THE LATEST RESEARCH
New findings about the brain, behavior and mental health—with the evidence and limits in view.
TL;DR: A 2026 review summed up years of studies that filmed brain cells lighting up in living mice bred to develop Alzheimer’s-like disease. Some cells fired far more than normal, especially near the protein clumps typical of Alzheimer’s, while others went sil…
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TL;DR: In a 2026 mouse study, researchers injected a toxic chemical into the eyes of mice to kill the nerve cells that carry vision to the brain, then treated some eyes with tiny particles carrying myricetin, a plant compound. Treated mice kept more of these c…
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TL;DR: In a small 2026 mouse study, mice got a memory-disrupting drug for 7 days, some along with a steroid that raises blood sugar. Mice also given kola nut extract, from a West African seed that contains caffeine, did better on maze memory tests and had heal…
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TL;DR: In a 2026 study, mice breathed a common surgical anesthetic gas for a few hours over several days. Afterward, molecules that turn genes up or down in the hippocampus, the brain’s memory center, had clearly shifted compared with mice that breathed none:…
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TL;DR: A 2026 analysis of 1,058 people with amyloid, the protein that builds up early in Alzheimer’s, combined their brain scans and spinal fluid tests into 4 disease scores. Those scores did a good job predicting who would move to a more advanced stage of mem…
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TL;DR: A 2026 review pulled together 36 lab studies that grew motor neurons, the nerve cells destroyed in ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), from stem cells of patients whose ALS comes from changes in one particular gene. Only 3 problems showed up reliably, such as d…
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TL;DR: In a 2026 study, a self-teaching computer program studied microscope images of rat brain slices, stained to show the fatty insulation around nerve fibers, with no labels saying what anything was. It sorted the tissue into real brain regions on its own a…
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TL;DR: In a small 2026 brain-scan study, researchers measured a marker of synapses, the contact points between brain cells, in women newly diagnosed with depression who had never taken medication. In one spot of the cerebellum, at the back of the brain, the ma…
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TL;DR: In a 2026 study, women who had chemotherapy for breast cancer and women who never had cancer watched dozens of short film clips, then described them from memory. Right after watching, the chemo survivors recalled somewhat fewer small details, like color…
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TL;DR: When people were told which of two remembered sounds would be tested, they recalled its pitch more accurately, but not where it came from. Both features were judged faster, suggesting attention does not sharpen every detail of a sound memory equally. Ke…
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