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Autistic Children Matched Navigation Tasks but Rated Their Ability Lower

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A 2026 medRxiv preprint found that 26 autistic children performed similarly to 25 typically developing children on objective SPACE navigation tasks, contrary to the prediction, while autistic children rated their own navigation ability lower on the Santa Barbara Sense of Direction scale.1 Research Highlights Objective performance did not separate groups: 26 autistic children and 25 …

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OCD DBS Reduced Y-BOCS 42.9% as GPe Alpha Activity Decreased

MHD featured image for OCD DBS and GPe alpha activity.

A 2026 medRxiv preprint found that 10 severe obsessive-compulsive disorder patients treated with anterior-limb-of-internal-capsule DBS had a 42.9% average Y-BOCS symptom decrease over 6 months while alpha-band activity in the anterior globus pallidus externus fell.1 The strongest read is a response-marker signal: GPe alpha decreased during effective OCD DBS, but the sample is too small …

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DBS for Cerebellar Ataxia: 27 Patients, Weak Evidence

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A 2026 systematic review found 15 clinical reports of deep brain stimulation for cerebellar ataxia, covering only 27 human patients across heterogeneous targets, causes, and outcome measures. Research Highlights The human evidence base was tiny: the review found 27 patients across 15 clinical studies, including 10 case reports, 4 case series, and 1 randomized trial. …

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Anterior Cingulate Sulcus Asymmetry Linked to Lower Delay Discounting

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A 2026 Human Connectome Project MRI study linked asymmetric anterior cingulate cortex sulcal pattern to lower delay discounting in 390 healthy young adults: asymmetric ACC morphology predicted a higher delay-discounting area under the curve, meaning delayed rewards lost less value.1 The finding is not a diagnostic scan for impulsivity, but it puts an early-formed cortical-folding …

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Reward Activation Failed as Bipolar-Psychosis Endophenotype

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A 244-person functional MRI study found no significant evidence that ventral striatum activation during reward anticipation works as an endophenotype — a measurable trait used to connect inherited risk with diagnosed illness — for bipolar and psychotic disorders. Research Highlights The registered hypothesis failed: Barendse et al. found no significant ventral striatum reward-anticipation difference among …

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Pulse-Wave Harmonics Flag MCI During Cognitive Stress: 2.6-Point Gap

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A 2026 community study of 101 older adults found that pulse-wave harmonics changed in a more organized way during a subtraction task in cognitively intact participants than in people with MoCA-defined mild cognitive impairment: amplitude-coherence scores averaged 9.00 vs. 6.40, a 2.60-point gap on a 0-10 scale. Research Highlights Cognitive stress exposed the signal: resting …

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Non-Auditory Tinnitus Linked to Lower Brain Blood Flow

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A 2026 arterial spin labeling MRI study found that 34 patients with non-auditory tinnitus and cerebral venous congestion had lower corrected cerebral blood flow across multiple brain regions than venous-congestion patients without tinnitus and healthy controls.1 Compared with those 2 groups, the tinnitus group had poorer sleep quality, higher depression scores, and slightly lower cognitive …

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