TL;DR: A 2026 study in O&G Open found that cannabis exposure 2–7 years after a first pregnancy was not associated with incident hypertension after adjustment in the nuMoM2b Heart Health Study. Key Findings No adjusted hypertension association: Cannabis exposure was not associated with incident hypertension after adjustment (AOR 1.05; 95% CI, 0.63-1.76). 4,079-person analysis: Researchers …
TL;DR: A 2026 study in Cell Chemical Biology found that alzheimer’s inflammation may be driven by a specific chemical switch: S-nitrosylation of STING at cysteine 148, which pushed innate immune signaling toward synaptic damage. Key Findings STING carried the redox switch: The study identified S-nitrosylation of human STING at cysteine 148 as a redox modification …
TL;DR: A 2026 study in The British Journal of Psychiatry found that people with anxiety disorders showed hyper-scanning during neutral image viewing and hyper-pursuit during moving-dot tracking, suggesting that eye-tracking could capture measurable patterns of anxiety-related vigilance. Key Findings 307-person sample: Researchers compared 91 patients with anxiety disorders, 118 with depressive disorders, and 98 healthy …
TL;DR: A 2026 in vitro study in Molecular and Clinical Oncology found that amitriptyline reduced C6 glioma cell viability and PD-L1 checkpoint expression, but the same drug weakened the cell-killing effect of radiation when combined with temozolomide. Key Findings Amitriptyline alone reduced glioma cell growth: In non-radiated C6 glioma cultures, 10 micromolar amitriptyline lowered viability …
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 …
