#22 — At the Intersections — September 12, 2026

At the Intersections — September 12, 2026 Welcome to this issue of At the Intersections. This edition brings together observations across environmental policy, neurological function, and human social experience. The selections connect discussions surrounding life in the soil with clinical and computational studies of the brain, observing how conditions such as psychosis register across neural tissue and the structure of written text. Alongside these biological considerations, the focus extends to human responses to adversity, looking at resilience as described by school-aged children as well as experiences of dignity among people experiencing homelessness. A wish-list for soil biodiversity in Canada <jats:p>Despite global concern for biodiversity loss, soil biodiversity remains absent from mainstream conversations and policy agendas, even though soils harbour nearly 60% of Earth's biodiversity. Simultaneously, discourse around soil tends to emphasize carbon and “soil health”, while overlooking the foundational role that soil biodiversity plays in driving core soil functions. We present our wish-list for Canadian soil biodiversity research, training, and policy integration in support of achieving Canada's Nature Strategy 2030 goals. We identify disconnections between soil and biodiversity policy narratives, assess current strengths and data gaps, and evaluate the alignment of soil biodiversity with national strategies; Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (Targets 1, 2, 3, 8, 10, and 14), and the Sustainable Development Goals (2, 3, 13, 15, and 17). Unlocking the full potential of soil biodiversity would strengthen Canada's capacity for ecosystem-based management, nature-based solutions, and climate mitigation, delivering direct benefits to Canadian ecosystems and policy goals. To do this, Canada must focus on soil biodiversity and build on broader biodiversity science and global initiatives to align monitoring, reporting, and action. We emphasize the urgent need for national coordination across agencies and outline a path toward Canada as a global leader in soil biodiversity science, policy, and practice by 2030 and beyond.</jats:p> ‘When Something's Hard, You Keep Going No Matter What’: School-Aged Children's Understanding and Experiences of Resilience During the COVID-19 Pandemic <jats:p> School-aged children were profoundly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Much of the existing research on children within health contexts is drawn from the perspectives of adults in their lives, but few studies have been conducted <jats:italic toggle="yes">with</jats:italic> children themselves. Existing literature fails to address how school-aged children navigated the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and how these experiences, as expressed via their own voices, fostered and/or foiled their resilience. To that end, the purpose of this paper is to explore a first-hand account of how school-aged children (aged 7–10 years) understood and experienced resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario, Canada. Data were collected through online, semi-structured interviews with children ( <jats:italic toggle="yes">n</jats:italic>  = 27) using child-centred, arts-informed interview methodologies tailored to online environments. Most children described resilience as a personal resource, describing an inner strength that allowed them to ensure. Children also identified time spent with family and friends and rapidly changing educational environments as environmental factors central to their resilience. Findings from this study highlight the utility of including children's voices in research; young children were capable of effectively communicating insights into their lived experiences, and the information they shared lends implications that should inform policy and practice. Public health priority setting should include considerations of equitable access to high-quality technology for fostering connection among children and ensuring adequate access to education to better promote children's resilience in future public health crises. </jats:p> Longitudinal inference of hippocampal volume and morphometric hippocampal-cortical covariance in psychosis Schizophrenia and related psychoses are characterized by reductions in hippocampal volume and morphometric hippocampal-cortical covariance. No study to date has inferred the temporal relationship between deviations in subfield and adjacent white matter volume and connectivity across psychosis. To explore this relationship, we sampled cross-sectional neuroimaging data from 174 patients and 120 non-clinical controls from two studies on first- and multi-episode psychosis. We applied Subtype and Stage Inference (SuStaIn), a machine learning algorithm combining clustering and disease progression modeling, to eight measures of hippocampal volume and morphometric hippocampal-cortical covariance (subfields and white matter regions per hemisphere) combined. We then performed in-depth SuStaIn analyses for 18 volumes (five subfields and four white matter regions per hemisphere) and 18 connectivity measures (graph-theory-based participation coefficient) separately. Some patients and controls showed no deviations (no increase or decrease) from control means in volume and covariance. For individuals who did show deviations, we inferred data-driven stages from deviations in volume toward covariance. In-depth SuStaIn analyses inferred three distinct volume patterns (intact volume, subfield-dominant, whiter matter-dominant) followed by one of four possible connectivity patterns (intact connectivity, whiter matter-dominant, subfield-dominant, subiculum-dominant). These subtypes showed significant differences in age, patient-control ratio and associations between data-driven stages and memory. In previous work, altered hippocampal volume and morphometric covariance distinctively precede cognitive and clinical symptoms of