MentalHealthDaily

Chronic Pain Plus Depression Alters Brain Structure

by GLOOM

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 …

Schizophrenia Dementia Risk: Diabetes, Head Injury, Substance Use

by GLOOM

Photoreal illustration of an aging brain with cardiovascular and lifestyle risk imagery, conveying preventable dementia drivers in schizophrenia.

Patients with schizophrenia have substantially elevated dementia risk compared to the general population — roughly 2-3 times the age-adjusted rate — but the specific drivers within the schizophrenia population have been less well characterized. A 2026 case-control study by Ho et al. used population-based data to identify which factors specifically elevate dementia risk among schizophrenia …