A 2026 Australian ecological model found that 20-year-lagged cumulative population blood-lead burden was nonlinearly tied to motor neuron disease mortality (lead spline p = 0.00024), while national insecticide use did not independently explain the curve after adjustment (p = 0.39).1 That is a real lead signal, but it is still population-level evidence, not proof that …
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 …
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 …
A 2026 total-body tau-PET study of 28 people with Alzheimer’s disease and 23 biomarker-negative controls found stronger brain-organ network connectivity in Alzheimer’s disease than in biomarker-negative controls: 35 altered connections, including 21 brain-body edges, plus AD-only links between brain-organ coupling, cortical tau burden, MRI-derived glymphatic markers, and cognition.1 The result is best read as a …
Auditory targeted memory reactivation during a 2-hour nap did not improve motor retention in 20 Parkinson’s disease patients or 20 healthy older adults, even though the same cues changed sleep physiology by reducing spindle density and increasing slow-wave density.1 Research Highlights First Parkinson’s TMR test: Micca et al. studied 20 Parkinson’s disease patients and 20 …
A 2026 longitudinal MRI preprint involving 54 people with Friedreich ataxia and 57 controls found 3 biologically interpretable progression subtypes: microstructure-dominant, macrostructure-dominant, and minimal/no progression.1 The clusters make biomarker heterogeneity visible at the research level, while the classifier remains too early to assign individual patients to treatment paths. Research Highlights 3 MRI progression subtypes emerged: …
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 …