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Alzheimer’s Neurovascular Unit Dysfunction May Start Before Amyloid

MHD featured image for neurovascular unit dysfunction and Alzheimer's disease.

A 2026 review argues that neurovascular-unit dysfunction may precede amyloid-beta generation in Alzheimer’s disease and then synergize with amyloid deposition, tau pathology, inflammation, and neuronal loss.1 The model is vascular biology plus amyloid biology: blood vessels, barrier integrity, and amyloid deposition can amplify each other early enough to affect dementia risk and progression. Research Highlights …

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Social Mindfulness Favored Ingroup Members in Refugee-Policy fMRI Study

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A 2026 fMRI study of 45 adults with strong pro- or anti-refugee stances found that people made more socially mindful choices for ingroup partners than for outgroup or unclassified partners, with mean socially mindful choices of 19.36 for ingroup, 17.18 for outgroup, and 16.31 for unclassified partners.1 Outgroup prosocial choices still occurred, but they recruited …

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TMEM175 Proton Channel Finding Clarifies Parkinson’s Lysosome Risk

MHD featured image for TMEM175 proton conductance and Parkinson's disease lysosome risk.

A 2026 PNAS study found that TMEM175 behaves as a pH-sensitive lysosomal channel relevant to Parkinson’s risk biology.1 Acidifying the luminal side from pH 7.4 to 4.7 activated proton conductance, shifted reversal potential, and tied H57 to H+ and K+ flux. Research Highlights Acidification activated TMEM175: lowering luminal-side pH from 7.4 to 4.7 increased inward …

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STAIR-R Did Not Beat Supportive Care for Refugee PTSD

A pilot randomized trial involving 71 refugees with posttraumatic stress disorder found large symptom improvement after narrative exposure therapy-based care, but adding refugee-adapted emotion-regulation training before narrative exposure therapy did not outperform supportive problem-solving before narrative exposure therapy in the full sample.1 Research Highlights 71 refugees were randomized: 35 received STAIR-R plus narrative exposure therapy, …

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Psilocybin First Use Changed Brain Signals for 1 Month

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A 2026 mechanistic study involving 28 healthy adults found that a single 25 mg psilocybin session changed acute brain entropy, psychological insight, well-being, cognitive flexibility, and some MRI-derived white-matter signals for up to 1 month. Research Highlights Acute brain entropy rose clearly: 25 mg psilocybin increased Lempel-Ziv complexity (LZc; a measure of signal irregularity) at …

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Facial Markers Differed in 31 Older Adults With MCI-Level MoCA Scores

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A 2026 medRxiv preprint found that older adults with mild-cognitive-impairment-level MoCA-J scores showed distinct resting facial action-unit patterns: AU10 upper lip raiser, AU23 lip tightener, and AU28 lip suck differed after correction in 45 analyzable participants.1 The result supports facial-expression screening research, but it does not show that a face video can diagnose MCI or …

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Parkinson’s Brain-Heart Coupling Signals MMSE and Freezing of Gait

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A 2026 EEG-ECG preprint reported that beta efficiency-sympathetic coupling differed across healthy young adults, healthy older adults, and Parkinson’s disease patients, p = 0.0032, while gamma efficiency-sympathetic coupling differed at p = 0.0003.1 The main claim is that motor, cognitive, and autonomic physiology may be coupled tightly enough to deserve biomarker-level study. Research Highlights Brain-heart …

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