MentalHealthDaily

tDCS Failed Visual Working Memory as Distraction Increased Orientation Bias

by GLOOM

Editorial card showing visual working memory, tDCS electrodes, and distraction-linked orientation bias in a cognitive neuroscience task.

A 2026 two-experiment study found no visual-working-memory benefit from parietal or occipital transcranial direct current stimulation, while distraction unexpectedly made the cardinal-over-oblique orientation advantage stronger than it was without distraction: the pooled distraction-by-angle interaction had BFinc = 1021.671.1 Research Highlights Distraction strengthened the bias: pooled data from 68 analyzed adults showed a strong distractor-by-angle interaction, …

Stress Internalization Predicts Memory Decline in Older Chinese Americans

by GLOOM

Editorial card showing an older Chinese American adult and a memory-decline trajectory, illustrating the PINE cohort finding that stress internalization predicts cognitive decline.

A 2025 longitudinal analysis of 1,528 older Chinese Americans by Chen et al. in the Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease says something more specific than “stress causes Alzheimer’s”: it isn’t the count of stressors that tracks memory decline — it’s a latent trait the authors call stress internalization, a bundle of high perceived stress, …

Social Cognition After Stroke/TBI: Insula-Cingulate Hub

by GLOOM

Editorial card showing a stylized brain with the insula, cingulate, middle frontal gyrus, and corpus callosum highlighted, representing the convergent neural substrates of social cognition after acquired brain injury.

A 2026 PRISMA systematic review by Cavallo et al. in Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience aggregates 43 neuroimaging studies of social cognition in adults with stroke or traumatic brain injury and finds the same handful of regions implicated again and again: the insula, cingulate cortex, middle frontal gyrus, and corpus callosum.1 Research Highlights Stroke/TBI social-cognition …

Right OFC rTMS Improves Memory in Early Schizophrenia

by GLOOM

Editorial card showing a coronal brain section highlighting the right orbitofrontal cortex with a TMS coil, illustrating the first RCT of OFC stimulation in first-episode schizophrenia.

Cognitive impairment in first-episode schizophrenia (FES) is the symptom that does the most work blocking employment, relationships, and independent living — and the symptom current antipsychotics barely move. A 2026 RCT by Hu et al. in Psychological Medicine tested whether 20 sessions of low-frequency rTMS targeting the right orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) could improve cognition where …

Alzheimer’s RVI-AD MRI Score Predicted Dementia Conversion With 0.70 AUC

by GLOOM

A 2026 Molecular Psychiatry study found that RVI-AD, a structural-MRI score measuring how closely a person’s brain anatomy matches an Alzheimer’s disease pattern, predicted mild-cognitive-impairment conversion to dementia most strongly over the next 3 years: OR 2.16, 95% CI 1.81-2.57, p < 2e-16, AUC 0.70.1 Research Highlights Short-term conversion signal: in 965 ADNI participants with …

Cognitive Reserve in First-Episode Psychosis: Education PRS Adds 4.2%

by GLOOM

Photoreal illustration of brain with strengthening neural networks suggesting reserve and protection against cognitive decline.

A 2026 analysis of 174 people with non-affective first-episode psychosis found that cognitive reserve was tied to 3 signals available near illness onset: age at onset, family history of psychosis, and polygenic liability for educational attainment. Adding the education polygenic score raised the model’s adjusted R² from 13.5% to 17.7%, a real but modest gain …

Lecanemab Clears Amyloid via Microglia and Fc Receptors

by GLOOM

Photoreal illustration of microglia clustering around an amyloid plaque, conveying immune-mediated clearance mechanism.

A 2026 Nature Neuroscience study found that lecanemab cleared amyloid in a humanized-microglia Alzheimer’s disease model only when microglia and the antibody’s intact Fc fragment were both present: X-34 plaque area differed across IgG1, lecanemab, and Fc-silenced LALA-PG groups (P = 0.0003), 82E1 plaque area differed across groups (P < 0.0001), and microglia-deficient mice showed …