beta = −0.195.1 Deep-feeling sleep can include immersive conscious experience. Research Highlights Immersion predicted depth: Perceptual immersion in NREM2 dreams was positively associated with subjective …
A 2026 Parkinson’s disease mouse study reported that benzhexol hydrochloride induced a measurable hallucination-like behavior state in 6-OHDA parkinsonian mice, and an integrated behavior classifier separated that state from non-PDVH mice with AUC = 0.96 and Youden index = 0.875.1 The careful interpretation is behavioral modeling, not proof that mice had human visual hallucinations. Research …