A 2026 ALZAN memory-clinic cohort found that cerebrospinal-fluid alpha-synuclein seed amplification assay detected 19 of 20 Lewy body dementia cases, with 95% sensitivity and 93.5% specificity against non-Lewy-body, non-Alzheimer’s controls.1 The same assay was positive in 32 of 203 Alzheimer’s disease patients, which makes the result a co-pathology warning as much as a diagnostic win. …
A 2026 mouse study linked cholestatic liver injury to smaller thalamic volume than control injury-free mice, broad thalamus gene-expression changes, and partial pathway rescue after systemic tumor necrosis factor neutralization. Research Highlights Thalamic volume decreased: bile duct ligation (BDL; a mouse model of obstructive cholestatic liver injury) reduced thalamic volume vs. sham surgery by magnetic …
A 2026 multi-cohort Alzheimer’s disease study found that MRI radiomics from the hippocampus and amygdala linked plasma pTau217 and smell identification to cognitive impairment — with more added cognitive signal than simple regional volume. The result is useful because it points to a possible bridge between blood biomarkers and brain-circuit damage, but it is still …
Popular coverage of chronotype neuroimaging usually claims that late chronotypes (evening types, often called “night owls”) show smaller cortical regions and faster brain aging than early chronotypes (morning types). A 2026 multimodal structural MRI analysis from Beheshti and Elkana ran the comparison in 136 healthy young adults using strict whole-brain correction, and the group differences …
GLP-1 drugs are usually described as appetite drugs, but a 2026 Nature mouse study mapped a more specific reward circuit: small-molecule GLP-1 receptor agonists suppressed palatable-food intake through Glp1r-expressing central-amygdala neurons that reduced dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens during high-fat-food retrieval.1 That mechanism makes binge-eating and substance-use hypotheses more plausible without turning an animal …
A 2026 PET-fMRI study of 20 healthy adults found that GABAA receptor binding tracked speech-production brain activity across frontal, temporal, parietal, putaminal, supplementary motor, and cerebellar regions, with peak GABA-BOLD correlations reaching Rs = 0.9.1 Human speech control looks less like a pure motor-output problem and more like a task-specific balance between inhibition, dopamine, and …
A 166-child resting-state fMRI study found that clinician-observed autism severity, not ADHD severity, tracked connectivity strength between a left middle frontal gyrus node and the posterior cingulate/default mode network across children diagnosed with autism or ADHD without autism. The result is transdiagnostic, but asymmetrical: autism traits carried the connectome signal after ADHD ratings were controlled.1 …