Have you read an outstanding paper published in Brain Communications during 2025? Take note of it for the Early Career Researcher Paper Prize! Nominations are Open! #ecr #paperprize #neuroscience
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Trudel et al. show that brain-derived plasma pTau, particularly pTau217, improves amyloid-PET positivity detection, reducing intermediate classifications and outperforming conventional plasma and cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers.

Read it at 👉buff.ly/osmMCrw

Askevold et al. introduce a sentence-based episodic-memory task, finding greater accuracy declines and high-confidence errors with retrieval difficulty in older compared to young adults and older APOE4 carriers compared to non-carriers.

Read it at 👉buff.ly/DIL31GH

📣 Call for proposals! Brain Communications is inviting submissions for an upcoming collection on Astrocytes in Neuropsychiatry. How is astrocyte research reshaping psychiatry and future therapies? Show us.

Submit today 👉 buff.ly/EjYKKKW

#Astrocytes #Neuropsychiatry

Meet Dr Nicola Ray, a Professor of Neuroscience at Manchester Metropolitan University👋

She is leveraging new advances in deep brain stimulation and neuroimaging to understand how cholinergic and dopaminergic systems interact in the context of Parkinson's disease.

#meettheteam

Newton et al. report that previously described pathogenic NaV1.7, NaV1.8 and NaV1.9 variants are common and not associated with chronic or neuropathic pain or analgesic use in the UK Biobank cohort.

Read it at 👉buff.ly/JVK4gFP

#neuroscience #braincommunications

Chen et al. report that shared loci involved in immune function and neurodevelopmental processes contribute to the association between COVID-19 outcomes and brain variation.

Read it at 👉buff.ly/V7T6nxm

#neuroscience #braincommunications

Zeeb et al. report that in persons living with HIV, viral gene variations, associated with self-reported neuropsychological complaints, are also associated with neurocognitive impairment.

Read it at 👉buff.ly/Ol2cTfR

#neuroscience #braincommunications

Scharf et al. combined long-read sequencing with genetic, epigenetic and phenotypic analyses across facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy genotypes, identifying groups at high risk of misdiagnosis and and clarifying its genetics basis.

Read it at 👉buff.ly/pshTLt5

In the letter to the editor Delgado-Ron critically reassesses Peinkhofer et al.’s (2021) hypothesis that near-death experiences and thanatosis share an evolutionary basis.

Read it at 👉buff.ly/UoFs7IQ

#neuroscience #braincommunications

Luzum et al. found that greater walking after stroke was associated with better attention and executive function, but not global cognition and memory. Changes in walking did not predict cognitive changes, or vice versa.

Read it at 👉buff.ly/Hi0DzHW

#neuroscience

Meet Dr Josef Priller, a Professor of Neuropsychiatry at the Charité in Berlin and the Chair of Brain Inflammation and Repair at the University of Edinburgh and UK DRI👋

Dr Priller’s research spans neuroinflammation, neurodegeneration and movement disorders.

#meettheteam

Strýček et al. show that PET-derived metabolic connectivity relates to memory performance in mesial temporal lobe epilepsy, with presurgical network patterns predicting postoperative memory change, supporting network-based risk assessment.

Read it at 👉buff.ly/EGlGwI7

Gunnarsdottir et al. report that supplementing preterm infants with arachidonic and docosahexaenoic acid promotes early white matter maturation, as shown with advanced diffusion magnetic resonance imaging.

Read it at 👉buff.ly/ulHP3wF

#neuroscience #braincommunications

Canori et al. found at-home Microtesla Magnetic Therapy feasible and well tolerated in 30 adults with cognitive impairment from long COVID, with exploratory improvements in cognition and emotional well-being largest at follow-up.

Read it at 👉buff.ly/q3zvMoV

#LongCovid

Canaslan et al. showed that ubiquitin C-hydrolase L1 levels in CSF and blood accurately distinguished sporadic Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease and fatal familial insomnia patients from controls, supporting it as a promising diagnostic biomarker.

Read it at 👉buff.ly/Ao5n0bl

Effiong et al. propose the Metabolic Debt Model, a hypothesis-generating framework that links four metabolic constraints to network dysfunction and clinical symptoms in myalgic encephalomyelitis and long COVID.

Read it at 👉buff.ly/rLazwQr

#neuroscience #LongCovid

Mirloo et al. describe how dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI detects age-related blood–brain barrier dysfunction independent of the mild cognitive impairment diagnosis and associated with domain-specific cognitive deficits.

Read it at 👉buff.ly/DWcNUvD

#neuroscience

Meet Dr Nicola Pavese, a Professor of Clinical Neuroscience at Newcastle University and Professor of Translational Research at Aarhus University👋

He investigates non-motor symptoms in Parkinson’s disease and neuroinflammation in neurodegenerative diseases.

#meettheteam

Using a large dataset of COVID-19 patients, Higgins et al. show Long COVID-specific memory and attention deficits, with structural equation modelling implicating on-task fatigue and subjective symptoms in post-COVID cognitive impairment.

Read it at 👉buff.ly/Tn0mJmw

Pérez-Millan et al. link MRI markers of subcortical sleep–wake regions to polysomnographic patterns in ageing and Alzheimer’s disease, with hypothalamic and locus coeruleus measures associated with sleep duration and arousals.

Read it at 👉buff.ly/WSK8Qoj

#neuroscience