A 2026 multimodal MRI analysis of 509 healthy adults found that fear acquisition, extinction learning, and renewal were not predicted by one generic “fear circuit” score: functional connectivity predicted acquisition, structural connectivity predicted extinction, and effective connectivity was the only renewal signal.1 The extinction result is the clinically interesting piece because exposure therapy depends on …
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 survey of 230 Farsi-speaking refugees in German camps found a hard double signal: 69.1% screened above the RHS-15 threshold for depression, anxiety, and PTSD symptoms, while 4 protective factors explained 61% of posttraumatic-growth variance.1 Research Highlights High distress and growth coexisted: 159 of 230 participants (69.1%) scored ≥12 on the RHS-15 symptom scale, …
A 2026 nuMoM2b Heart Health Study analysis tested whether urine-confirmed cannabis exposure 2–7 years after a first pregnancy predicted incident stage II hypertension; it did not: adjusted odds ratio (AOR) 1.05, 95% CI 0.63–1.76, with 216 of 4,079 participants developing hypertension.1 Research Highlights The headline result was null: cannabis exposure at the 2–7 year postpartum …
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 …
A 2026 double-blind randomized controlled trial by Kappes et al. in Psychopharmacology found something the smart-drug users likely wouldn’t have predicted: a single 30 mg dose of methylphenidate reduced dishonest misreporting on a die-rolling task from ~22% of trials in the placebo arm to ~6% (in the methylphenidate arm).1 Atomoxetine, a noradrenergic comparator, had no …