#neuropathology

#neuropathology

Lewy body dementia (LBD) is the second-most-common neurodegenerative cause of dementia, after Alzheimer's Disease. But it's the most-common cause that doesn't receive sufficient attention.

DNA damage can originate from internal sources like metabolic by-products or normal cellular activities, as well as external factors such as cosmic radiation, diet, and pollution.

When Lorraine Kelly Donnelly felt a cramp in her left hand at the start of 2025, she didn't think anything of it. But when a week later the pain was still there, she made an appointment to see her GP.

This could open up some interesting possibilities for therapeutic interventions for depression-like behaviors or maladaptive changes in motivational behaviors down the road where microglia are known to play a really important role.

Anyone living with schizophrenia understands the true limitations of current treatment options. Antipsychotics remain the single leading treatment for the disorder, and they are riddled with undesirable side effects. Weight gain, tardive dyskinesia, and excessive drowsiness are a few. Much research is devoted to expanding the range of medication options, and few academics have pursued other avenues. However, there is a possibility that treatment for schizophrenia can be approached through cellular methods if long-term research validates early signs of hope.

Young, two-month-old lab mice housed with older, 18-month-old mice showed really impaired cognition. Researchers exposed young mice raised in a sterile, microbe-free environment to gut bacteria from old mice, causing the younger animals to perform worse on cognitive tests, as if they had prematurely aged, just like the cohoused mice.

A groundbreaking study found that adults who sit for 10 or more hours daily face a significantly higher risk of dementia compared to those who sit less. The research, which tracked over 50,000 adults using wearable devices, revealed that the risk increases dramatically after crossing that 10-hour threshold.

According to University of Michigan neuroscientists, not only can their AI vision language model diagnose neurological disorders from MRI scans with high performance accuracy, but it also has foundation model capabilities, making it a flexible, general-purpose solution that can be tailored for a wide variety of medical imaging. "These results demonstrate that Prima has foundation model properties, and reported performance will continue to improve with additional health system training data and larger compute budgets," wrote the study's authors in the preprint.

Most people will forget a name, misplace their phone, or lose track of a conversation at some point. Usually, those moments pass without much thought. But for many adults, especially as they age, small lapses can trigger a much deeper fear: Is this the beginning of cognitive decline? As a neurologist, I hear this concern often. And as a researcher, I have learned something important: Worry about cognition and cognitive disease are not the same thing.

A recent study published in Biological Psychiatry identified a distinct subtype of psychiatric illness marked by brain inflammation, one that cuts across traditional diagnoses and may explain why standard treatments fail for some people (Tang et al., 2025).This new brain imaging study offers an interesting clue. It turns out that across different psychiatric disorders, some people show clear signs of brain inflammation, visible on scans and confirmed through immune system tests.

But questions remain about the accuracy and uncertainty of these tests, and experts caution that the assays aren't ready for prime time. While the results here are encouraging, they are not yet at the level of having significant clinical benefit for individual patients, says Corey Bolton, a clinical neuropsychologist and an assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, who was not involved in the new study.

Tumours lure and then hijack nearby sensory neurons to boost their own growth. The cancer cells use these neurons to send a signal to the brain that subdues the activity of immune cells around the tumour, which allows it to grow unchecked. When researchers deactivated these neurons in mice with lung cancer, they saw "a huge, dramatic reduction" in tumour growth - more than 50% - says cancer immunologist and study co-author Chengcheng Jin.

Haavik was surprised to hear this because the scientific data do not suggest an unequivocal link between low levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine and ADHD. But the idea that low dopamine is a direct cause of ADHD is a common misconception, one that's amplified on social media and even in popular books about the condition. The reality, Haavik and other researchers say, is that the causes of ADHD are more diverse and nuanced than a simple deficit in one chemical cue in the brain.

New therapies for Alzheimer's disease should target a particular gene linked to the condition, according to researchers who said most cases would never arise if its harmful effects were neutralised. The call to action follows the arrival of the first wave of drugs that aim to treat Alzheimer's patients by removing toxic proteins from the brain. While the drugs slow the disease down, the benefits are minor,

You know that moment when you walk into a room and completely forget why you went there? Or when someone you've known for years walks up to you at the grocery store and their name just... vanishes from your brain? Last week, I spent ten minutes searching for my reading glasses while they were sitting on top of my head. My first thought wasn't "oh, silly me." It was "Is this how it starts?"

To make their discovery, researchers examined donated eye tissue from more than 100 people who had died with Alzheimer's, mild cognitive impairment or no signs of dementia. They were looking specifically for C. pneumoniae, because previous research has already linked it to Alzheimer's. The bacteria has also been detected in brain tissue from patients who died with the condition, sometimes found close to the sticky amyloid plaques and tangles believed to drive memory loss and confusion.

When a person suffers a stroke, physicians must restore blood flow to the brain as quickly as possible to save their life. But, ironically, that life-saving rush of blood can also trigger a second wave of damage - killing brain cells, fueling inflammation and increasing the odds of long-term disability. Now, in a study published in the journal Neurotherapeutics, Northwestern University scientists have developed an injectable regenerative nanomaterial that helps protect the brain during this vulnerable window.

Researchers used data from two health studies to track the caffeine-drinking habits of more than 130,000 people over four decades. They found that drinking 2-3 cups of coffee or 1-2 cups of tea a day was associated with the greatest reductions in rate of cognitive decline, a result that held true even in people with a genetic variant called APOE4, which is associated with Alzheimer's disease.