Learning Disorders News

January 7, 2026

Top Headlines

The Simplest Way Teens Can Protect Their Mental Health

Jan. 7, 2026 Teens who sleep in on weekends may be giving their mental health a boost. A new study found that young people who made up for lost weekday sleep had a significantly lower risk of depression. While consistent sleep is still best, weekend catch-up ...

Scientists Discover Why Mental Disorders so Often Overlap

Jan. 3, 2026 A massive global genetics study is reshaping how we understand mental illness—and why diagnoses so often pile up. By analyzing genetic data from more than six million people, researchers uncovered deep genetic connections across 14 psychiatric ...

Researchers Find ADHD Strengths Linked to Better Mental Health

Dec. 31, 2025 New research reveals a brighter side of ADHD, showing that adults who recognize and use their strengths feel happier, healthier, and less stressed. People with ADHD were more likely to identify traits like creativity, humor, and hyperfocus as ...

ADHD Drugs Don’t Work the Way We Thought

Dec. 29, 2025 ADHD stimulants appear to work less by sharpening focus and more by waking up the brain. Brain scans revealed that these medications activate reward and alertness systems, helping children stay interested in tasks they would normally avoid. The ...

A Massive Scientific Review Put Alternative Autism Therapies to the Test

Dec. 28, 2025 A major new review has put hundreds of alternative autism treatments under the microscope—and most didn’t hold up. Scientists analyzed decades of research and found little reliable evidence that popular approaches like probiotics, acupuncture, ...

Your IQ May Determine How Well You Hear in a Crowd

Oct. 29, 2025 New research reveals that intelligence plays a key role in how well people process speech in noisy environments. The study compared neurotypical and neurodivergent individuals and found that cognitive ability predicted performance across all groups. ...

From Poison to Power: How Lead Exposure Helped Shape Human Intelligence

Oct. 16, 2025 Long before humans built cities or wrote words, our ancestors may have faced a hidden threat that shaped who we became. Scientists studying ancient teeth found that early humans, great apes, and even Neanderthals were exposed to lead millions of ...

Autism May Be the Price of Human Intelligence

Sep. 28, 2025 Researchers discovered that autism’s prevalence may be linked to human brain evolution. Specific neurons in the outer brain evolved rapidly, and autism-linked genes changed under natural selection. These shifts may have slowed brain development in ...

Why so Many Young Kids with ADHD Are Getting the Wrong Treatment

Sep. 16, 2025 Preschoolers with ADHD are often given medication right after diagnosis, against medical guidelines that recommend starting with behavioral therapy. Limited access to therapy and physician pressures drive early prescribing, despite risks and reduced ...

Autism Symptoms Vanish in Mice After Stanford Brain Breakthrough

Sep. 8, 2025 Scientists at Stanford have found that hyperactivity in the brain’s reticular thalamic nucleus may drive autism-like behaviors. In mouse models, drugs and neuromodulation techniques that suppressed this overactive region reversed symptoms, hinting ...

Sweeteners in Diet Drinks May Steal Years from the Brain

Sep. 4, 2025 A large Brazilian study following more than 12,000 middle-aged adults found that those consuming the most artificial sweeteners—commonly found in diet sodas, flavored waters, and processed snacks—experienced significantly faster declines in ...

A Safe Painkiller? New Research Raises Concerns About Tylenol’s Safety in Pregnancy

Aug. 21, 2025 A large-scale review finds that acetaminophen use during pregnancy may increase the risk of autism and ADHD in children. The strongest studies showed the clearest links, pointing to biological ...

Latest Headlines

updated 8:29am EST

A "herculean" Genetic Study Just Found a New Way to Treat ADHD

Jan. 2, 2026 Attention depends on the brain’s ability to filter out distractions, but new research suggests this works best when background brain activity is quieter. Scientists found that lowering certain ...

Human Brains Light Up for Chimp Voices in a Way No One Expected

Dec. 10, 2025 Humans don’t just recognize each other’s voices—our brains also light up for the calls of chimpanzees, hinting at ancient communication roots shared with our closest primate relatives. ...

Why Some Memories Last a Lifetime While Others Fade Fast

Nov. 30, 2025 Scientists have uncovered a stepwise system that guides how the brain sorts and stabilizes lasting memories. By tracking brain activity during virtual reality learning tasks, researchers identified ...

New Research Reveals How ADHD Sparks Extraordinary Creativity

Oct. 13, 2025 Researchers have discovered that ADHD’s hallmark mind wandering might actually boost creativity. People who deliberately let their thoughts drift scored higher on creative tests in two large ...

Four Hidden Types of Autism Revealed — and Each Tells a Different Genetic Story

July 24, 2025 Scientists at Princeton and the Simons Foundation have identified four biologically distinct subtypes of autism, using data from over 5,000 children ...

Can’t Sleep, Can’t Focus, Can’t Thrive? ADHD and Insomnia May Be a Vicious Cycle

July 16, 2025 Struggling to sleep might be the hidden reason why adults with ADHD traits often feel less satisfied with life. New research reveals a strong link ...

Brain-Computer Interface Restores Real-Time Speech in ALS Patient

June 12, 2025 A team at UC Davis has made a major leap in neurotechnology, enabling a man with ALS to speak again through a brain-computer interface that converts thoughts into speech in real time. Unlike prior ...

