1000 results for “Social_Experiment”
Pollster admits to fabricating data for ‘social experiment’ to expose flaws of industry
By Lucy Campbell
Wedgewood Polls said project was designed to highlight lack of scrutiny over polling sector by mainstream media
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/21/polling-fabricated-data-social-experiment
#USnews #Opinionpolls #USpolitics #Media #TheGuardian #LucyCampbell
Pollster admits to fabricating data for ‘social experiment’ to expose flaws of industry https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/21/polling-fabricated-data-social-experiment #UsNews #OpinionPolls #UsPolitics #Media
The line is doing more work than any policy paper this cycle. The conservative commentator's whole bit is a thought experiment: swap for Biden, Harris, Obama, Buttigieg, or Bessent, and picture the news media firestorm that never comes.
#BreakingNews #ForeignPolicy #News
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Bluesky expands its AI-powered Attie app to let anyone build websites, games, and more
Bluesky is bringing “social vibe coding” to its experimental Attie platform, allowing users to create interactive experiences like games, quizzes, and websites that can tap into the social network’s audience.
Clayface (2026) review – Tom Rhys Harries excels in DC’s horror experiment
Written by Will Hinton
Superhero films have dipped their toes into horror in the past, though never with full commitment. Constantine, The New Mutants, and Doctor Strange in Multiverse of Madness each attempted to balance comic-book action and the dread of horror. That was until Clayface.
James Watkins’ Clayface marks the character’s second outing in the new DC Universe, following an appearance in Creature Commandos, and the live-action feature-film debut for any iteration of the character. Centred on Matt Hagen, the film charts his rising acclaim in Hollywood, until a brutal gang attack forces him to take a dangerous experimental treatment. Hagen’s version of Clayface was made famous by Batman: The Animated Series and is here given a full-on horror makeover.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCR-rz0YfD4&pp=ygUIY2xheWZhY2XSBwkJOQwBhyohjO8%3D
Grisly, brutal and surprisingly emotional, Clayface does a stellar job at wearing many different hats. Balancing Hagen’s cinematic background with his slow descent into monstrosity, this feels like a film that understands what it is. In an era of blockbusters obscuring their true nature for mass appeal, Clayface isn’t afraid to lean into it, though still remains accessible to a general audience. Rather than allowing itself to become just a horror film though, Clayface maintains its superhero roots, with an exceptional third act fight that is electrifying on the big screen.
With some striking practical and visual effects, Watkins demonstrates an understanding of how to push an audience to the edge of their comfort zones without resorting to Terrifier–esque gross-outs. Don’t get it twisted: this film certainly has its share of gross moments. Some facial transformations look somewhat unnatural, though this is outweighed by the supremely inventive CGI kills.
Clayface’s most tense moments are enhanced by the score from Academy Award winner Volker Bertelmann. Though silence is in many ways the tension’s best ally, with quiet moments of security before a striking chord makes you jump, a Watkins signature. Rather than relying on cheap jump-scares, Watkins builds a deeply unsettling atmosphere to leave you on edge, with the odd jump-scare here and there.
Generally, the pacing is strong, wasting no time in delivering the monstrosity audiences came to see. The beginning of the second act does become repetitive, though once Clayface jumps this hurdle it moves at an exhilarating pace.
Tom Rhys Harries is a revelation, wonderfully balancing the movie-star charisma of Matt Hagen with his eventual decline into insanity. Hagen is written as a deeply conflicting character, with the film encouraging you to sympathise with him, before showing his acts of depravity. This sense of emotional whiplash and distrust plays nicely into the plot’s reliance on Hagen’s adoption of alternate appearances. Although the film moves quickly from Hagen’s stardom to rapid decline, enough time is spent building emotional investment in the character. Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini’s script allows Rhys Harries to utilise a wide palette of emotions, creating a character that leaves you unsure how to feel from start to finish.
Clayface seems to have a message about avoiding responsibility by using other identities that feels apt in today’s era of social media anonymity. Watkins uses Hagen’s assumed identities to comment on how anyone can obscure their true nature in today’s tech-centric world, bringing real-world nuance into the picture.
Naomi Ackie as Dr. Caitlyn Corr is a wonderful emotional anchor, and an interesting counterpoint to the increasingly unstable Hagen. Rather than losing relevance after Hagen’s transformation, she stays a focal point of the plot, allowing a talented actor like Ackie to shine in more emotionally taxing scenes. Max Minghella as John Borrelli (Corr’s fiancé) works well with the material he is given, though is ultimately a one-dimensional cop. Both Ackie and Minghella thrive in their interactions with Rhys Harries, as Ackie carries their chemistry believably, with Minghella’s tension always simmering in the background.
There is something within the film that feels very British. Filmed in Liverpool with a largely British cast and crew, Gotham feels like a representation of the bleakness of post-industrial urban Britain. In the tonally comparable Joker, Gotham is an imposing New York City urban environment, whereas Clayface feels more reminiscent of a British style of urban imposition. With billowing chimneys reminiscent of the steelworks of the North of England, British viewers may find Gotham unexpectedly familiar.
This is by no means a perfect horror or superhero film, but it certainly balances the pair in an excitingly fresh way. Though somewhat disconnected from the wider DCU, Clayface is certainly strong enough to stand on its own two feet. It knows how to disgust, amuse, provoke, and engross its audience. Entertaining at almost all turns, Watkins’ film demands to be seen in a busy cinema for the full horror experience.
★★★★
Clayface releases in cinemas worldwide on October 23, 2026.
Will Hinton is a second-year English Literature student and aspiring film journalist. A passionate fan of the superhero and horror genres, he enjoys exploring the stories behind the camera as much as the finished product on the screen. He is particularly interested in how films can push the boundaries of their respective genres, listing Wes Craven among his cinematic idols.
