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Browse the failure-mode index

258 real negative results, null findings, and replication failures in Neuroscience. Search the index →

WASTE indexes published research — it does not host or republish full papers. Each entry is a metadata record compiled from open scholarly databases; the abstract is shown in full only where the paper is openly licensed, otherwise a short excerpt under fair use. Classifications are automated and approximate.

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessNeuroscience

Memory out of context: Spacing effects and decontextualization in a computational model of the medial temporal lobe

James W. Antony · 2026

Abstract Some neural representations change across multiple timescales. Here we argue that modeling this “drift” could help explain the spacing effect (the long-term benefit of distributed learning), whereby differences between stored and current temporal context activity patterns produce greater error-driven learning. We trained a neurobiologically realistic model of the entorhinal cortex and hippocampus to learn paired associates alongside temporal context vectors that drifted between learning episodes and/or before final retention intervals. In line with spacing effects, greater drift led t

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessNeuroscience

TSANN-TG: Temporal–Spatial Attention Neural Networks with Task-Specific Graph for EEG Emotion Recognition

Chao Jiang, Yingying Dai, Yunheng Ding et al. · 2024 · Brain Sciences

Electroencephalography (EEG)-based emotion recognition is increasingly pivotal in the realm of affective brain-computer interfaces. In this paper, we propose TSANN-TG (temporal-spatial attention neural network with a task-specific graph), a novel neural network architecture tailored for enhancing feature extraction and effectively integrating temporal-spatial features. TSANN-TG comprises three primary components: a node-feature-encoding-and-adjacency-matrices-construction block, a graph-aggregation block, and a graph-feature-fusion-and-classification block. Leveraging the distinct temporal sca

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessNeuroscience

Disconnected and Hyperactive: A Replication of Sensorimotor Cortex Abnormalities in Patients With Schizophrenia During Proactive Response Inhibition

Christopher J. Wertz, Faith M Hanlon, Nicholas A. Shaff et al. · 2018 · Schizophrenia Bulletin

Inhibitory failure represents a core dysfunction in patients with schizophrenia (SP), which has predominantly been tested in the literature using reactive (ie, altering behavior after a stimulus) rather than proactive (ie, purposefully…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessNeuroscience

Chinmo function in cockroaches provides new insights into the regulation and evolution of insect metamorphosis

Jorge Escudero, Judit Gonzalvo, Maria-Dolors Piulachs et al. · 2025 · PLoS Genetics

Insect metamorphosis occurs in two main forms, hemimetaboly (simple) and holometaboly (complete), both regulated by hormonal and genetic pathways involving the transcription factors Krüppel homolog 1 (Kr-h1), Broad-Complex (BR-C), and Ecdysone-induced protein 93F (E93). The BTB-zinc finger protein Chronologically inappropriate morphogenesis (Chinmo), recently identified in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, an holometabolan, as a larval state maintainer, was studied here in the German cockroach, Blattella germanica, an hemimetabolan. We also examined another BTB transcription factor, Abrup

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessNeuroscience

Glymphatic system impairment in cerebral small vessel disease: associations with perivascular space volume and cognition

Lulu Ai, Zhiwei Li, Huipeng Huang et al. · 2025 · Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience

Objective While emerging evidence links glymphatic dysfunction to cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD), its clinical relevance remains poorly defined. This study aimed to investigate the relationships among glymphatic function, perivascular space (PVS), and cognitive performance in CSVD. Methods We enrolled 120 CSVD patients [52 with no cognitive impairment (CSVD-NCI) and 68 with mild cognitive impairment (CSVD-MCI)] and 40 healthy controls (HCs). Glymphatic function was assessed using the left ALPS index derived from diffusion tensor imaging analysis along the perivascular space (DTI-ALPS). G

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessNeuroscience

Majority language skill, not measures of bilingualism, predicts executive attention in bilingual children

David Giguere, Daniel J. Dickson, Michelle K. Tulloch et al. · 2021 · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Evidence is mixed regarding whether and why bilingual children might be advantaged in the development of executive functions. Five preregistered hypotheses regarding sources of a bilingual advantage were tested with data from 102 Spanish-English bilingual children and 25 English monolingual children who were administered a test of executive attention, the flanker task, at 7, 8, and 9 years of age. Measures of the children's early and concurrent bilingual exposure and their concurrent English and Spanish skill were available from a larger longitudinal study in which these children participated.

