MentalHealthDaily

Prostate Cancer Survivors Who Smoke Showed Lower Verbal Memory Scores

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for smoking, verbal memory, and cognition in prostate cancer survivors.

A 2026 study involving 118 prostate cancer survivors found the clearest lifestyle-cognition signal around smoking: smokers learned fewer words across repeated verbal-memory trials, while obesity and physical activity produced narrower reaction-time findings and no significant anxiety or depression differences. Research Highlights Smoking tracked verbal learning: in 118 prostate cancer survivors, smokers scored lower on Verbal …

Multiple Sclerosis Iron MRI Linked to Cognitive Impairment in 12 Studies

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for multiple sclerosis, iron-sensitive MRI, and cognitive impairment.

A 2026 systematic review of advanced neuroimaging in multiple sclerosis narrowed 600 database records to 12 studies and found the clearest cognition signal in basal ganglia iron-sensitive MRI measures, while thalamic susceptibility was more variable and often tangled with atrophy. Research Highlights Basal ganglia signal was strongest: across 12 studies, elevated susceptibility or iron-related metrics …

Neck-to-Height Ratio Screens Pediatric Sleep Apnea Better Than BMI

by GLOOM

Editorial medical card showing pediatric sleep apnea screening with neck measurement, PSG waveforms, and airway anatomy.

A 2026 polysomnography study involving 685 children found that neck-to-height ratio identified moderate/severe pediatric obstructive sleep apnea better than BMI Z-score, waist-to-height ratio, or hip-to-height ratio. The signal was useful but not diagnostic: neck-to-height ratio reached AUC 0.781 overall, which is strong enough for triage but not strong enough to replace a sleep study.1 Research …

Alzheimer’s AI MRI Diagnosis: ANA-GNN Reaches 85.23% Accuracy in ADNI

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for ANA-GNN Alzheimer's AI MRI diagnosis in the ADNI cohort.

A 2026 ADNI study reported 85.23% accuracy for ANA-GNN, a graph neural network that combined structural MRI regional features with clinical variables to classify cognitively normal controls, mild cognitive impairment, and Alzheimer’s disease.1 The result is useful, but the clinical-feature ablation dropped accuracy to 68.35%, so the model should be read as multimodal decision-support research, …

Pareidolia Study: Natural Images Shift Illusions Toward Animals and Nature

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for pareidolia, natural images, white noise, and animal-shaped visual illusions.

A 2026 experiment involving 81 healthy adults found similar pareidolia counts across natural and white-noise images, but different content: natural images favored natural-world categories (75.3% vs. 59.37%), while white noise favored human-created categories (27.59% vs. 14.53%). Pareidolia means seeing meaningful objects or patterns in ambiguous input.1 Research Highlights Image type changed the content, not the …

Novel Depth Cues Integrated in 49% of Adults After 1-Hour Training

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for perceptual learning and novel depth cues.

A 2026 iScience study found that adults could learn a new auditory cue to visual depth after about 1 hour, but full perceptual integration did not appear reliably at the group level: only 31 of 63 participants, or 49%, gained precision when the novel cue was combined with familiar visual disparity.1 The sharp interpretation separates …

Adult Hippocampal Neurogenesis Added 670,000 Rat Dentate Neurons

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for adult hippocampal neurogenesis and dentate gyrus neuron turnover.

A 2026 rat study estimated that adult hippocampal neurogenesis added 670,000 dentate gyrus granule neurons from 2 to 18 months of age, but the total dentate gyrus population grew by only 385,000 cells because older developmentally born neurons were also being lost.1 The result makes adult neurogenesis look numerically larger than the usual “tiny trickle” …