Overimitation Begins in Infancy but Is Not Yet Linked to in-Group Preference

May 26, 2025 A new study examines the emergence of overimitation in infants aged between 16 and 21 months to see if and how it is linked to social affiliation and ...

AI Is Here to Stay, Let Students Embrace the Technology, Experts Urge

May 26, 2025 A new study says students appear to be using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) responsibly, and as a way to speed up tasks, not just boost their ...

Good News for People With Migraine Who Take Drugs Before or During Pregnancy

May 21, 2025 There's good news for people with migraine who take common drugs before or during pregnancy -- a new study found no increase in neurodevelopmental ...

This 100-Year-Old Teaching Method Is Beating Modern Preschools

Jan. 1, 2026 A first-of-its-kind national trial shows that public Montessori preschool students enter kindergarten with stronger reading, memory, and executive function skills than their peers. These gains ...

Sophisticated Data Analysis Uncovers How City Living Disrupts ADHD's Path to Obesity

May 19, 2025 A hidden link between impulsivity and obesity may not be fixed in human biology but shaped by the cities we live in. Using a novel engineering-based approach, researchers found that ...

New Auditory Brainstem Implant Shows Early Promise

May 16, 2025 Investigators are developing a new type of auditory brainstem implant that is designed to be soft, and flexible and address limitations of models currently in use. These implants may one day benefit ...

New Study Raises Concerns About the Safety of Long-Term ADHD Medication Treatment in Children

May 14, 2025 A recent study reveals that the average duration of ADHD medication for children and adolescents is more than three years. However, reliable, controlled data on the safety of marketed ADHD medicines ...

Energy and Memory: A New Neural Network Paradigm

May 14, 2025 Listen to the first notes of an old, beloved song. Can you name that tune? If you can, congratulations -- it's a triumph of your associative memory, in which one piece of information (the first ...

The Key to Spotting Dyslexia Early Could Be AI-Powered Handwriting Analysis

May 14, 2025 A new study outlines how artificial intelligence-powered handwriting analysis may serve as an early detection tool for dyslexia and dysgraphia among young ...

Study Sheds Light on How Autistic People Communicate

May 14, 2025 There is no significant difference in the effectiveness of how autistic and non-autistic people communicate, according to a new study, challenging the stereotype that autistic people struggle to ...

Mapping a New Brain Network for Naming

May 13, 2025 Researchers identified two brain networks involved in word retrieval -- the cognitive process of accessing words we need to speak. A semantic network processes meaning in middle/inferior frontal ...

New Survey Shows Privacy and Safety Tops List of Parental Concerns About Screen Time

May 13, 2025 As kids spend more time on screens, a new national survey conducted by Ipsos on behalf of The Kids Mental Health Foundation, founded by Nationwide Children's Hospital, identifies parents' ...

Non-Inherited Genes Affect Children's Development

May 7, 2025 Parents' genes -- even when not directly inherited by a child -- may play a role in their educational and mental health outcomes, finds a new ...

How Individuals Grasp an Object May Offer Simpler Diagnosis for Autism Spectrum Disorder

May 5, 2025 Getting a timely diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder is a major challenge, but new research shows that how young adults, and potentially children, grasp objects could offer a simpler way to ...

How Is Handedness Linked to Neurological Disorders?

May 5, 2025 The fact that left-handedness resp. mixed-handedness are strikingly common in patients with certain neurological disorders such as autism spectrum disorders is a frequently reported observation in ...

Children's Reading and Writing Develop Better When They Are Trained in Handwriting

Apr. 30, 2025 Researchers explored how manual and keyboard practice influenced children's abilities in their reading and writing learning process. 5-year-olds were taught an artificial alphabet using ...

Trouble Hearing in Noisy Places and Crowded Spaces? Researchers Say New Algorithm Could Help Hearing Aid Users

Apr. 28, 2025 BU researchers develop a brain-inspired algorithm that can help people with hearing loss pick out conversations in noisy, crowded ...

By 15 Months, Infants Begin to Learn New Words for Objects, Even Those They've Never Seen

Apr. 23, 2025 A new study by developmental scientists offers the first evidence that infants as young as 15 months can identify an object they have learned about from listening to language -- even if the object ...

Listeners Use Gestures to Predict Upcoming Words

Apr. 22, 2025 In face-to-face conversations, speakers use hand movements to signal meaning. But do listeners actually use these gestures to predict what someone might say next? In a study using virtual avatars, ...

Novel Treatment Approach for Language Disorder Shows Promise

Apr. 21, 2025 Neuroscientists have developed a new treatment approach for a language disorder that combines traditional speech therapy with noninvasive electrical stimulation of the brain. Brain stimulation helped ...

Study Shows Addressing Working Memory Can Help Students With Math Difficulty Improve Word Problem-Solving Skills

Apr. 21, 2025 Working memory is like a mental chalkboard we use to store temporary information while executing other tasks. Scientists worked with more than 200 elementary students to test their working memory, ...

Simulating Protein Structures Involved in Memory Formation

Apr. 16, 2025 Complex protein interactions at synapses are essential for memory formation in our brains, but the mechanisms behind these processes remain poorly understood. Now, researchers have developed a ...

Gestational Diabetes Linked to ADHD in Children

Apr. 14, 2025 A new study has found children born to mothers who experienced gestational diabetes (GDM) during pregnancy are more likely to develop attention-deficient hyperactive disorder (ADHD) and externalizing ...