Medical Xpress news

Medical Xpress / Handwriting speed may be a sign of cognitive decline in older people

Handwriting requires a combination of fine motor control and a complex set of mental skills, such as selecting, organizing, and interpreting sensory information, making it a cognitively challenging task. Because of its high ...

May 20, 2026
Medical Xpress / The neural basis of thought symbols identified for the first time

If you ask a child to draw an animal that doesn't exist, they'll often cobble together components from real ones—say, the body of a seal with an elephant's trunk, four octopus arms, and one lizard eye.

May 20, 2026
Medical Xpress / Pilot trial suggests anti-inflammatory drug could help difficult-to-treat depression

Immunotherapy could be a promising new treatment option for patients with difficult-to-treat depression. This is a key finding from a University of Bristol-led pilot randomized controlled clinical trial, published in JAMA ...

May 20, 2026
Medical Xpress / Brain's chemical brake hides a second power, and it could reshape how mental disorders are treated

An important chemical messenger that typically inhibits brain activity might sometimes do the opposite, according to new Yale School of Medicine (YSM) research. One way that brain cells communicate is through chemical messengers ...

May 20, 2026
Dialog / Rewiring early life: What extremely preterm birth teaches us about the brain

Extremely preterm birth (before 28 weeks of gestation) places infants into the world at one of the most extraordinary moments in human development. The brain at this stage is not simply growing; it is folding, organizing, ...

May 20, 2026
Medical Xpress / How children with autism hear: Not better or worse, just differently

Université de Montréal psychiatry professor Laurent Mottron has spent his career studying the cognitive processes of people with autism. Rather than viewing autism as a deficit, he sees it as a different way of processing ...

May 20, 2026
Medical Xpress / Saliva could flag one of the deadliest and most baffling cancers sooner

Scientists at the Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience (SBIMB) at Wits University are exploring whether bacteria in saliva could offer a low-cost warning signal for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, where late ...

May 20, 2026
Medical Xpress / Sabiá virus has been circulating in Brazil for 142 years and mutating, study finds

The Sabiá virus causes an acute hemorrhagic and neurological syndrome. Four fatal cases have been recorded in the state of São Paulo since 1990. The virus has been circulating in Brazil for about 142 years. Genomic analyses ...

May 20, 2026
Medical Xpress / Strong genetic mutation overrides female protective effects in autism, researchers discover

Autism spectrum disorder affects males far more frequently than females, with diagnoses occurring roughly four times more often in boys. Scientists have long suspected that females may possess biological protective mechanisms ...

May 20, 2026
Medical Xpress / Early birth safer for mother and baby in high blood pressure pregnancies, researchers find

Planned early birth for pregnant women with high blood pressure cuts maternal complications by nearly half and reduces the risk of stillbirth, without increasing the likelihood of cesarean section, according to data published ...

May 20, 2026
Medical Xpress / Cytokine-armored CAR-T cell therapy helps eliminate aggressive brain tumors in preclinical study

Scientists at the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have developed a new cytokine-armored CAR-T cell therapy that helps the immune system better attack aggressive brain tumors in mice while reducing dangerous ...

May 20, 2026
Medical Xpress / How dead tumor cells could make chemotherapy and radiotherapy work better

As tumors outgrow their blood and nutrient supplies, or respond to treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy, individual cancer cells die, exposing their internal scaffolds. These dead cells are an abundant source of ...

May 20, 2026