TL;DR: A 2026 study in Scientific Reports found that 300 high-risk pregnant women in Egypt reported much lower pregnancy anxiety and stress scores after 4 weeks of daily AI chatbot emotional support, although the pre-post design cannot prove the chatbot caused the full change. Key Findings 300 high-risk pregnancies: Researchers recruited women aged 18-45 from …
TL;DR: A 2026 cross-sectional study in Scientific Reports found that attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptom screening was linked to extremely severe chronic pain in 958 adults at Japanese pain centers, while autism spectrum disorder (ASD) screening was not clearly tied to pain intensity. Key Findings Referral pain sample: Researchers analyzed 958 adults with persistent chronic pain …
TL;DR: A 2026 qualitative study in BMC Psychology reported that the For Baby’s Sake whole-family domestic violence and abuse programme was linked to parents’ perceived changes in abuse recognition, emotion regulation, and parenting behavior across pregnancy-to-two-year interviews. Key Findings 83 interviews: Researchers analyzed 83 interviews from 39 parents enrolled in the For Baby’s Sake programme. …
TL;DR: A 2026 preprint in medRxiv from the CORE-VNS study reported that vagus nerve stimulation (VNS), a neuromodulation therapy for drug-resistant epilepsy, produced similar 36-month seizure reductions in people with and without prior intracranial epilepsy surgery. Key Findings 531 VNS implants: The analysis included 531 people with drug-resistant epilepsy who received an initial VNS implant …
TL;DR: A 2026 study in Journal of Medical Case Reports described a 71-year-old breast-cancer survivor whose Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), a cognitive screening test, increased from 16 to 20 and whose 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS-15), a depression-symptom questionnaire, decreased from 8 to 2 after 12 sessions of left DLPFC, a prefrontal executive-control region, transcranial …
TL;DR: A 2026 study in Neuron from Weill Cornell used mouse melanoma models to find that sympathetic nerves growing into tumors release norepinephrine, which activates alpha adrenergic receptors on tumor-associated macrophages and reduces their pro-tumor numbers — flipping the conventional view of the nervous system as a cancer accelerator into evidence that one branch of …
TL;DR: A 2026 study in Journal of Neuroscience found that when people expected sugar, an artificially sweetened drink became more pleasant and produced a stronger midbrain response, even though perceived sweetness was similar. Key Findings Expectation changed the reward readout: The researchers selected participants who reported similar perceptual experiences of sugar and non-nutritive sweetener. 27 …
TL;DR: A 2026 medRxiv preprint reported that closed-loop subgaleal intersectional short-pulse stimulation reduced seizure duration and rapidly lowered seizure incidence in a small first-in-human treatment-resistant epilepsy study. Key Findings Subgaleal implantation reached 13 patients: Researchers enrolled 15 adults, 2 withdrew before implantation, and 13 underwent subgaleal electrode implantation and inpatient monitoring. 2,283 hours of video-EEG …
TL;DR: A 2026 preprint in medRxiv used natural language processing (NLP) on Scottish CT and MRI reports to subtype stroke at scale, linking lobar intracerebral hemorrhage to higher later dementia risk and cortical ischemic stroke to higher early myocardial infarction risk. Key Findings 785,331 head scans: Researchers applied NLP to CT and MRI head-scan reports …
TL;DR: A 2026 preprint in medRxiv reported that an interpretable CatBoost machine-learning model predicted stroke-associated pneumonia after acute ischemic stroke bridging therapy with a test-set AUC of 0.932, with 7-day stroke severity and early inflammatory markers among the strongest contributors. Key Findings 135 stroke patients: The retrospective analysis included 135 acute ischemic stroke patients who …
