MentalHealthDaily

Parkinson’s Balance Study Finds Cortical-Latency Muscle Control at 215 ms

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for cortical balance control in Parkinson's disease.

A 36-person Parkinson’s disease balance study found that perturbation-evoked muscle activity could be split into brainstem-latency LLR1 responses around 116-119 ms, cortical-latency LLR2 responses around 200-215 ms, and an antagonist destabilizing component around 173-181 ms.1 Parkinson’s disease lowered clinical balance scores, but the broad claim that Parkinson’s patients had higher cortical-latency LLR2 responses than older …

TMEV Viral Parkinson’s Mouse Model Caused 20-Week Dopamine-Lesion Behaviors

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for a viral Parkinson's mouse model using Theiler's murine encephalomyelitis virus.

A 2026 mouse study found that Theiler’s murine encephalomyelitis virus (TMEV) injected into the substantia nigra produced persistent Parkinson’s-like motor signals through 20 weeks, including apomorphine-induced rotations at every measured post-injection timepoint.1 The finding makes TMEV a useful viral-neuroinflammation model of dopamine-neuron injury, but it does not show that Theiler’s virus causes human Parkinson’s disease. …

Parkinson’s Diabetes Oxidative Stress: 8-OHdG Rose, F2-Isoprostanes Did Not

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for Parkinson's disease, diabetes, oxidative stress, 8-OHdG, and F2-isoprostanes.

A 2026 meta-analysis of 54 human studies found that 8-hydroxy-2′-deoxyguanosine rose in Parkinson’s disease, while F2-isoprostanes did not show a statistically confirmed Parkinson’s signal; type 2 diabetes showed much larger peripheral oxidative-stress elevations than Parkinson’s disease for both biomarkers. Research Highlights Parkinson’s DNA-oxidation signal was moderate: Msigwa et al. pooled 5 Parkinson’s disease studies with …

Leigh Syndrome Brain Organoids: Azoles Rescued Lactate 20%

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for Leigh syndrome brain organoid drug screening.

A 2026 Leigh syndrome study combined a cell-type-specific deep-learning screen with a 2,250-drug yeast survival screen and found the same drug family from both directions: azoles, with talarozole and sertaconazole lowering lactate release by 20% in SURF1-mutant midbrain organoids.1 The finding is preclinical, but it is stronger than a single in silico hit because the …

Entorhinal Dopamine Fails Early in Alzheimer’s Mice

by GLOOM

Editorial card showing the lateral entorhinal cortex with dopamine projections from the midbrain, illustrating an early-Alzheimer's mechanism finding rescued by L-DOPA in mice.

A 2026 Nature Neuroscience study from the Igarashi lab proposes a circuit-level answer for why the lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC) is the first cortical region to falter in Alzheimer’s: dopamine inputs from the VTA and substantia nigra to the LEC go functionally silent at the earliest disease stage in an APP knock-in mouse — before …

Falling Dementia Rates Linked to Generational Memory Gains

by GLOOM

Photoreal illustration representing generational gains in memory across older adults, with imagery of overlapping age trajectories and hippocampal motifs.

Dementia rates in the US, UK, Netherlands, Sweden, France, and several other high-income countries have been falling for decades, despite population aging. The standard explanation — improved cardiovascular care, more education, and less smoking in later-born cohorts — is real but incomplete. Research Highlights Dementia incidence has been falling about 13% per decade in Western …

Chlorpyrifos Exposure Linked to Up to 174% Higher Parkinson’s Risk

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for chlorpyrifos exposure, Parkinson's risk, dopaminergic neurons, and autophagy dysfunction.

A human, mouse, and zebrafish study linked long-term chlorpyrifos exposure to Parkinson’s disease risk, with the strongest exposure-duration estimate reaching OR 2.74 for workplace proximity across the 1974-to-index-year window.1 The paper is stronger than a single epidemiology result because animal experiments pointed to dopaminergic neuron loss, microglial activation, pathological α-synuclein, and autophagy dysfunction. Research Highlights …