Social Anxiety May Be a Prefrontal Control Problem

Social Anxiety May Be a Prefrontal Control Problem

TL;DR: A 2026 study in The British Journal of Psychiatry found that social anxiety disorder was linked to altered communication inside prefrontal control circuits during a functional MRI emotion-regulation task. Key Findings 102-person fMRI sample: The study analyzed emotion processing and regulation in 61 people with social anxiety disorder and 41 healthy controls using a …

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Sleep History Modulated Wake EEG Oscillations Across Development With Distinct ADHD Patterns

Sleep History Modulated Wake EEG Oscillations Across Development With Distinct ADHD Patterns

TL;DR: A 2026 eNeuro study of 163 people ages 3-25 found that sleep history and age shaped waking electroencephalography (EEG) oscillations, while children with ADHD showed distinct sleep-wake EEG patterns. Key Findings Sleep and development interact to shape wake EEG oscillations: The amount of recent sleep or wakefulness produces age-dependent effects on EEG oscillation amplitude …

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Reactive Oligodendrocytes Fed Glioblastoma via CCL5

Reactive Oligodendrocytes Fed Glioblastoma via CCL5

TL;DR: A 2026 study in Neuron found that glioblastoma was not growing alone: reactive oligodendrocytes helped maintain glioma stem cells through CCL5/CCR5 signaling, and blocking that conversation slowed tumor growth in models. Key Findings CCL5/CCR5 showed the association: Reactive oligodendrocytes promoted glioma stem cell maintenance through a chemokine pathway better known from immune biology. Stem-like …

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Psychopathy Linked to Higher Cortical Surface Area in 804 Incarcerated Men

Psychopathy Linked to Higher Cortical Surface Area in 804 Incarcerated Men

TL;DR: A 2026 study in Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science linked higher psychopathy in MRI data from 804 incarcerated men to lower empathic concern and broader cortical surface area, while empathy scores themselves were not directly tied to cortical thickness or surface area. Key Findings The sample was large for prison MRI research: the study …

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Year-Long Aerobic Exercise Lowered Long-Term Cortisol in Midlife Adults: First Randomized Trial Mapping Cause and Effect

Year-Long Aerobic Exercise Lowered Long-Term Cortisol in Midlife Adults: First Randomized Trial Mapping Cause and Effect

TL;DR: A 2026 randomized clinical trial in the Journal of Sport and Health Science assigned 130 midlife adults to 150 minutes/week aerobic exercise or no-exercise control for 1 year and found sustained lower long-term cortisol in the exercise group. Key Findings Year-long randomized trial in 130 midlife adults: Participants aged 26 to 58 were randomly …

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Dopamine Synthesis Decreased After Psychotic Remission in Schizophrenia

Dopamine Synthesis Decreased After Psychotic Remission in Schizophrenia

TL;DR: A 2026 preprint in medRxiv used 18F-DOPA positron emission tomography (PET) to estimate dopamine synthesis and storage, and found that caudate dopamine synthesis decreased as schizophrenia patients moved from active psychosis into early psychotic remission. Key Findings Patient group: Researchers scanned 28 schizophrenia patients twice and compared them with 21 healthy controls scanned over …

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Right OFC rTMS Improved Visuospatial Memory in First-Episode Schizophrenia

Right OFC rTMS Improved Visuospatial Memory in First-Episode Schizophrenia

TL;DR: A 2026 randomized study in Psychological Medicine found that right orbitofrontal cortex repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), a noninvasive brain-stimulation method, improved visuospatial memory on the Brief Visuospatial Memory Test-Revised (BVMT) in people with first-episode schizophrenia. Key Findings The analysis included 90 patients: Researchers studied 48 people assigned to active rTMS and 42 assigned …

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Daughter-Led Humor Linked to More Open Sex Communication With Mothers

Daughter-Led Humor Linked to More Open Sex Communication With Mothers

TL;DR: A 2026 study in The Journal of Sex Research found that teenage daughters’ own humor during sexuality conversations was linked to more open mother-daughter communication and higher sexual well-being, while mothers’ humor was linked to less openness from daughters. Key Findings 98 mother-daughter pairs: Researchers analyzed confidential survey data from Israeli mothers and teenage …

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Rats Outperformed Humans in 2-Second Temporal Error Monitoring Task

Rats Outperformed Humans in 2-Second Temporal Error Monitoring Task

TL;DR: A 2026 iScience study found that both humans and rats could report their own timing errors in a 2-second task, but rats made more accurate error-based choices than humans. Key Findings Matched timing task: Researchers compared 34 adults with 16 male Sprague-Dawley rats in a similar 2-second time-production task. Both species monitored errors: Humans …

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Warm Language Models Increased Errors and Sycophancy

Warm Language Models Increased Errors and Sycophancy

TL;DR: A 2026 Nature study found that training language models to sound warmer made them less accurate across factual, medical, and misinformation tasks, with error rates rising by about 5 to 9 percentage points by task and sycophancy increasing when users expressed incorrect beliefs. Key Findings Five models tested: the study fine-tuned Llama-8b, Mistral-Small, Qwen-32b, …

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