#Clayface #films #movies #review #thatfilmbloguk
https://www.europesays.com/britain/150021/ Creative Classic: HSBC charts a small business’ evolution through its elevator #advertising #B2B #banking #broadcast #campaigns #contributors #creative #CreativeMoments #education #experimental #FoodAndBeverage #Healthcare #HSBC #IndustryCreativeReviews #Law #OnlineMagazine #pr #PrIndustryReview #PrMoment #PrReviews #PrintMarketing #sectors #social #tech #technology #Video
DATE: October 23, 2026 at 09:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG
** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
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TITLE: People who believe conspiracy theories overestimate how many others agree, new research finds
Reading a conspiracy theory does more than just introduce a suspicious narrative; it also inflates a person’s estimate of how many other people believe the claim is true. According to new research published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, this exaggerated sense of public agreement may help explain why people come to accept conspiracy theories after encountering them. In one of the experiments, showing people concrete statistical data about how few others actually endorsed these claims reduced their own belief in them.
Conspiracy theories are explanations for events that assume multiple actors are secretly working together to achieve a harmful or unlawful goal. When people feel uncertain about how to interpret events, they often look to others for cues on what to think or do. Psychologists refer to these cues as descriptive norms, which are perceptions of how common a particular belief or behavior is within a group. Relying on descriptive norms is a form of social proof, where people assume that if many others hold a view, that view is likely valid.
Although conspiracy theories frequently draw massive attention online, actual believers usually represent a minority of the broader public. Still, those who endorse these narratives often assume their views are widely shared. For example, a 2021 study of British participants found that people consistently overestimated how much their peers believed in conspiracy theories, and that thinking peers endorsed these ideas strongly predicted a person’s own belief. Similarly, a 2023 study in Turkey indicated that people who believed local conspiracy theories overestimated how many ordinary citizens and experts agreed with them.
Correcting these misperceptions can alter how people think. In a 2021 experiment with British parents, showing participants that most other parents rejected anti-vaccine conspiracy theories reduced their own endorsement of those claims. Building on this foundation, the new research was led by Jan-Willem van Prooijen, head of the Social Psychology section at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, senior researcher at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, and endowed professor of radicalization, extremism, and conspiracy thinking at Maastricht University.
He and his colleagues wanted to test whether simply encountering a conspiracy theory inflates perceived descriptive norms, and whether providing hard data on public skepticism can reduce belief in a wide variety of general conspiracy theories.
“People often encounter conspiracy theories, for instance online,” van Prooijen told PsyPost. “One problem is that extreme voices that spread conspiracy theories (e.g., online influencers) sometimes get excessive exposure. That might raise the impression that these conspiracy theories are more widely believed than is actually the case. We wanted to examine these dynamics in our research: Do conspiracy beliefs depend on how normative people think they are, and can we use these insights to develop an intervention?”
To investigate these questions, the researchers conducted six online studies totaling 2,906 participants from the United States and the United Kingdom. All six studies were preregistered, meaning the researchers publicly recorded their hypotheses and analysis plans before collecting data.
In the first pair of studies, the researchers examined the relationship between personal conspiracy beliefs and perceived norms using 300 American participants in Study 1a and 299 British participants in Study 1b. Participants rated how plausible they found 10 popular conspiracy claims, such as the idea that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an inside job by the U.S. government, on a scale from 0 to 100, and then used the same scale to estimate the average plausibility rating given by the other participants in the study.
In both countries, the actual average belief in these 10 theories was relatively low, sitting at 33.09 out of 100 in the American sample and 34.16 in the British sample. However, participants estimated the group average to be higher, guessing 39.85 in the United States and 42.30 in the United Kingdom. Those who strongly endorsed the conspiracy theories themselves were much more likely to think other participants believed them too, with strong correlations of 0.65 in the U.S. sample and 0.71 in the U.K. sample, and their estimates of the group average were less accurate than the estimates of skeptics.
The researchers also tested whether conspiracy believers saw themselves as standing out from the crowd, given that past research has linked conspiracy belief to a desire to feel unique. By comparing each person’s own rating to their estimate of the group rating, the team found that stronger believers saw the gap between their own views and the group’s as no larger than skeptics did.
These initial findings align with research covered by PsyPost in 2025, which found that individuals who are overconfident in their thinking abilities tend to hold stronger conspiracy beliefs and vastly overestimate how many others agree with them.
Because the first two studies only looked at correlations, the researchers next tested whether reading a conspiracy theory directly causes people to think the idea is popular. They recruited 505 American participants for Study 2a and 501 British participants for Study 2b. In each study, half of the participants were randomly assigned to read an anonymous blog post claiming that pharmaceutical companies secretly suppress medical cures to boost their profits, while the other half read a blog post arguing that pharmaceutical companies do not hide cures.
After reading and summarizing the text, participants rated their own belief in four statements about pharmaceutical conspiracies on a 0 to 100 scale, and estimated how the other participants in the study rated them. In the American sample, reading the conspiratorial blog post raised personal belief to an average of 61.78, compared to 49.46 among those who read the non-conspiratorial text. It also pushed estimates of other people’s belief up to 62.64, compared to 51.00 in the control group.
The British sample in Study 2b showed the same pattern. Personal belief averaged 59.78 after reading the conspiracy post versus 41.99 in the control group, while estimates of others’ beliefs rose to 60.28 compared to 46.41 in the control condition. Statistical mediation analyses were consistent with the idea that the increase in personal belief ran through this heightened sense that others believed the claim. But the reverse pattern, in which people’s newly strengthened beliefs shaped their guesses about others, also fit the data, so these analyses cannot establish which came first.
“One reason why people believe conspiracy theories is because they assume many others believe them as well,” van Prooijen explained. “Conspiracy beliefs thus spread via social influence processes. Understanding these processes can help design effective interventions to reduce conspiracy beliefs.”
To test whether changing perceived norms can directly alter conspiracy beliefs, the researchers manipulated the norm information given to participants in Studies 3 and 4. In Study 3, 501 American participants were presented with six popular conspiracy theories, such as the claim that the government uses subliminal messages on television. Half were told that “especially many” previous participants found the statements plausible, while the other half were told that “only a few” found them plausible.
