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 …
The broad cytokine story failed its most direct community test: in 972 adults, depression, alcohol use, and alcohol use disorder (AUD) were not associated with C-reactive protein (CRP) or a pre-registered pro-inflammatory cytokine index. The only multiple-testing-corrected cytokine hits ran opposite the hypothesis — AUD was linked to lower IL-1β, IL-4, IL-10, and IL-12 — …
A 2026 multimodal MRI study found that treatment-resistant depression had lower coordination between brain structure and brain activity than non-treatment-resistant depression in frontal, parietal, motor, and temporal regions. Machine-learning models using those structure-function coupling measures classified treatment-resistant vs. non-treatment-resistant depression with AUC values from 0.886 to 0.950 in the primary atlas analysis.1 Research Highlights TRD …
The endogenous opioid system has been a candidate target for novel anxiety treatments, but a 2026 placebo-controlled crossover fMRI study in 38 healthy volunteers ran opposite the hypothesis: instead of increasing threat-related distress and amygdala reactivity, 50 mg oral naltrexone reduced subjective distress during cognitive reappraisal (p = 0.044, d = 0.57) and shifted ventromedial …
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 task-based fMRI study of 91 young adults separated misophonia from hyperacusis inside the same “sound sensitivity” experiment: misophonia-containing groups showed visual association cortex and ACC-visual network changes during unpleasant sounds, while key hyperacusis contrasts showed weaker salience-control connectivity than misophonia.1 The scan data support separating trigger-specific sound aversion from loudness-driven sound intolerance, while …
A 2026 Nature Communications study found that Mecp2 overexpression deregulated approximately 5,000 genes in mouse neural progenitor cells but only approximately 500 mostly small-change genes in mature neurons, with the same progenitor-vs-neuron split reproduced in human iPSC-derived cells.1 For Rett syndrome gene therapy, that is the useful calibration: extra MeCP2 is most dangerous when it …