TL;DR: A 2026 medRxiv preprint found that pupil dilation measured inside a virtual reality (VR) headset increased as working-memory load rose in healthy adults, was reproducible 60–90 days later in 33 returnees, and was smaller under the highest load in cognitively impaired patient cohorts than in 81 healthy controls. Key Findings Forty-three healthy adults completed …
TL;DR: A 2026 mouse study in Nature Communications reported that 10 daily bouts of optogenetic dentate-gyrus stimulation produced weeks-long changes in chromatin, nuclear structure, behavior, and spatial coding, while Cyclin B deletion weakened several effects; this ECT-inspired model does not establish how electroconvulsive therapy works in people. Key Findings Ten stimulation sessions produced the durable …
TL;DR: A 2026 randomized study in Psychological Medicine reported that 7–10 days of prucalopride improved word-learning recall and working-memory response speed versus placebo in adults with remitted recurrent depression, but the 49-person analysis did not test durability, daily functioning, or relapse prevention. Key Findings Short randomized exposure: Researchers analyzed 49 adults ages 18–40 after 7–10 …
TL;DR: A 2026 study in Science Advances reported that disrupting the membrane-associated periodic skeleton (MPS), an actin-spectrin lattice beneath neuron membranes, reduced the fitted amyloid precursor protein (APP) uptake time constant in cultured mouse hippocampal neurons and increased intracellular amyloid-beta 42 under APP-overexpression conditions. The cell-culture experiments do not show that stabilizing the MPS prevents …
TL;DR: A 2026 mouse study in Gene Therapy used an adeno-associated virus 9 (AAV9) vector to deliver human FMR1 and reduced sound-triggered seizures, excessive digging, and gamma-frequency electroencephalography (EEG) power in selected dose and route groups. The outcomes came from separate experiments, and high-dose intravenous treatment without immunosuppression caused excess deaths. Key Findings Adolescent seizure …
TL;DR: A 2026 Phase 2 trial in The British Journal of Psychiatry found that 10 mg emestedastat did not improve attention and working memory after six weeks in adults with major depressive disorder and objectively measured cognitive impairment. A nominal depression-score difference appeared four weeks after treatment ended, but it was secondary, unadjusted for multiple …
TL;DR: A 2026 mouse study in Translational Psychiatry reported that six days of adolescent THC exposure reduced Reelin-positive cell density in the female prefrontal cortex and cortical thickness across sexes. Prenatal immune activation did not consistently magnify the effects, and the short-term animal experiment does not show that cannabis causes schizophrenia in people. Key Findings …
TL;DR: A 2026 study in PLOS One found that emergency call takers and dispatchers who used more negatively valenced words when describing a stressful work event reported higher depression and anxiety symptoms, while arousal-related language did not predict distress. Key Findings 106 emergency communications workers described a stressful work-related event and completed the DASS-21, a …
TL;DR: A 2026 study in Journal of Medical Internet Research found that psychology trainees were generally open to artificial intelligence-based precision mental health technologies (AI-PMHTs), but fear, perceived risk, resistance to change, and reliability concerns shaped whether they expected to use them. Key Findings 357 psychology trainees: The cross-sectional survey included undergraduate and master’s psychology …
TL;DR: A 2026 preprint in medRxiv tested an interpretable machine-learning model for focal cortical dysplasia (FCD), a lesion linked to drug-resistant epilepsy, and found that hemispheric-asymmetry MRI features classified 39 of 50 subjects correctly in leave-one-out testing. Key Findings 50-subject MRI sample: The analysis used 25 FCD patients and 25 age-matched healthy controls from the …
