News From Jarred Younger / Neuroinflammation, Pain, and Fatigue Laboratory at UAB, From Aug 2020

[rvallee]

"This is called the anterior mid-cingulate cortex, or the aMCC. Now this region drives motivation, will power and perseverance and sustained effort. And it does this by monitoring available energy in the brain and assessing whether there's sufficient energy to do the thing that you're thinking of doing."

Hard to see any relevance, I have almost never heard of those things being any lower in pwME. In fact they might even be above normal. It's not the traditional definition of effort, but when simply existing requires massive effort on a second-by-second basis, that's still a high degree of sustained effort.

Plus all those "drive motivation, will power and perseverance and sustained effort" as far and as best as current neuroscience defines them, which is obviously crude and superficial.

 

[Silip]

In the video Younger shows 3 ME patients where 'active' microglia are colored red through a tracer, one shows them present in amygdala, one in the thalamus and brainstem and one in broad areas of the brain, the latter being the persons scans you showed in a picture earlier in this thread.

Younger speculates that maybe there are these 3 groups of 'inflammatory' patterns in patients with ME but acknowledges at the same time that he hasn't enough data/scans to confidently claim that, so it's unclear if he has seen and compared 10, 20 or 100 of those scans.

What seems clear though is
a) that there isn't one pattern of inflammation that can be connected to the symptoms of ME and
b) none of the patterns he shows has 'activated' microglia primarily present in the anterior mid-cingular cortex, 2 even show no presence of them in this area, so if we equate this with neuroinflammation like he does it seems unlikely for neuroinflammation to explain abnormalities in this area.

Like I said above the red areas are marked by a tracer that is said to bind to 'activated' microglia, what that exactly means remains unclear. Younger then equates this hightened density of 'activated' microglia with neuroinflammation, as a layman it's also not clear to me if this equation is something that can be done so easily.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

Like I said above the red areas are marked by a tracer that is said to bind to 'activated' microglia, what that exactly means remains unclear. Younger then equates this hightened density of 'activated' microglia with neuroinflammation, as a layman it's also not clear to me if this equation is something that can be done

As someone with a doctorate in inflammation science I can assure you that it can't.
The real problem with all these imaging methods is that it is too easy to turn knobs so that certain areas look really different when the difference probably has no biological significance. Pictures on their own are not enough. Using pictures to suggest that they show something on their own is misleading people.

 

[ChronicallyOverIt]

He cites this paper at 2:38 that he suggest convergence. I think it he’s been teasing his own results for over a year now, what happened to that?? He keeps saying chronic inflammation in this area. This video posted is possibly the least informative yet, lots of conjecture

Thread 'Microstructural alterations in brain tissue of ME/CFS and long COVID using diffusion tensor imaging and diffusion kurtosis imaging, 2026, Singh et al'

Jul 17, 2026

Microstructural alterations in brain tissue of ME/CFS and long COVID using diffusion tensor imaging and diffusion kurtosis imaging

Singh, Tanoj Bahadur; Marshall-Gradisnik, Sonya; Barnden, Leighton; Eaton-Fitch, Natalie; Huynh, Tuong Hieu; Inderyas, Maira; Thapaliya, Kiran

Introduction
Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) and long COVID have overlapping symptoms, such as profound fatigue, cognitive impairment, post-exertional malaise, pain and sleep disturbances that are debilitating and reduce quality of life. While Magnetic Resonance Imaging...

• forestglip
• diffusion tensor imaging long covid me/cfs microstructure
• Replies: 7
• Forum: ME/CFS research

• 

 

[Lisan_Al_Ghaib_87]

@paolo I See you have published a papper about Cingulate Cortex in the past. Is there any connection with Younger's hypothesis?

 

[ChronicallyOverIt]

I don’t have the energy to look this up atm but was wondering if this spot is marked in ADHD or other conditions. Seems very ADHD from the top level description, it would interesting to see if that was controlled for if it did appear in ADHD

 

[ChronicallyOverIt]

Jared says this is the site of ME/CFS “inflammation” he also states in this video this area is not reachable by photobiomodilation. Odd that he is supporting the renagade research photobiomodulation trial if he is so sure this is truly the area where things have gone awry.

Edit: I don’t want to be such a huge downer. I do think you can chase two things at once, just neither here seems to have sound or reproducible data to chase just yet. Show the data then find the target and then apply the therapeutic. We’re not even seeing the data, and for the photobiomodulation I don’t think there is any either yet it’s being promoted and will inadvertently cost desperate ill people money.