This vague wording did not produce a statistically significant difference between the two groups. Participants told that many others believed the claims scored an average of 44.48 out of 100 on personal belief, compared to 41.65 among those told that few others believed them. The authors noted that words like “many” and “few” are open to personal interpretation; for instance, learning that even 10 percent of the public believes an extreme claim might still register as a large number to some people. Because this study did not measure whether participants’ sense of the norm actually shifted, the authors acknowledge another possibility: that people do not take their cues from norm information at all, and that the link seen in earlier studies reflects people projecting their own beliefs onto others.
In Study 4, the team tested whether providing specific, factual statistics would be more effective. They recruited 800 American participants and showed them eight conspiracy theories from the first study. Half of the participants saw a bar chart for each theory displaying the actual distribution of ratings from Study 1a, along with the median score and a note explaining that most participants did not find the statement plausible at all. The other half saw the conspiracy statements without any statistical data.
Providing concrete data shifted how participants viewed both the public consensus and the theories themselves. Those who saw the charts estimated the previous group’s average belief at 20.95 out of 100, compared to 38.34 among those who received no data. In turn, personal endorsement of the conspiracy theories dropped to an average of 24.06 in the group that saw the factual charts, compared to 33.70 in the control group.
“We have done two studies testing the intervention, but it only worked if we gave people factual statistical information of how few people believed a conspiracy theory,” van Prooijen noted. “If we provided more abstract information, only stating that ‘few people’ believe the theory without providing concrete numbers, the intervention did not work. It remains speculative why that is the case, but it is nevertheless informative for future interventions based on this research.”
“The practical significance is that these insights quite directly suggest an intervention to reduce conspiracy beliefs,” van Prooijen said. “We have tested the effects of exposing people to factual statistical information of how widespread belief in a particular conspiracy theory is. Such information often clarifies to people that a conspiracy theory actually is not widely endorsed at all, which decreases the likelihood that people will believe the theory themselves.”
As with all research, there are some caveats to consider when interpreting these results. Participants in brief online experiments may partly respond the way they think researchers expect, which the authors note could mean these effects are smaller in everyday life, and the “others” in these studies were fellow online participants rather than the broader population. In addition, social media algorithms and online communities can surround users with like-minded believers, creating environments where conspiracy theories genuinely are the local norm.
“It is important to keep in mind that in everyday life, these processes are likely to be more complicated,” van Prooijen said. “For instance, we examined the effects of exposing people to conspiracy theories on their perceptions of how normative belief in these theories is. But in real life, people to some extent also choose what information they wish to be exposed to. People may for instance actively search the Internet looking for conspiracy theories, and be motivated to think belief in these theories is widely shared.”
The authors also point out that factual norm interventions could backfire if applied to the rare conspiracy theories that actually are endorsed by a majority of the public, such as theories surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Future studies could examine how these social processes operate in real-world online networks and in more collectivistic cultures, where pressure to conform to group norms may be even stronger.
“An important caveat is that the intervention that we tested might only work in communities where a particular conspiracy theory is indeed not so widespread,” van Prooijen added. “Some conspiracy theories ARE widespread, for instance in the general population (e.g., about the Kennedy assassination), or in specific groups (e.g., online anti-vaccination groups). These are complications that need to be investigated further, and are important to take into account before putting these insights into practice.”
“We were excited to see that our findings almost naturally suggested an intervention, which indeed had the anticipated effects,” he continued. “At the same time, the intervention was successful in only one experiment. We need more testing to assess the effectiveness of this approach. One possible goal is to examine these issues in a longitudinal design: What is the long-term effectiveness of an intervention based on information about descriptive norms?”
The study, “Everyone Knows It’s a Hoax: The Role of Perceived Descriptive Norms in Conspiracy Beliefs,” was authored by Jan-Willem van Prooijen, Paul K. Bergmann, Vladimira Čavojová, and Jakub Šrol.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #ConspiracyTheories #Psychology #SocialPsychology #NewResearch #Misinformation #CriticalThinking #SocialInfluence #BehavioralScience #MediaLiteracy #ScienceNews
#RevueDePressive
#Contrôle #Fichage #Surveillance #IA #IArienQuiVa
> Nous publions un document prouvant que France Travail développe un outil d’IA générative, de type ChatGPT, pour le contrôle des plus de 6 millions de personnes inscrites1. Devant les risques que fait peser le déploiement d’IA génératives à des fins de contrôle social, et alors que ce projet fait figure de pilote à l’échelle nationale, nous appelons à son retrait immédiat.
https://www.laquadrature.net/2026/10/23/france-travail-experimente-une-ia-generative-de-controle/
SIGUE ⬇️
El matrimonio duró más de cinco décadas, hasta la muerte de Zimbardo.
Juntos tuvieron dos hijas, Zara y Tanya.
En total, Zimbardo tuvo tres hijos y cuatro nietos.
Christina Maslach desarrolló su propia carrera académica y es conocida, entre otros trabajos, por sus investigaciones sobre el agotamiento profesional o *burnout*.
No fue simplemente la mujer que le hizo detener un experimento: fue también una investigadora con una trayectoria propia.
Zimbardo se retiró de la docencia a tiempo completo en Stanford en 2003, aunque siguió participando en actividades académicas, conferencias y proyectos educativos.
Además de sus libros, fue uno de los creadores y presentadores de la serie educativa *Discovering Psychology*, que acercó conceptos y estudios psicológicos a estudiantes y espectadores de numerosos países.
Su carrera recibió numerosos reconocimientos, aunque su legado nunca ha estado exento de controversia.
El experimento de Stanford le dio fama mundial, pero también convirtió su trabajo en un caso habitual cuando se habla de los límites éticos de la investigación con seres humanos.
Philip Zimbardo murió el 14 de octubre de 2024, a los 91 años, en su casa de San Francisco, California, rodeado de su esposa y sus hijos, según comunicó su familia.
No se hizo pública una causa de muerte.
Con él desapareció una figura influyente de la psicología social, recordada tanto por sus investigaciones como por las discusiones que provocaron.