psychosis. While not all patients were assigned a staging pattern for hippocampal volume or connectivity, our findings might thus contribute to elucidating distinct hippocampal patterns underlying heterogeneous manifestations of psychosis for a subgroup of patients. Neuroinflammation Detected by TSPO PET in Adult Onset Leukodystrophy With Axonal Spheroids and Pigmented Glia Background and Objectives Adult-onset leukodystrophy with axonal spheroids and pigmented glia (ALSP) causes a progressive neurodegenerative disease, with typical onset in the fourth decade of life. Recent genetic advances implicate microglia and abnormal neuroimmune response in the pathophysiology of ALSP. Translocator protein (18 kDa) (TSPO) PET ligands bind TSPO, which is expressed on microglia, macrophages, and astrocytes, enabling in vivo measurement of the density of these neuroimmune cells. The objective of this study was to determine whether TSPO-PET detects differences in the density of neuroimmune cells in vivo in patients with ALSP. Methods Patients with definite ALSP due to CSF1R variants or from families with neuropathologic confirmation and no CSF1R/AARS1/AARS2 disease-associated variants, and aged matched healthy volunteers were eligible to complete clinical assessments and TSPO [18F]FEPPA PET imaging or MRI at the Lawson Health Research Institute in London, Ontario. Results Four patients, 2 with definite ALSP due to CSF1R variants and 2 with neuropathologic confirmation and no CSF1R/AARS1/AARS2 variants (50% female; mean age 57 years), and 23 healthy volunteers (43% female; mean age 61 years) were enrolled. TSPO-[18F]FEPPA PET imaging or MRI demonstrated robust increased binding in affected brain white matter regions in all 4 patients in comparison with health controls (T-map t values >3 at p < 0.01). Discussion These findings highlight the potential of TSPO-PET imaging as an in vivo clinical biomarker in ALSP, pending further validation studies with larger cohorts. Writing when writhing with psychosis: a computational linguistic autopsy of Vaslav Nijinsky’s diary <jats:p> ‘God of Dance’ Vaslav Nijinsky wrote profusely during a short period in 1918–1919, immediately preceding his diagnosis of schizophrenia and long-term confinement. This diary, in its uncensored form, constitutes one of the most extensively documented <jats:italic>ex tempore</jats:italic> first-person accounts during psychosis. It offers a chance to explore the impact of psychosis on writing—not just on <jats:italic>what</jats:italic> one writes, but also <jats:italic>how</jats:italic> one writes under such torment. The text generates a pervasive impression of repetitive, meandering thought—invoking suspicions of being a product of <jats:italic>formal thought disorder</jats:italic> —an affliction that lies at the core of schizophrenia. We study the specific linguistic structure of this diary using computational approaches, comparing it to a word-count-matched control text composed by his wife, Romola Nijinsky, to characterise what the writing does show. Our computational analysis reveals intact topic-level discourse organisation with adequate surface-level coherence. But this apparent coherence is generated via repetition of words—indexing an inability to escape a narrow lexical repertoire—a pattern we term the <jats:italic>perseveration paradox</jats:italic> . Furthermore, first-person pronoun usage was 5.45-fold higher than in the control text, and its removal reduced coherence and increased perplexity, demonstrating that the self-pronoun ‘I’ functioned as a <jats:italic>structural scaffold</jats:italic> for Nijinsky’s thought in written text. All findings replicated on the original Russian manuscript, confirming robustness despite translation. Nijinsky’s diary is not simply a document of suffering or a record of thought disorder; it is an unwitting self-portrait of a mind condensing around a fixed, narrow repertoire of words and the concepts they stand for. </jats:p> “Beggars can’t be choosers”: Exploring service users’ perspectives on accessing charitable meal services while experiencing homelessness Highlights • Charitable meal services shape dignity through everyday organizational practices • Participatory practices in charitable meal services provide opportunities for community, despite broader structural constraints • There is a need to shift from charity to rights-based approaches to address food insecurity Abstract Charitable meal services are an essential source of nourishment for many people experiencing homelessness (PEH), yet little research has examined how everyday organizational practices shape experiences of power, dignity, and participation within these settings. Guided by the work of Paulo Freire, this critical ethnography explored how power is enacted and experienced within charitable meal services for PEH in two mid-sized Canadian cities. Data were collected through participant observation and semi-structured interviews conducted between September 2023 and April 2024. Participants described charitable meal services as essential for meeting immediate needs while highlighting how organizational practices, provider discretion, and interpersonal relationships shaped experiences of autonomy, dignity, and belonging. Three interconnected themes were identified: 1) being deprived of choice; 2) treated as “less than”; and 3) making it work. Our findings suggest that charitable meal services are more than sites of food provision but provide relational environments in which everyday organizational practices shape experiences of care, dignity, and power. While respectful, participatory practices can foster more positive experiences, lasting reductions in food insecurity require broader structural responses addressing poverty, housing affordability, and income security. By centering lived experiences of PEH, this work highlights the limitations of charity-based models and offers research, policy, and practice recommendations aimed to support more equitable and rights-based approaches.