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MS Memory Loss: 7-Day Recall Finds What 30-Minute Tests Miss

Photoreal illustration representing memory and forgetting in multiple sclerosis, with imagery of a fading word list and brain consolidation pathways.

Standard memory testing can tell a multiple-sclerosis (MS) patient that recall is normal after 30 minutes while missing a deficit that appears days later. Jansen et al. tested that exact blind spot in 62 MS patients and 65 matched controls: 7-day/30-minute recall ratios were lower in MS on both verbal-list recall (0.64 vs. 0.78, p …

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PTSD Trauma Memories Are Encoded in Hippocampal Semantic Maps

Photoreal illustration of the hippocampus with semantic encoding pathways highlighted, representing trauma memory processing in PTSD.

A 2026 fMRI study of 79 women with interpersonal-violence-related PTSD found that the hippocampus does encode the meaning of autobiographical trauma narratives, t(140) = 4.05, p < 0.001, even though average hippocampal encoding did not rise for trauma vs. neutral memories. Research Highlights Hippocampal semantic encoding was significant: Cisler et al. analyzed 3,928 narrative sentences …

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Negative Emotionality Reduces Frontal Midline Theta in 106 Recruits

Photoreal illustration of frontal-midline brain activity overlaid on a stylized portrait, conveying personality-brain link in cognitive control.

A 2026 EEG study of 106 Army National Guard recruits found that higher negative emotionality predicted poorer Go/No-Go discrimination (β = −.234, 95% CI −.392 to −.076) and lower frontal midline theta (β = −.149, 95% CI −.290 to −.001). The key result was not a vague personality-brain link: frontal midline theta, not occipital alpha, …

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Resting Brain Connectivity Predicts Fear Extinction Learning

Photoreal illustration of brain network connections in the fear-extinction circuitry, with imagery linking amygdala and prefrontal regions.

A 2026 multimodal MRI analysis of 509 healthy adults found that fear acquisition, extinction learning, and renewal were not predicted by one generic “fear circuit” score: functional connectivity predicted acquisition, structural connectivity predicted extinction, and effective connectivity was the only renewal signal.1 The extinction result is the clinically interesting piece because exposure therapy depends on …

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Plasma p-tau217 Blood Test Predicts Alzheimer’s Risk 1.5x Stronger in APOE-e4

Photoreal illustration representing a blood biomarker test for Alzheimer's disease with imagery of blood vials, neurons, and APOE genetic motifs.

Until recently, Alzheimer’s pathology could only be confirmed in living patients via PET imaging or lumbar puncture. Plasma p-tau217 changed that calculus — but how to interpret a positive result depends substantially on APOE genotype.1 Research Highlights Plasma p-tau217 is a blood biomarker that rises years before Alzheimer’s symptoms. The 2024 Alzheimer’s Association revised criteria …

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How Betrayal Biases Trust: Selective Attention, Distrust, and Social Judgment

Betrayal does not just make people less trusting. It can also change what they pay attention to afterward. After a negative social surprise, people may start scanning more closely for signs of threat, which can make distrust easier to confirm and harder to undo. Research Highlights Selective observation: Son and Yoo 2026 modeled social inference …

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AD8 Dementia Screening in Chinese-Speaking Older Adults

Photoreal illustration of older adult with informant during screening interview, conveying culturally-aligned dementia screening.

Brief screening tools for early dementia risk are essential in primary care. A 2026 study by You et al. evaluated the AD8 informant questionnaire in older Chinese-speaking adults in Australia, mapping how cognitive, functional, social, and language-barrier risks stack before dementia is formally diagnosed.1 Research Highlights The AD8 dementia screening interview is an 8-item informant-based …

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