Su historia deja preguntas que siguen siendo relevantes: cuánto influyen los grupos en nuestras decisiones, qué responsabilidad tienen las instituciones cuando se producen abusos y hasta dónde puede llegar la autoridad cuando nadie se atreve a cuestionarla.
Pero también deja una advertencia para quienes estudian el comportamiento humano: una experiencia impactante no siempre constituye una prueba científica definitiva.
Para entender a las personas hacen falta observación, rigor, contraste y la disposición a revisar incluso las conclusiones más conocidas.
Porque estudiar la conducta humana no consiste únicamente en descubrir de qué somos capaces.
También exige preguntarse cómo se obtuvieron esas respuestas y qué precio pagaron quienes participaron en la investigación.
▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣▣
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwmuvCytcd4 ➡️𝐸𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑎 𝑎 𝑃𝘩𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑝 𝑍𝑖𝑚𝑏𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑜
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7LmJn5BnAY ➡️𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑙𝑒𝑟
#philipzimbardo #psicología #psicologíasocial #experimentodestanford #historiadelapsicología #comportamientohumano #historiareal #cienciayética #memoriahistorica
Cryochemistry by G. B. Sergeev; V. A. Batyuk
This is the first Soviet monograph on the cryochemistry and related subjects. Written by leading Soviet authorities in the field, it covers low-temperature homogeneous and heterogeneous reactions involving gases and liquids, experimental apparatus and techniques, radical and ion reactions in frozen solid, low-temperature polymerisation, chain reactions, spontaneous low-temperature reactions, kinetic models for cryogenic chemical reactions in the solid phase, reactions in multi-component frozen systems, biochemical reactions at sub-zero and low temperatures, and applications of low temperatures in science and technology. The book will be of interest to those concerned with cryochemistry and cryogenics of all levels of sophistication.
Professor Gleb B. Sergeev, D.Sc., a leading Soviet authority on chemical kinetics, is a disciple and follower of N. N. Semenov, a Nobel Prize Laureate. His scientific interests lie basically in the field of chemical kinetics and low-temperature chemistry. He has penned over 200 publications on chemical kinetics and physical chemistry. At present, he is deputy dean of the Chemical Department at Moscow University. In 1976, he was awarded the Lomonosov Prize for his work in cryochemistry.
Vladimir A. Batyuk, Cand.Sc., is a senior research worker at the Chemical Department, Moscow University. He is mainly interested in chemical and biochemical reactions at low temperatures. He has published over 80 papers on the subject. In 1978–79, he worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology within the framework of a USSR-US scientific exchange program.
Translated from the Russian by B. V. Kuznetsov
You can get the book here and here
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DATE: October 22, 2026 at 03:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG
** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
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TITLE: Haunted houses may bring people closer, but psychological research suggests the bonding really happens on the ride home
A new study published in the journal Emotion provides evidence that visiting a haunted house with others is linked to feeling more connected to them. People who felt more scared, and who held hands or made physical contact, were more likely to say the experience brought them closer, though before-and-after closeness ratings barely changed, and interviews suggested that talking about the experience afterward may be where much of the bonding happens.
Humans are highly social creatures, and forming bonds with others is strongly linked to overall health and psychological well-being. Scientists have gathered substantial evidence showing that sharing positive emotions, like laughing at a comedy show or cheering at a concert, amplifies interpersonal closeness. A separate line of research suggests that negative emotions, specifically fear, also push people to seek out the company of others. When people face a common threat, they often prefer to face it together rather than alone.
Beyond simply seeking company, shared emotional arousal can create a sense of unity. Previous studies indicate that fear can spread from person to person, synchronizing heart rates and potentially reinforcing group cohesion. Most previous experiments exploring the link between fear and social bonding relied on artificial laboratory settings or situations involving genuine threats. The researchers wanted to investigate how fear affects relationships in a recreational context, where the threat is entirely simulated.
Jane Wiley conducted this research as an undergraduate student at the University of Florida and is now an incoming social psychology doctoral student at the University of Virginia. The project grew out of a passion Wiley shares with their faculty advisor and the study’s senior author, Lawton K. “Ken” Swan.
“He and I are huge horror and haunted house fans,” Wiley told PsyPost. “We have shared plenty of stories (and have heard many others from haunted house guests) of how going through a haunted house together can be a strong bonding experience.”
Wiley noted that anecdotal success stories served as inspiration for the project. “A first date he had at Halloween Horror Nights led to a happy marriage, and I got very close with a best friend — Garrett Johnson, another author of the paper — after we went through a haunted house together,” they said. “This interpersonal focus had not been researched in recreational fear literature when we began, so that was what drew us to studying what we did.”
Millions of people seek out recreational fear every year by riding roller coasters, watching horror movies, or visiting haunted attractions. The scientists designed this project to test whether the fear experienced in these playful, safe environments translates into stronger social ties. They wanted to know if the temporary thrill of a scare can generate a lasting sense of interpersonal warmth among friends, family members, and acquaintances.
To explore these ideas, Wiley and their colleagues at the University of Florida conducted a series of five studies over three Halloween seasons at a commercial haunted attraction in Florida, the Gainesville Fear Garden. In the first study, the team surveyed 986 attraction attendees immediately after they finished a sensory deprivation haunted house. The participants answered questions on a 7-point scale regarding how much fear they felt, how much they enjoyed the attraction, and whether the experience brought them closer to the person in their group they already felt closest to. The researchers also asked if participants communicated or held hands with their companion during the event.
About 48 percent of participants agreed that the experience brought them closer to their companion. Higher levels of reported fear predicted a stronger feeling of having bonded, with each additional point of fear on the 7-point scale associated with about a fifth of a point higher rating on the bonding question. Holding hands, communicating during the event, and enjoying the experience also predicted higher ratings. This provided preliminary, correlational evidence that shared fear in a fun setting is linked to feeling closer.
To verify these findings and look for measurable changes, the researchers conducted a second study with 500 participants during the next Halloween season. This time, guests completed surveys both immediately before and right after navigating the attraction. This method allowed the scientists to measure shifts in interpersonal closeness. As in the first study, participants were asked to focus on the person in their group they felt closest to.
