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Subcortical Connectivity Differs in Schizophrenia, Bipolar, Depression

MHD featured image for subcortical connectivity patterns across schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression.

A 2026 resting-state fMRI study of 800 adults found intra-thalamic hypoconnectivity across schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression, but schizophrenia showed far broader subcortical dysconnectivity than bipolar disorder or depression.1 The calibrated read is that these diagnoses may share a thalamic vulnerability while diverging in striatal and limbic circuitry. Research Highlights Shared thalamic deficit: In …

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Alzheimer’s AI MRI Diagnosis: ANA-GNN Reaches 85.23% Accuracy in ADNI

MHD featured image for ANA-GNN Alzheimer's AI MRI diagnosis in the ADNI cohort.

A 2026 ADNI study reported 85.23% accuracy for ANA-GNN, a graph neural network that combined structural MRI regional features with clinical variables to classify cognitively normal controls, mild cognitive impairment, and Alzheimer’s disease.1 The result is useful, but the clinical-feature ablation dropped accuracy to 68.35%, so the model should be read as multimodal decision-support research, …

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Adult Hippocampal Neurogenesis Added 670,000 Rat Dentate Neurons

MHD featured image for adult hippocampal neurogenesis and dentate gyrus neuron turnover.

A 2026 rat study estimated that adult hippocampal neurogenesis added 670,000 dentate gyrus granule neurons from 2 to 18 months of age, but the total dentate gyrus population grew by only 385,000 cells because older developmentally born neurons were also being lost.1 The result makes adult neurogenesis look numerically larger than the usual “tiny trickle” …

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MS Memory Loss: 7-Day Recall Finds What 30-Minute Tests Miss

Photoreal illustration representing memory and forgetting in multiple sclerosis, with imagery of a fading word list and brain consolidation pathways.

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 …

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PTSD Trauma Memories Are Encoded in Hippocampal Semantic Maps

Photoreal illustration of the hippocampus with semantic encoding pathways highlighted, representing trauma memory processing in PTSD.

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 …

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Resting Brain Connectivity Predicts Fear Extinction Learning

Photoreal illustration of brain network connections in the fear-extinction circuitry, with imagery linking amygdala and prefrontal regions.

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 …

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Chronic Pain Plus Depression Alters Brain Structure

Photoreal illustration of brain regions affected by overlapping pain and depression networks, conveying comorbid neural signature.

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 …

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