Ultra-Processed Foods Eroded Visual Attention

Ultra-Processed Foods Eroded Visual Attention

TL;DR: A 2026 study in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring found that each 10% higher energy share from ultra-processed foods was associated with lower attention scores and higher modifiable dementia-risk scores in 2,192 dementia-free Australian adults. Key Findings A dementia-free midlife sample anchored the analysis: the Healthy Brain Project included 2,192 Australians …

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Ten-Minute Digital Meditation Reduced Anxiety Symptoms

Ten-Minute Digital Meditation Reduced Anxiety Symptoms

TL;DR: A 2026 randomized-trial preprint in medRxiv reported that 10 minutes of daily digital meditation reduced anxiety and mind wandering, with the largest gains in people who started with higher symptom burden. Key Findings Ten daily minutes reduced anxiety: Meditation-naive adults were assigned to immediate training or waitlist control in a delayed-intervention design. Low-dose protocol: …

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Higher Temperatures Linked to Police-Violence Death Risk

Higher Temperatures Linked to Police-Violence Death Risk

TL;DR: A county-level 2026 study in PLOS One found that warmer monthly temperatures in the United States from 2013 to 2024 were associated with higher police-violence death rates, with projected additional deaths by 2050 under high-emissions climate scenarios. Key Findings 2013-2024 county-level data: Researchers linked U.S. police-violence deaths with monthly temperature and precipitation data across …

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Substance Use Disorder Shared Reward-Circuit fMRI Abnormalities

Substance Use Disorder Shared Reward-Circuit fMRI Abnormalities

TL;DR: A 2025 systematic review in Translational Psychiatry found that substance use disorder was associated with recurring resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI), a scan of spontaneous brain-network communication, abnormalities in reward and self-control circuits across 53 studies. Key Findings 53-study meta-analysis: Researchers pooled whole-brain rs-fMRI studies covering 1,700 people with substance use disorder and 1,792 healthy …

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Severe Infections Stayed Linked to Dementia After Comorbidities

Severe Infections Stayed Linked to Dementia After Comorbidities

TL;DR: A 2026 study in PLOS Medicine found that severe infections stayed linked to later dementia in Finland even after researchers accounted for a broad set of noninfectious comorbid diseases. Key Findings 62,555 dementia cases: The analysis matched Finnish adults diagnosed with late-onset dementia from 2017 to 2020 against 312,772 dementia-free controls. 29 prior hospital …

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Schizophrenia Insight Linked to fMRI Flexibility and Receptor Maps

Schizophrenia Insight Linked to fMRI Flexibility and Receptor Maps

TL;DR: A 2026 medRxiv preprint on schizophrenia reported that illness insight tracked with resting-state functional MRI (fMRI) flexibility, a measure of how dynamically brain regions reconfigure their connectivity, and that these brain-dynamics patterns aligned with dopamine D2 and serotonin 5-HT2A receptor maps after accounting for antipsychotic receptor occupancy. Key Findings Two insight subtypes: Clinical clustering …

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Plasma p-tau217 Blood Test Identified Alzheimer’s Pathology in Meta-Analysis

Plasma p-tau217 Blood Test Identified Alzheimer's Pathology in Meta-Analysis

TL;DR: A 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis in Molecular Neurobiology found that plasma phosphorylated tau 217 (p-tau217), a blood marker of Alzheimer-linked tau pathology, identified biomarker-defined Alzheimer’s disease with pooled sensitivity of 85.4% and specificity of 88.0% across 27 studies. Key Findings 27-study evidence base: Researchers analyzed 19,652 participants from studies that compared plasma p-tau217 …

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Nighttime Heat During Pregnancy Linked to Autism Risk

Nighttime Heat During Pregnancy Linked to Autism Risk

TL;DR: A 2026 study in Science of the Total Environment followed nearly 295,000 Southern California births and linked extreme nighttime heat in early and late pregnancy to higher autism diagnosis by age 5, while daytime heat was not associated. Key Findings A large Southern California cohort anchored the estimate: The retrospective Kaiser Permanente Southern California …

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SimulAD Modeled Amyloid Clearance in Alzheimer’s Trials

SimulAD Modeled Amyloid Clearance in Alzheimer's Trials

TL;DR: A 2026 medRxiv preprint tested SimulAD, an Alzheimer’s disease progression simulator, and reported that it reproduced mean amyloid-clearance results within 5% error across six major phase III anti-amyloid trials while also separating positive trials from null trials in retrospective power analyses. Key Findings Six phase III trials: Researchers retrospectively simulated TRAILBLAZER-ALZ2, CLARITY AD, EMERGE, …

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Sensation Seeking Was Linked to Restraint and Overeating in Adolescents

Sensation Seeking Was Linked to Restraint and Overeating in Adolescents

TL;DR: A 2026 study in the Journal of Eating Disorders found that higher sensation seeking, a personality trait involving pursuit of novel or intense experiences, was linked to more restraint and overeating in 400 German adolescents, with stronger disordered-eating links in teens with higher BMI, hyperactivity/inattention, emotional symptoms, or peer problems. Key Findings 400 adolescents: …

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