A longitudinal MIDUS analysis involving 840 adults found that loneliness scores higher than a person's objective social-isolation score were linked to later cognitive impairment mainly through chronic disease burden, while the allostatic-load pathway was weaker than the chronic-disease pathway and not statistically confirmed for the main cognitive outcomes.1 Research Highlights Loneliness was separated from isolation: …
A 2026 controlled study of 96 people found severe long-COVID fatigue across 3 validated fatigue scales, but the tested peripheral inflammation, cellular-stress, neuroprotection, and autoimmunity markers did not significantly differ by group or explain fatigue severity.1 The finding argues against a simple blood-marker story, not against the reality of long-COVID fatigue. Research Highlights Fatigue was …
A 2026 PLOS One machine-learning study reported 95.0% accuracy for a hybrid FT-Transformer plus long short-term memory (LSTM) model predicting student mental-health risk. The technical result is strong inside the dataset, but the clinical claim is still limited because the labels came from repository data rather than prospective clinical diagnosis.1 Research Highlights 95.0% accuracy was …
Sleep problems during chemotherapy include more than daytime fatigue. In a 2026 outpatient chemotherapy sample, 87% reported poor sleep quality and 61% had variable sleep timing, while measured bedroom light, temperature, and self-reported environmental disruption were not significantly linked to overall sleep health.1 Research Highlights Small chemotherapy sample: Adams et al. studied 23 adults receiving …
A double-blind placebo-controlled trial found no evidence that ebselen reduced impulsivity in 130 healthy adults: 66 received ebselen, 64 received placebo, and the 1,800 mg 2-day regimen did not improve motor impulsivity, reflection impulsivity, or delay discounting.1 The more interesting calibration is that several trait-impulsivity interactions ran opposite the secondary prediction, weakening the idea that …
A 7-day mind-body retreat study in 20 healthy adults found pre/post shifts across fMRI brain networks and plasma biology, with p values as low as 0.000003.1 Those numbers are striking, but the design was observational, so the honest reading is biological signal without causal isolation. Research Highlights Neural signal was broad: Meditation-state fMRI showed lower …
A 2026 laboratory study found no detectable acute-pain increase in frequent cannabis users after at least 12 hours of biochemically verified abstinence. Frequent users had higher THC exposure and higher plasma cannabinoid markers, but pain threshold, pain tolerance, and pain ratings did not differ from occasional users.1 Research Highlights 75 healthy adults were tested: Pabon …