MentalHealthDaily

tDCS for Empathy: rTPJ Increased Other-Pain Signals, DLPFC Did Not

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for tDCS empathy and rTPJ versus DLPFC social cognition.

A 2026 Psychological Medicine study involving 196 healthy adults found that transcranial direct current stimulation over the right temporoparietal junction increased cognitive empathy signals across pain and video tasks, while left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex stimulation produced narrower and less consistent effects.1 The useful finding is anatomical calibration: rTPJ looked more like an other-state representation target, …

Video Calls Preserved Empathy for Pain in EEG Study

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for video calls, empathy for pain, and EEG.

A 35-person EEG study found that pain empathy did not collapse when live two-way video was replaced by prerecorded viewing: observer-target pain-rating correlations were nearly identical during video calls and recordings, r = 0.65 vs. r = 0.64, both p < 0.001.1 The calibrated read is narrow but useful: temporal immediacy was not required for …

Post-Stroke Aphasia Theory of Mind Linked to Cerebral Microbleeds

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for post-stroke aphasia, theory of mind, and cerebral microbleeds.

A 2026 medRxiv preprint involving 44 people with chronic post-stroke aphasia found reduced performance on nonverbal false-belief tasks in 23% of participants on the Reality-Unknown task and 36% on the Reality-Known task, with accuracy tied more clearly to cerebral microbleed burden than to aphasia severity.1 The result reframes social-cognitive testing after stroke as a vascular …

Chord Progressions and Eye Contact Boost Brain Synchrony in 20 Dyads

by GLOOM

Editorial card showing two people listening to music while neural synchrony lines connect across a dark social-neuroscience scene.

A 2026 fNIRS hyperscanning study involving 20 dyads found that structured chord progressions paired with live eye contact increased activity in social-brain regions and produced partner-specific neural synchrony more than scrambled-note control music.1 The result supports a plausible mechanism for music-supported connection, but it does not prove that chord progressions treat loneliness or replace clinical …

Language and Theory of Mind Separate by Age 3 in Child Brain Scans

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for language and theory of mind brain development in children.

A 2026 fMRI study found language and theory-of-mind activation already separated in 54 child sessions from ages 3-9, with strict child overlap near zero in the left superior temporal lobe (Dice 0.015) and no evidence that the 2 systems disentangled with age.1 The result pushes against a simple developmental story in which language grows out …

Social Cognition After Stroke/TBI: Insula-Cingulate Hub

by GLOOM

Editorial card showing a stylized brain with the insula, cingulate, middle frontal gyrus, and corpus callosum highlighted, representing the convergent neural substrates of social cognition after acquired brain injury.

A 2026 PRISMA systematic review by Cavallo et al. in Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience aggregates 43 neuroimaging studies of social cognition in adults with stroke or traumatic brain injury and finds the same handful of regions implicated again and again: the insula, cingulate cortex, middle frontal gyrus, and corpus callosum.1 Research Highlights Stroke/TBI social-cognition …