Once again, the amount of fear a person felt predicted how much they believed the experience brought them closer to their companion, with 58 percent agreeing that the attraction brought them closer. Yet, when the scientists looked at the direct difference between the before and after closeness ratings, they found no measurable change: participants rated closeness at an average of 6.27 out of 7 before entering and 6.12 after exiting. The researchers suspected a ceiling effect, meaning that because these participants already rated their relationship so highly before entering the attraction, there was very little mathematical room for their closeness score to increase on a 7-point scale.
For the third study, the researchers adjusted their focus to see if the bonding effect applied to less intimate relationships. They surveyed 554 participants, asking them to focus on the group member they felt the least close to, or someone they argued with most often. Participants were asked if the attraction brought them closer to this specific person, how much fear they felt, and if they made any physical contact.
The scientists found that fear and physical contact remained strong predictors of feeling brought together, even for the least close companions. Approximately 45 percent of participants agreed that the experience made them feel closer to their least close group member. When asked about their party as a whole, an even higher percentage, about 64 percent, felt the experience brought their entire group closer. This suggests that the link between fear and feeling closer is not limited to already-close relationships, and the authors suggest the effect may be even stronger at the group level, though the group and individual figures came from different questions.
In the fourth study, the only one that was preregistered, the researchers again attempted to capture a measurable shift in closeness from before to after the haunted house. They maintained their focus on least close companions to avoid the ceiling effect seen in earlier attempts. The researchers collected complete survey data from 263 attendees who rated their closeness to their least close groupmate before entering and then again after exiting. The team also asked the participants to rate their fear, enjoyment, and physical contact during the immersive 30-minute experience.
The predictive model held up for a fourth time, with fear, physical contact, and enjoyment all predicting perceptions of enhanced closeness. Additionally, the researchers finally detected a statistically significant increase in closeness ratings from before the experience to afterward, rising from 4.61 before entering to 4.81 after exiting, an average increase of just 0.21 points on a 7-point scale. This modest change raised questions about why about half of participants said the experience brought them closer, even though their numerical closeness ratings barely moved.
“Our most surprising finding was when we kept seeing no pre-to-post change in closeness, prior to figuring out that post-haunt reflection is essential for bonding to occur,” Wiley noted.
Wiley added that this lack of initial change was difficult to interpret at first. “This ultimately ended up being a good obstacle to encounter since it led us to transition to qualitative data collection (which helped us deduce the post-experience reflection bit), but it was hard to make sense of at the time,” Wiley said. “So I would say the most surprising finding is that going through a haunted house together alone, without the time to talk and laugh afterwards, does not seem to be sufficient for significant bonding.”
To understand this paradox, the researchers conducted a fifth and final study consisting of face-to-face qualitative interviews. Qualitative research involves gathering non-numerical data, such as conversational responses, to understand underlying concepts, opinions, and motivations. The researchers interviewed 20 guests right after they completed the haunted house and the quantitative survey. They asked the participants what feeling closer meant to them and why their numerical scores might not have changed despite reporting a stronger bond.
In the interviews, 16 of the 20 attendees said that talking, laughing, and swapping stories about the scares afterward, such as on the car ride home, played a central role in making them feel closer. Fourteen described the novelty of the experience as part of its appeal, and many said that relying on one another while blindfolded or frightened created a sense of vulnerability. Twelve commented on the survey itself: some said they had not yet had time to process the experience, and several said they had not distinguished between their overall closeness and their closeness in that moment when answering the questions.
“Haunted houses seem to have the ability to make two people feel closer together, whether these two people were previously very close or not,” Wiley explained. “In other words, going through a haunted attraction with either your best friend or your annoying coworker will likely prove to be beneficial to the relationship. However, this link is quite contingent on what you and that other person do after the experience.”
Wiley emphasized that what happens after the scare may matter most. “Post-haunt reflection is important to the process of bonding: the haunted house on its own may not do much to strengthen the relationship, but if you talk, reminisce, and laugh about the experience afterwards, you’ll probably feel more bonded with that person,” they said.
As with all research, there are some caveats to consider. All five studies took place at one attraction whose format changed from year to year, and none compared haunted house visitors with people doing a non-scary activity together, so the studies cannot show that fear itself, rather than simply sharing a fun outing, drives the sense of bonding. Closeness was measured with single survey items, only the fourth study was preregistered, and in the interviews, participants were told about the earlier null results before being asked to explain them.
“As there is with any study, ours certainly had limitations,” Wiley noted. “We used convenience samples of people who were already at the haunted house, so not only were race, ability, and income unevenly distributed, but our conclusions can only really be generalized to people who would normally show up at a haunted house with their friends or family (this is a double-edged sword though — we’re interested in recreational fear, so we are particularly interested in people who seek out these experiences on their own time anyway).”
Environmental factors during the surveys might have also influenced the data. “We were surveying people inside the bar of the haunted house, which was a pretty chaotic and high-traffic space: the music was loud, people were drinking, and participants filled out surveys side-by-side with other participants, who in some cases were the people they came with,” Wiley explained. “So it was definitely not a distraction-free environment we were collecting data in, which may have impacted responses. We also only examined the impact of haunted houses in particular, so we cannot make these same conclusions yet about other forms of recreational fear, like horror movies or extreme sports.”
Scaring people together is not a guaranteed relationship fix. Across the studies, only about half of participants agreed the haunted house brought them closer, and a notable minority disagreed. The authors speculate that shared fear might strain a relationship when people’s fear responses are badly mismatched or one person feels unsupported, and they propose that recreational fear may act as an interpersonal stress test: responding to a frightened companion with comfort and humor could reinforce a bond, while failing to do so could weaken it.
Expanding the research could yield useful insights into how shared emotional intensity shapes human connection over time. “We would definitely like to expand on this study, particularly adding an experimental manipulation where some participants have time for post-experience reflection while others don’t, in order to investigate the cause-and-effect relationship,” Wiley said. “We’d also like to see if this bonding pattern exists for other forms of recreational fear.”
