Why Unfinished Tasks Trouble the Mind

HEALTH NEWS  

• Can exercise turn back the clock on your brain? New study says yes
• Why leaving things unfinished messes with your mind
• Short-term, calorie-restrictive diet improves Crohn’s disease symptoms
• Higher daylight exposure improves cognitive performance, study finds
• Breastfeeding may lower mums’ later life depression/anxiety risks for up to 10 years after pregnancy

    Can exercise turn back the clock on your brain? New study says yes

AdventHealth Research Institute, January 13 2026 (Eurekalert)

A simple, steady exercise routine may help your brain stay biologically younger, supporting clearer thinking, stronger memory, and a greater sense of whole-person well-being.  

The study found that adults who followed a year-long aerobic exercise program had brains that appeared nearly a year “younger” than those who didn’t change their activity levels.  

Published in the Journal of Sport and Health Science, the study explored whether regular aerobic exercise could slow, or even reverse “brain age,” a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based biomarker of how old your brain looks compared to your actual age. A higher brain-predicted age difference (brain-PAD), indicates an older-appearing brain and has been linked to poorer physical and cognitive function and increased risk of mortality in previous research. 

In this clinical trial, 130 healthy adults aged 26–58 were randomly assigned to either a moderate-to-vigorous aerobic exercise group or a usual-care control group. The exercise group completed two supervised 60-minute sessions per week in a laboratory plus home-based exercise to reach about 150 minutes of aerobic activity per week, aligning with the American College of Sports Medicine’s physical activity guidelines. Brain MRI and cardiorespiratory fitness, measured as peak oxygen uptake (VO2peak), were assessed at the beginning and end of the 12-month period. 

Over 12 months, participants in the exercise group showed a measurable reduction in brain age, while the control group showed a slight increase. On average, the exercise group’s brain-PAD decreased by about 0.6 years, indicating a younger-appearing brain at follow-up. In contrast, the control group’s brains appeared about 0.35 years older, a change that was not statistically significant. Overall, the between-group difference in brain age was nearly one year, favoring the exercise group.

   

Why leaving things unfinished messes with your mind

Yale University, January 12 2026 (Medical Xpress)

In a new study, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Yale professor of psychology Brian Scholl and lab members explored why humans so badly want to finish what we've started—in matters great and small.

It turns out the brain just doesn't like dangling threads.

The researchers had a hunch that visual clues could help explain the lure of the unfinished. Why is this state of leaving things undone so salient to us? It's an interesting quirk of human nature that science has not previously addressed.

Unfinishedness has been found to decrease work satisfaction, impair sleep, and fuel ruminative thinking patterns. The researchers turned to the visual system. When we see unfinished events, are they somehow prioritized in memory?"

To test their hunch that visual memory plays a role in making unfinishedness feel so sticky, the researchers ran four experiments involving a total of 120 participants who viewed computer animations of simple mazes populated by moving dots or lines.

In several experiments, it seemed that the brain is wired to notice and remember incomplete things better than finished ones. The findings suggest that "unfinishedness" isn't just about motivation or satisfaction. It's built into the way people see and remember the world.

  Short-term, calorie-restrictive diet improves Crohn’s disease symptoms     Stanford University, January 13 2026 (News-Medical)
  There have been few large studies of dietary interventions for IBD, a group of disorders that includes ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease. Now a Stanford Medicine-led study finds a short-term, calorie-restrictive diet significantly improved symptoms.

Their national, randomized controlled clinical trial found that a short-term, calorie-restrictive diet significantly improved both physical symptoms and biological indicators of mild-to-moderate Crohn's disease.

A chronic condition affecting about a million Americans, Crohn's disease causes inflammation in the digestive tract, leading to symptoms of diarrhea, cramping, abdominal pain and weight loss. Steroids are the only approved therapeutic for mild Crohn's, but their use is limited due to significant side effects, particularly with long-term use.

The study compared the symptoms and biological indicators of patients with mild-to-moderate Crohn's disease as they either followed a fasting mimicking diet or ate their normal diet for three consecutive months. The study enrolled 97 patients across the country, with 65 in the fasting mimicking group and 32 in the control group.

Participants in the fasting mimicking group severely limited their calories for five consecutive days per month, eating between about 700 and 1,100 calories a day. Plant-based meals were provided during the fasting period. For the remainder of the month, the fasting mimicking group ate their normal diet.

At the end of the study, two-thirds of the fasting mimicking group experienced improvement in their symptoms. The researchers found a significant decline in fecal calprotectin, a protein in the stool that indicates gut inflammation, in the fasting mimicking group compared with the control group. Some inflammation-promoting lipid mediators derived from fatty acids also declined in fasting mimicking group participants. Similarly, the immune cells of fasting mimicking group participants produced fewer of several types of inflammatory molecules.

  Higher daylight exposure improves cognitive performance, study finds

University of Manchester (UK), January 12 2026 (Medical Xpress)

A real world study led by University of Manchester neuroscientists has shown that higher daytime light exposure positively influences different aspects of cognition.

The first study of its kind showed that stable light exposure across a week and uninterrupted exposure during a day had similar effects.

Participants in the study experienced improved subjective sleepiness, the ability to maintain focused attention and 7-10% faster reaction speeds under bright light when compared to recent dim conditions.

Compared with their peers who went to bed later, participants with earlier bedtimes tended to be both more reliably wakeful under bright morning light and sleepy under dimmer evening light.

Being exposed to bright, stable daytime light was linked to enhanced and more sustained attention in a visual search task in which participants were asked to find a specific target on a page.

Higher daytime light exposure and fewer switches between light and dark were linked to improved cognitive performance.

And higher daytime light exposure and earlier estimated bedtimes were also associated with stronger relationships between recent light exposure and subjective sleepiness.

However, neither the time of day nor time awake significantly impacted cognitive performance; the effect of light was stronger than the effect of time of day.

  Breastfeeding may lower mums’ later life depression/anxiety risks for up to 10 years after pregnancy University College Dublin (Ireland), January 8 2026 (Eurekalert)  

Breastfeeding may lower mothers’ later life risks of depression and anxiety for up to 10 years after pregnancy, suggest the findings of a small observational study, published in the open access journal BMJ Open.

The observed associations were apparent for any, exclusive, and cumulative (at least 12  months) breastfeeding, the study shows.

The researchers tracked the breastfeeding behaviour and health of 168 second time mothers who were originally part of the ROLO Longitudinal Birth Cohort Study for 10 years.   At the check-ups, the mothers provided information on: whether they had ever breastfed or expressed milk for 1 day or more; total number of weeks of exclusive breastfeeding; total number of weeks of any breastfeeding; and cumulative periods of breastfeeding of less or more than 12 months.   The study concludes there may be a protective effect of successful breastfeeding on postpartum depression and anxiety, which in turn lowers the risk of maternal depression and anxiety in the longer term.