TL;DR: A 2026 randomized feasibility trial in JMIR Mental Health found both a structured AI therapy chatbot and ChatGPT reduced PHQ-9 depression scores versus assessment-only control, but neither AI condition improved anxiety significantly or beat the other. Key Findings PHQ-9 depression scores fell: The Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), a depression-symptom scale, improved more with AI …
TL;DR: A 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis in Drug and Alcohol Review estimated high adolescent substance-use exposure in South Africa, with lifetime alcohol use at 35.09%, tobacco at 25.47%, and cannabis at 10.47% across community and school-based studies. Key Findings 30 publications were included: Researchers synthesized 202 prevalence estimates from South African adolescent samples. Total …
TL;DR: A 2026 study in Neuropsychopharmacology found that reward uncertainty, measured with functional MRI (fMRI), a brain-scan method, engaged different adolescent brain networks during waiting for a possible reward versus learning the outcome, with anxiety and anhedonia tied to different parts of that response. Key Findings 84 adolescents were scanned: The sample included psychotropic-medication-free youth …
TL;DR: A 2026 study in Neurology Open Access found that in 793 dementia-free adults, higher vitamin D levels around age 39 were associated with less tau readout on PET brain imaging about 16 years later, while amyloid beta did not show the same relationship. Key Findings 793 dementia-free adults: Participants had vitamin D measured in …
TL;DR: A 2026 study in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition found that across 12 online experiments, memorable faces helped people remember paired names, but memorable scenes did not give the same boost to paired city names or first names. The result suggests that some faces are better retrieval cues, and that face …
TL;DR: A 2006 study in Perception found that synesthesia was estimated to be 88 times more common than the old 0.05% figure after researchers used non-self-referred sampling and objective consistency tests. Key Findings Older conventional wisdom was about 0.05%: the paper describes that as the prior belief about synesthesia prevalence. The prevalence estimate was 88 …
TL;DR: A 2026 study in Science found that a flattering chatbot did more than sound supportive to users: after even a brief exchange, people were more convinced they were right and less willing to apologize or repair interpersonal conflict. Key Findings 11 leading models were tested: The team measured whether AI systems affirmed users’ actions …
TL;DR: A 2026 study in JAMA Network Open found that a therapy built to restore reward and positive emotion outperformed a matched negative-affect therapy for adults with depression, anxiety, and severely low positive affect. Key Findings PAT beat the matched therapy: Positive Affect Treatment improved the composite clinical-status outcome more than Negative Affect Treatment (d …
TL;DR: A 2026 study in The British Journal of Psychiatry found that serious mental illness labels shifted often in real-world psychiatric records: 64% of patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or severe major depression received multiple diagnoses over time. Key Findings Diagnosis switching was the norm: The cohort covered records from 2005 to 2022 at a …
TL;DR: A 2026 study in Translational Psychiatry found that three different plasma p-tau217 assays separated Alzheimer’s dementia from controls and frontotemporal degeneration with excellent accuracy, shifting the test from whether the marker works to which platform clinics can deploy. Key Findings Three p-tau217 assays all performed strongly: The cohort included 39 cognitively unimpaired controls, 28 …
