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 …
A 2026 fMRI study of 79 women with interpersonal-violence-related PTSD found that the hippocampus does encode the meaning of autobiographical trauma narratives, t(140) = 4.05, p < 0.001, even though average hippocampal encoding did not rise for trauma vs. neutral memories. Research Highlights Hippocampal semantic encoding was significant: Cisler et al. analyzed 3,928 narrative sentences …
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 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, …
Betrayal does not just make people less trusting. It can also change what they pay attention to afterward. After a negative social surprise, people may start scanning more closely for signs of threat, which can make distrust easier to confirm and harder to undo. Research Highlights Selective observation: Son and Yoo 2026 modeled social inference …
Psychedelic-assisted therapy has been one of the most-covered mental-health stories of the past decade. A 2026 quantitative analysis by Evers and colleagues maps how media enthusiasm grew, peaked, and partially pulled back across major U.S. outlets — and how the coverage related to the actual evidence base for depression and PTSD.1 Research Highlights Psychedelic clinical …
The internet era has dramatically changed how people are exposed to traumatic events — uncensored video of violence, war, and disaster reaches civilian audiences within minutes of occurrence. A 2026 study by Allouche-Kam and colleagues examines the mental health consequences of this indirect-trauma exposure in modern populations.1 Research Highlights Indirect trauma exposure through media has …