The study, “Haunted Attraction: The Effects of Recreational Fear on Interpersonal Bonding,” was authored by Jane K. Wiley, Alexa A. Rivers, Otho Garrett Johnson, Cristina S. Negraru, Jake T. Watson, Tara M. Perreault, Rebecca Martin, Sara C. Slayton, Steffano I. Segovia-Palacios, Benjamin R. Stanisky, Kate E. Doherty, and Lawton K. Swan.
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A Look Back at X-Men 2099 #23 (1995)
Disclaimer: This is my original work with details sourced from reading the comic book and doing personal research. Anyone who wants to use this article, in part or in whole, needs to secure first my permission and agree to cite me as the source and author. Let it be known that any unauthorized use of this article will constrain the author to pursue the remedies under R.A. No. 8293, the Revised Penal Code, and/or all applicable legal actions under the laws of the Philippines.
Welcome back, superhero enthusiasts, 1990s culture enthusiasts, X-Men fans and comic book collectors! Today we revisit the Marvel Comics shared universe through one of the many tales of the X-Men 2099 monthly series.
Having taken over the United States as its President, Doom 2099’s impact was undeniably felt even though his appearances in X-Men 2099 issues #21 and #22 were pretty short. Along the way, members of the futuristic X-Men are gradually making their way back together. While Meanstreak and Krystalin have reunited and left Las Vegas, the trio of Skullfire, Shakti and Luna pursue a dangerous mission to get back Xi’an who has officially joined the Theater of Pain led by the demonic Brimstone Love.
With those details laid down, here is a look back at X-Men 2099 #23, published by Marvel Comics in 1995 with a story written by John Francis Moore and drawn by Ron Lim.
The cover.Early story
The story begins with Junkpile who was recently rescued by Doom’s team and restored to functioning status. Doom’s minister of humanity Morphine Somers informs him that he has the chance to join SHIELD (the elite security force of the nation) and operate autonomously and with full administrative sanction. Suddenly, Doom himself appears and convinces Junkpile to calm down and formally join SHIELD.
Over at Death Valley, Skullfire, Shakti and Luna are disguised and traveling with the many disenfranchised people (the ones discarded and unwanted by society) heading to the floodgate bio-resource processing center. Even though the odds are tremendous, the three of them are determined to find their former leader Xi’an and save him from the Theater of Pain.
Upon arriving at the floodgate facility filled with armed guards and handlers, Skullfire, Shakti and Luna join the line for processing. Watching from a distance is Xi’an who is now operating as Controller X…
Quality
Pay attention to the details closely. In 2099, human lives can be disregarded or turned into something else.Apart from the obvious fact that this particular story is part of the build-up towards the events of issue #25, this comic book carries a fundamental expansion of the lore of America of 2099. As the theme of mega corporations taking over America has been a core element of Marvel 2099, this X-Men 2099 tale further explores what happens to the social outcasts and unwanted people, and why the self-declared authorities have such power to have each of them processed under heavy surveillance.
Even without resources, Skullfire, Shakti and Luna push through with their very dangerous mission.Through words and images, the Moore-Lim duo gave readers a really dark look at how human lives got turned into commodities by those who wield a lot of power in 2099 America. Some people who got processed end up being subjects for medical experimentation, others are groomed for private pleasure dens while the best ones are prepared for the use of the Theater of Pain. That said, Xi’an being part of the Theater of Pain as Controller X really strikes hard at the foundation of the futuristic X-Men who have been struggling a lot since he left them.
More on the plot itself, the X-Men are the underdogs and they really don’t have much resources nor a solid strategy to get to Xi’an while dealing with the dangerous forces of Brimstone Love and the Theater of Pain. Fortunately for them, there are a few others who have the means to take on the Theater of Pain directly.
Conclusion
Junkpile joins SHIELD in the presence of Doom 2099.X-Men 2099 #23 (1995) is another engaging read and it nicely sets the stage for the inevitable big story in issue #25. The odds are really up against the X-Men whose three members are truly determined to get Xi’an back believing there is hope for him to turn away from the Theater of Pain. Bigger than the story itself is the presentation about the immense power others have over the people and why being a social outcast can be very dangerous. That said, I am looking forward to the next issue and see how it connects with issue #25.
Overall, X-Men 2099 #23 (1995) is recommended.
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DATE: October 21, 2026 at 12:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG
** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
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TITLE: Your posture may change how much pain you feel
URL: https://www.psypost.org/your-posture-may-change-how-much-pain-you-feel/
A new study published in Psychophysiology indicates that people are somewhat less sensitive to pain while lying down than while standing upright. The researchers propose that this reflects shifts in blood volume and blood pressure as the body adjusts to gravity, which may help explain why lying down eases acute discomfort. They also suggest the same relief could encourage inactivity in people with chronic pain, an idea the study did not test directly.
The human cardiovascular system does more than circulate oxygen and nutrients; it also helps regulate how the nervous system processes physical discomfort. Embedded within the walls of major blood vessels, such as the carotid arteries in the neck and the aorta near the heart, as well as inside the heart chambers and lungs, are microscopic stretch sensors called baroreceptors. When blood volume increases or blood pressure rises, the walls of these vessels expand, stretching the baroreceptors. Once stretched, these sensors send neural signals to the brain that slow the heart and relax blood vessels while simultaneously triggering pain-inhibiting pathways in the central nervous system.
Because of this built-in dampening mechanism, higher blood pressure tends to be accompanied by reduced sensitivity to physical pain. Early evidence from a 1994 human experiment demonstrated that artificially stimulating neck baroreceptors with gentle suction dulled pain reflexes and lowered how much pain participants reported feeling. Building on that work, a 2009 clinical study showed that giving medication to raise blood pressure in people with chronically low blood pressure reduced their pain sensitivity.
This link between the circulatory system and pain processing even extends beyond physical sensation. For instance, a study covered by PsyPost in 2019 found that higher resting blood pressure was associated with lower self-reported sensitivity to social pain and rejection. Closer to physical pain, a 2021 study of fibromyalgia patients by Reyes del Paso and colleagues found that individuals whose baroreceptors were less responsive to blood pressure changes experienced worse daily pain, fatigue, and anxiety.
