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, …
A 2026 fMRI study of 84 medication-free adolescents found that reward uncertainty had its own phase-specific brain pattern: anxiety, depression, and anhedonia separated across different task phases and brain systems.1 The clearest clinical split was narrow but useful: anxiety tracked blunted striatum/thalamus activation during uncertain non-reward expectancy, while depression and anhedonia tracked higher visual/default-network activation …
A 2026 eLife computational study modeled classical psychedelics by increasing a network state variable from alpha = 0 to alpha = 1, shifting perception from bottom-up sensory inference toward top-down generative replay. The result is a useful but still unproven oneirogen model: hallucinations look less like random noise and more like wake-time replay of a …
A 2026 eNeuro analysis of 163 people ages 3.5–24.7 found that wake EEG amplitude behaved like a sleep-pressure marker, but wake alpha-density changed in opposite directions across development: it decreased overnight in children and increased overnight in adolescents and adults.1 Research Highlights Alpha density flipped by age: In 163 participants ages 3.5–24.7, oscillation density showed …
A 2026 UK Biobank MRI preprint involving 71,214 adults found that chronic pain plus current depression had a structural brain profile that was more than chronic pain plus depression pasted together. The 1,377-person comorbid group showed widespread lower cortical volume, lower bilateral thalamic and hippocampal volume, lower left accumbens volume, and broad white-matter microstructure differences …
Deep brain stimulation works for Parkinson’s, but it requires implanted electrodes. A 2026 randomized crossover trial by Stalter and colleagues tested whether transcranial temporal interference stimulation — a non-invasive technique designed to reach deep targets without exciting overlying cortex — can move the needle on motor symptoms when aimed at the putamen.1 Research Highlights Transcranial …
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 …