A 2026 fMRI meta-analysis of 11 studies found a narrow anxious-depression signal: 829 anxious-depression patients differed from 681 non-anxious MDD patients in left middle temporal gyrus activation (SDM-Z = 2.046, p = 0.020), while healthy-control contrasts centered on the anterior commissure and right middle frontal gyrus. The calibrated interpretation is not “amygdala and insula hyperactivity …
A 2026 male-mouse study found that 30 mg/kg dexamethasone for 5 days increased light-phase wakefulness (t13 = 4.122, p = 0.0012), decreased NREM sleep (t13 = 4.412, p = 0.0007), and amplified orexin-neuron activity during NREM-to-wake transitions (F1,9 = 6.941, p = 0.0272). The result points to orexin-linked hyperarousal as a testable explanation for steroid-induced …
A 60-patient randomized trial of lithium loading for acute bipolar I mania reported faster serum lithium attainment than standard titration and a larger 14-day Young Mania Rating Scale (YMRS) change score, but the same accepted manuscript says absolute YMRS scores at Days 3, 7, and 14 were not significantly different between the 2 arms when …
A 2026 Nature mouse study found that basolateral amygdala astrocyte Ca2+ signals tracked fear retrieval and extinction, then showed causality: 3 mg/kg CNO manipulations of astrocyte DREADDs pushed early-extinction freezing in opposite directions while both disrupting later extinction retrieval.1 Research Highlights Astrocytes tracked fear state: after 3 tone-shock pairings and 2 days of 25 cue-only …
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 …
Whether alcohol, cocaine, nicotine, and cannabis damage the same brain regions or different brain regions has been hard to settle in the addiction-imaging literature. A 2026 ENIGMA Addiction analysis by Georgiadis et al. — pooling 4,733 brains across 51 sites — now has an answer. Research Highlights Across 2,782 people with substance use disorder (SUD) …
A 2026 meta-analysis of 56 controlled trials found the clearest gamma-frequency neuromodulation signal in schizophrenia: overall symptoms improved vs. control (g = −0.46), global cognition improved (g = 0.55), and MDD showed a smaller depression effect than the schizophrenia symptom estimate (g = −0.34). Bipolar disorder and autism stayed directional but nonsignificant, and the paper’s …