Despite these established findings in psychophysiology, lead study author Gustavo A. Reyes del Paso, a full professor of psychophysiology at the University of Jaén in Spain, noted that “the general public is unaware that an increase in blood pressure has an inhibitory effect on pain: people with hypertension report fewer pain complaints, whereas those with chronic low blood pressure are more sensitive to pain.”
Recognizing that blood flow alters pain sensitivity, Reyes del Paso and his colleagues in Spain and Austria wanted to test whether everyday changes in body posture naturally move enough blood to change how much pain people feel. When a person stands up, gravity pulls blood down into the legs, reducing blood return to the heart and temporarily lowering blood pressure and baroreceptor stretching. When a person lies flat on their back, blood flows easily back to the chest, increasing the volume of blood pumped with each beat and stretching the baroreceptors, which the researchers hypothesized would dampen pain sensitivity.
“Changes in body posture alter blood pressure (it decreases during standing up and increases during lying down), so they may also affect pain,” Reyes del Paso told PsyPost. “We wanted to probe this hypothesis. Also, patients with chronic pain usually are very sedentary (i.e., have kinesiophobia) and are lying down much of the time. Is there a cause for that?”
In clinical settings, kinesiophobia refers to an excessive, debilitating fear of physical movement and activity resulting from a feeling of vulnerability to painful injury. To test how posture affects pain and circulation, the researchers recruited 83 healthy university students, consisting of 61 women and 22 men with an average age of about 20 years. None of the participants had cardiovascular conditions or chronic pain, and all abstained from pain medications for 24 hours and alcohol or vigorous exercise for three hours beforehand. Women taking oral contraceptives were excluded because synthetic hormones alter both blood pressure regulation and pain sensitivity, which could obscure the natural effects of posture.
During the experiment, the researchers measured cardiovascular activity and pain perception while participants assumed three postures: sitting, standing upright, and lying flat on their backs. The sequence included an initial sitting phase, a first standing phase, a lying down phase, and a second standing phase, with cardiovascular measurements recorded across four-minute intervals in each position. Pain testing was carried out during sitting, lying down, and the second standing phase, and the study protocol was publicly registered before data collection began.
To measure pain in a controlled way, the team used a computer-guided pressure algometer, a device that applies steadily increasing mechanical pressure to a one-square-centimeter area on the third fingernail of the left hand. The researchers recorded two behavioral thresholds: the pain threshold, defined as the pressure at which the participant first began to feel pain, and pain tolerance, defined as the maximum pressure the participant could endure. Participants also received five-second pressure stimuli ranging from 1.5 to 4 kilograms per square centimeter and rated how painful each press felt on a 10-centimeter visual scale from painless to extremely painful.
Throughout these postures, participants wore chest electrodes to record an electrocardiogram, which tracks the timing between heartbeats, and an impedance cardiogram, a non-invasive method that uses mild electrical currents across the chest to estimate blood flow volume. Continuous blood pressure sensors on the fingers of the right hand were calibrated every minute with an upper-arm cuff.
From these recordings, the team tracked blood pressure, heartbeat intervals, stroke volume (the blood pumped per beat), cardiac output (the blood pumped per minute), total peripheral resistance (how tightly constricted the blood vessels are), and baroreflex sensitivity, which measures how effectively the heart adjusts its beat timing in response to blood pressure shifts.
The results supported the hypothesis that lying down dulls pain sensitivity compared to standing upright. Participants exhibited higher pain thresholds while lying down than when standing, and their maximum pain tolerance was higher while lying down than during both standing and sitting. Across the sample, average pain thresholds varied only modestly between 3.4 and 3.6 kilograms per square centimeter across postures, and the authors noted that the clinical relevance of these small differences remains uncertain.
Subjective pain intensity ratings followed a similar pattern once the applied pressure crossed that threshold into actual pain. At the highest pressure of 4 kilograms per square centimeter, participants rated the sensation as more painful while standing than while either sitting or lying down. At 3 and 3.5 kilograms per square centimeter, standing also produced higher pain ratings than sitting. Contrary to the researchers’ hypothesis, for lighter pressures between 1.5 and 2.5 kilograms per square centimeter, ratings were slightly higher while lying down than sitting, though the authors noted that pressures below 3.4 kilograms may not have been perceived as painful by most participants.
The cardiovascular recordings confirmed that shifting postures produced substantial changes in blood flow and pressure regulation. When participants moved from sitting to the first standing period, their systolic blood pressure dropped from an average of 109.36 to 104.97 millimeters of mercury, and their stroke volume fell from 73.39 to 63.61 milliliters per beat. When they lay flat on their backs, systolic blood pressure rose to 111.33 millimeters of mercury, stroke volume climbed to 89.47 milliliters, and baroreflex sensitivity nearly tripled from 11.52 while standing to 30.35 milliseconds per millimeter of mercury while lying down, which the authors interpret as stronger heart-slowing nervous system activity.
When the researchers analyzed how baseline cardiovascular traits while sitting predicted pain responses, they found that mean arterial blood pressure was inversely linked to pain intensity ratings. Participants with higher resting blood pressure tended to rate the presses as less painful, a pattern that appeared at every pressure level when stimuli came in random order and at three of six levels when they increased step by step.
Total peripheral resistance, or the tightness of the blood vessels, was positively associated with both pain threshold and pain tolerance across the entire group, suggesting that blood vessel constriction may play a role in dampening pain. Stroke volume, cardiac output, heart rate, and baroreflex sensitivity, the measures that shifted most with posture, were not linked to any of the pain measures.
The researchers also observed distinct differences between men and women in both pain and circulatory measurements. Men had higher overall blood pressure, greater blood vessel resistance, and higher pain thresholds and pain tolerance than women, although men and women gave similar subjective pain intensity ratings on the visual scale. In addition, higher blood pressure was directly associated with a higher pain threshold in men, with correlation coefficients ranging from 0.43 to 0.47, whereas this specific association was not statistically significant in women, though the male subsample included only 22 participants.