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessNeuroscience

Melatonin as a Guardian of Mitochondria: Mechanisms and Therapeutic Potential in Neurodegenerative Diseases

Yanyu Bao, Guoying Miao, Nannan He et al. · 2026 · Biology

Mitochondrial dysfunction is a key early pathological process in neurodegenerative diseases (NDs), leading to oxidative stress, impaired energy metabolism, and neuronal apoptosis prior to the onset of clinical symptoms. Although mitochondria represent important therapeutic targets, effective interventions targeting mitochondrial function remain limited. This review summarizes current evidence regarding the mechanisms by which melatonin protects mitochondria and evaluates its therapeutic relevance, with a primary focus on Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and Huntington's disease-the ma

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessNeuroscience

Update on the Symptomatic Treatment of Huntington’s Disease: From Pathophysiology to Clinical Practice

Gonzalo Olmedo‐Saura, E Bernardi, Lidia Bojtos et al. · 2025 · International Journal of Molecular Sciences

Huntington's disease (HD) is the most common autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disorder, characterized by a triad of motor dysfunction, cognitive decline, and psychiatric disturbances. While recent efforts have focused on developing disease-modifying therapies, no treatment has yet demonstrated clinical efficacy. As a result, symptomatic treatment remains the cornerstone of care. However, high-quality evidence from large randomized trials is limited, and therapeutic decisions must rely on clinical expertise and extrapolation from other neurological or psychiatric conditions. This narrative

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Negative / Null Result ReportNeuroscience

The burden of secrecy? No effect on hill slant estimation and beanbag throwing.

Diane Pecher, Heleen van Mierlo, Rouwen Cañal‐Bruland et al. · 2015 · Journal of Experimental Psychology General

Slepian, Masicampo, Toosi, and Ambady (2012, Experiment 1) reported that participants who recalled a big secret estimated a hill as steeper than participants who recalled a small secret. This finding was interpreted as evidence that…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessNeuroscience

Computational genetics analysis of grey matter density in Alzheimer’s disease

Amanda Zieselman, Jonathan Fisher, Ting Hu et al. · 2014 · BioData Mining

BACKGROUND: Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of progressive dementia and there is currently no known cure. The cause of onset is not fully understood but genetic factors are expected to play a significant role. We present here a bioinformatics approach to the genetic analysis of grey matter density as an endophenotype for late onset Alzheimer's disease. Our approach combines machine learning analysis of gene-gene interactions with large-scale functional genomics data for assessing biological relationships. RESULTS: We found a statistically significant synergistic interaction among t

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessNeuroscience

Regulation of LEAP2 by insulin and glucagon in mice and humans

Valdemar Brimnes Ingemann Johansen, Anna Katrina Jógvansdóttir Gradel, Stephanie Kjærulff Holm et al. · 2025 · Cell Reports Medicine

Liver-expressed antimicrobial peptide 2 (LEAP2) is an endogenous antagonist and inverse agonist of the ghrelin receptor, countering ghrelin's effects on cell signaling and feeding. However, despite an emerging interest in LEAP2's…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessNeuroscience

Cognitive load, fatigue and aversive simulator symptoms but not manipulated zeitgebers affect duration perception in virtual reality

Magdalena Sabat, Bartosz Haładus, Michał Klincewicz et al. · 2022 · Scientific Reports

The perceived duration of an interval depends on numerous aspects of the passed event both endogenous, including physiological arousal, level of wakefulness, attention, and surprise, as well as exogenous such as valence, salience, or context in the environment. There is some evidence that "time-giving" cues from the environment (zeitgebers) are coupled with time perception. The movement of the sun on the horizon was demonstrated to affect interval perception in a study conducted by Schatzschneider et al. (2016) claiming that the sun's motion is a zeitgeber that influences time perception. In t

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