Published September 22, 2026, in BME Frontiers, this blinded trial randomized 36 adults with mild biomarker-confirmed Alzheimer's disease to active or sham 810-nm transcranial near-infrared stimulation.
What changed After 15 daily sessions, the active group improved more than sham across cognitive and neuropsychiatric assessments. The authors report mean gains of 2.17 MMSE points and 3.67 ADAS-cog points, with no adverse events. Several improvements, including MMSE and MoCA, weakened by the 60-day follow-up.
A network-level view The study also mapped changes with fMRI and TMS-EEG. Those measurements were collected only in the active group, so they cannot establish that network changes caused the cognitive findings or rule out time and practice effects.
The important boundary This was a small single-center study using scalp positions rather than MRI-guided targeting. Larger, longer sham-controlled trials are needed before routine clinical use.
Source and disclosure Full text checked. Five Chinese government and public research programs supported the work; the authors declared no competing interests. Prepared with AI assistance and source-checked September 25, 2026.