MentalHealthDaily

Depression vs. Schizophrenia: Microglial TSPO and KYNA Signals

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for microglial and kynurenine pathway patterns across depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia.

A 2026 systematic review found that microglia-related immune signals do not line up cleanly with psychiatric diagnosis labels: major depression showed frontolimbic TSPO-PET increases, while schizophrenia showed elevated kynurenic acid in cerebrospinal fluid.1 The strongest interpretation is that immune-brain markers may sort subgroups better than DSM categories do. Research Highlights Depression had the clearest TSPO-PET …

Cerebellar Gray Matter Separated Bipolar From Unipolar Depression

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for cerebellar gray matter differences in bipolar and unipolar depression.

A 2026 structural MRI study found that cerebellar gray-matter patterns helped distinguish first-episode bipolar depression from unipolar depression: a model using significant cerebellar lobules reached 76.3% accuracy and AUC 0.779.1 The result is best read as proof-of-concept neuroimaging evidence, not as a scan-based bipolar diagnostic test. Research Highlights Classifier performance was moderate: cerebellar lobules with …

Post-Stroke Aphasia Theory of Mind Linked to Cerebral Microbleeds

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for post-stroke aphasia, theory of mind, and cerebral microbleeds.

A 2026 medRxiv preprint involving 44 people with chronic post-stroke aphasia found reduced performance on nonverbal false-belief tasks in 23% of participants on the Reality-Unknown task and 36% on the Reality-Known task, with accuracy tied more clearly to cerebral microbleed burden than to aphasia severity.1 The result reframes social-cognitive testing after stroke as a vascular …

Nucleus Accumbens-to-Ventral Pallidum Pathway Regulates Social Play in Rats

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for nucleus accumbens to ventral pallidum social-play circuitry.

A 2026 juvenile rat study found that inactivating the ventral pallidum or stimulating nucleus accumbens GABA terminals in the ventral pallidum reduced social play behavior in both sexes, pointing to a specific reward-circuit pathway required for normal play expression.1 Research Highlights VP inactivation reduced play: bilateral muscimol infusion into the ventral pallidum reduced juvenile social …

Alzheimer’s Neurovascular Unit Dysfunction May Start Before Amyloid

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for neurovascular unit dysfunction and Alzheimer's disease.

A 2026 review argues that neurovascular-unit dysfunction may precede amyloid-beta generation in Alzheimer’s disease and then synergize with amyloid deposition, tau pathology, inflammation, and neuronal loss.1 The model is vascular biology plus amyloid biology: blood vessels, barrier integrity, and amyloid deposition can amplify each other early enough to affect dementia risk and progression. Research Highlights …

Social Mindfulness Favored Ingroup Members in Refugee-Policy fMRI Study

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for social mindfulness, group identity, and refugee-policy fMRI.

A 2026 fMRI study of 45 adults with strong pro- or anti-refugee stances found that people made more socially mindful choices for ingroup partners than for outgroup or unclassified partners, with mean socially mindful choices of 19.36 for ingroup, 17.18 for outgroup, and 16.31 for unclassified partners.1 Outgroup prosocial choices still occurred, but they recruited …

Psilocybin First Use Changed Brain Signals for 1 Month

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for first-time psilocybin use, brain entropy, MRI changes, and psychological insight.

A 2026 mechanistic study involving 28 healthy adults found that a single 25 mg psilocybin session changed acute brain entropy, psychological insight, well-being, cognitive flexibility, and some MRI-derived white-matter signals for up to 1 month. Research Highlights Acute brain entropy rose clearly: 25 mg psilocybin increased Lempel-Ziv complexity (LZc; a measure of signal irregularity) at …