Neuroscience

Dexamethasone Disrupted Mouse Sleep Through Orexin Activation

May 15, 2026May 15, 2026 by BrainASAP

TL;DR: A 2026 mouse study in Psychopharmacology found that repeated dexamethasone, a synthetic glucocorticoid steroid, disrupted light-phase sleep and increased orexin-neuron activity, a wake-promoting hypothalamic signal, during sleep-to-wake transitions. Key Findings 5-day steroid model: Male C57BL/6J mice received dexamethasone at 30 mg/kg for 5 days before 24-hour sleep recording. Light-phase sleep was disrupted: Dexamethasone increased …

BIOMEDE Trial Found No Survival Gain From Targeted Drugs in DIPG

May 15, 2026 by BrainASAP

TL;DR: A 2026 randomized phase 2 trial in Nature Medicine found that three targeted drugs added to radiotherapy did not improve overall survival for children with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), a lethal brainstem tumor, although everolimus caused fewer treatment-stopping side effects. Key Findings 233 randomized patients: BIOMEDE assigned 36 children to erlotinib, 102 to …

Olfactory MRI Radiomics Linked pTau217 to Alzheimer’s Cognition

May 15, 2026 by BrainASAP

TL;DR: A 2026 article-in-press study in Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy found that olfactory-region MRI radiomics, a method that turns brain scans into quantitative texture and shape features, linked blood pTau217, a tau-related Alzheimer’s disease biomarker, with cognitive impairment across three cohorts. Key Findings Three Alzheimer’s cohorts were matched: Researchers matched 122 Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients …

Alzheimer’s AI Model Improved Disease Progression Prediction

May 15, 2026May 15, 2026 by BrainASAP

TL;DR: A 2026 machine-learning study found that the final SNP-NF model in PLOS One reported mAUC 0.965, recall 0.929, and precision 0.929, while the study reported gains of about 3% in mAUC, 1% in precision, and 0.7% in recall versus their previous neural-process model. Key Findings SNP-NF performance was high: The final model reported mAUC …

Oral Arginine Reduced Amyloid-Beta Pathology in Two Mouse Models of Alzheimer’s Disease

May 15, 2026 by BrainASAP

TL;DR: A 2025 study in Neurochemistry International from Kindai University showed that oral arginine, a naturally occurring amino acid, blocked the formation of toxic amyloid-beta aggregates in lab tests and reduced amyloid pathology in two well-established mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease — with the authors flagging that the research-grade doses and methods are not equivalent …

Natural Daylight During Office Hours Improved Glucose Time-in-Range and Shifted Substrate Metabolism in Type 2 Diabetes

May 14, 2026 by BrainASAP

TL;DR: A 2026 randomized crossover trial in Cell Metabolism compared natural daylight against standard artificial office lighting in 13 older adults with well-controlled type 2 diabetes and found that natural-daylight days produced more time in a healthy blood-glucose range (about 51% vs 43%), smaller glucose swings, and a metabolic shift toward burning more fat and …

Three or More Live Births Was the Only Reproductive Factor Linked to Lower Stroke Risk in Framingham Women

May 25, 2026May 14, 2026 by BrainASAP

TL;DR: A 2026 study in the Journal of the American Heart Association followed 1,882 stroke-free women from the Framingham Heart Study for a median of 18 years and found that having three or more live births was associated with a reduced risk of clinical stroke and lower MRI markers of vascular brain injury — the …

Cochrane Review of 17 Trials Found Anti-Amyloid Antibodies Made No Clinically Meaningful Difference in Early Alzheimer’s

May 25, 2026May 14, 2026 by BrainASAP

TL;DR: A 2026 systematic review in The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews pooled 17 trials of anti-amyloid monoclonal antibodies (N=20,342 people with mild cognitive impairment or mild Alzheimer’s dementia) and concluded that any effect on memory decline or dementia severity was either nonexistent or well below the threshold considered clinically meaningful for patients. Key Findings …

Mendelian Randomization Found Brain Structure Causally Contributed to ADHD and Autism

May 14, 2026May 14, 2026 by BrainASAP

TL;DR: A 2026 Mendelian randomization study in Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry used genetic data to test direction of effect between brain structure and neurodevelopmental conditions, and found that increased surface area in the superior frontal gyrus raised ADHD risk while increased surface area in the orbital frontal gyrus protected against autism — with …

Language and Theory of Mind Brain Systems Were Already Distinct in 3- to 9-Year-Old Children

May 15, 2026May 14, 2026 by BrainASAP

TL;DR: A 2026 Communications Biology fMRI study found that language and theory of mind, the ability to infer other people’s mental states, were already neurally distinct in children aged 3-9 rather than slowly separating during development. Key Findings Children show distinct neural specificity for language and theory of mind in superior temporal lobe — just …

+ Load more