The authors noted that lying down appears to be an intuitive, functional behavior for easing acute physical pain, which they attribute to greater blood return to the heart and stronger stimulation of pain-blocking baroreceptors. At the same time, they pointed out that this biological mechanism could have unintended drawbacks for people with chronic pain conditions.
“The reduction in pain during lying down could be a mechanism explaining the typical sedentarism and low physical activity in chronic pain patients, in which bed rest is considered counterproductive for pain rehabilitation, as this inhibitory effect can negatively reinforce inactivity by reducing pain,” Reyes del Paso explained.
“If you feel an acute pain, the maintenance of a lying down posture will help alleviate the pain,” he added. “However, if a person suffers from chronic pain, he/she should avoid the frequent use of a supine position, because it reinforces inactivity and in the medium and long term can aggravate the pain problem.”
As with all research, there are some caveats to consider when interpreting the results. The study sample consisted entirely of young, healthy university students who generally had low-to-normal resting blood pressure, and nearly three-quarters of the participants were women. Because the pain-dampening effects of blood pressure are typically strongest in people with elevated or high-normal blood pressure, the modest effects observed here might differ in older adults, people with hypertension, or patients living with chronic pain syndromes. The idea that pain relief while lying down reinforces inactivity in chronic pain is the authors’ hypothesis, and the study did not test it.
In addition, the links between blood pressure and pain were measured only while participants were seated, by comparing people with one another. The study did not test whether each person’s blood pressure changes across postures explained their own changes in pain.
Another detail to keep in mind is that the researchers did not randomize the order of the postures, meaning every participant went through the sitting, lying, and standing phases in the exact same sequence. When participants stood up for the second time, directly after lying down, which is when standing pain was measured, their blood pressure did not drop as it had during the first standing phase, averaging 110.30 millimeters of mercury. The authors explained that standing up from a flat position causes a bigger, faster shift of blood toward the legs than standing up from a chair, which likely triggered a rapid reflex that kept blood pressure from dropping. They suggest this may have weakened the posture effect on pain.
Looking ahead, the research team plans to directly investigate how these postural mechanisms operate in clinical populations. “We are going to replicate this study in individuals with chronic pain disorders, such as fibromyalgia or chronic back pain,” Reyes del Paso said.
The study, “Body Posture-Related Differences in Pain Perception and Their Mediation by Cardiovascular Factors,” was authored by Gustavo A. Reyes del Paso, Dolores Santiago, Belén Moreno, Casandra I. Montoro, Stefan Duschek, and Dmitry M. Davydov.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/your-posture-may-change-how-much-pain-you-feel/
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DATE: October 23, 2026 at 10:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG
** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
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TITLE: Testosterone may help new brain cells survive, and timing could matter
URL: https://www.psypost.org/testosterone-may-help-new-brain-cells-survive-and-timing-could-matter/
New research in male rats suggests that the timing and duration of testosterone exposure may influence whether newly born brain cells survive to maturity. The study, published in Neuroscience, indicates that testosterone may be most effective at boosting the survival of young neurons during the later stages of their development, particularly within a part of the hippocampus involved in spatial learning and memory. These findings offer new insight into how male sex hormones support brain plasticity in adulthood.
Adult neurogenesis is the biological process by which the mature brain generates new functional nerve cells, or neurons, from dividing stem cells. This process takes place largely inside the hippocampus, a seahorse-shaped structure located deep within the brain’s temporal lobe that is essential for learning, memory formation, and stress regulation. Specifically, new cells are born along a thin band of tissue called the subgranular zone, located within a subregion of the hippocampus known as the dentate gyrus.
Once these precursor cells divide, they migrate into the neighboring granule cell layer and begin extending communication fibers to other parts of the hippocampus. Over several weeks, the surviving cells mature into functional neurons that are highly excitable and adaptable, helping the brain form new circuits and store new memories. However, roughly half of all newly generated cells in the hippocampus naturally die off within the first month before they can fully integrate into the brain’s network.
Hormones are among the major internal factors that regulate how many of these young cells survive. Testosterone, the primary male sex hormone, naturally declines as men age, and low circulating levels of the hormone are associated with an elevated risk of age-related memory decline and dementia, although results from clinical trials testing testosterone treatment for memory in older men have been mixed. In the body and brain, testosterone can act directly on androgen receptors or be converted by enzymes into other active hormones, such as estradiol, a form of estrogen, or dihydrotestosterone, a potent androgen.
“Growing clinical evidence has shown that testosterone can improve or sustain memory in aging men, potentially reducing the risk and severity of age-related memory loss, including Alzheimer’s disease,” senior study author Mark D. Spritzer, a professor of biology at Middlebury College, told PsyPost. “One mechanism by which testosterone may be having these effects is by acting as a neuroprotectant in the brain. The hippocampus is a region of the brain that is essential for learning and memory, and it is an area that degrades with age.”
Previous experiments in male rats have shown that removing the testes, and with them the main source of testosterone, does not change the rate at which new hippocampal cells are born, but it substantially reduces how many of those new cells survive. Restoring testosterone through daily injections for 30 consecutive days reliably rescues these young neurons. In contrast, several studies using shorter treatment windows of 15 to 21 days found no benefit for cell survival, while a recent experiment by the same research group showed that a brief five-day burst of testosterone given between days 11 and 15 after cell birth did improve survival.
This pattern raised questions about whether testosterone needs to build up over a full month to protect new neurons, or if young cells are simply more sensitive to the hormone during specific developmental stages. Between 11 and 30 days after birth, maturing neurons go through a sensitive window where they begin forming active connections, or synapses, with other brain regions. During this same timeframe, chemical signals from a neurotransmitter called GABA shift from exciting the young cells to inhibiting them, a transition that promotes proper maturation.
“We had previously shown that testosterone injections can improve levels of adult neurogenesis (proliferation and maturation of new neurons) within the hippocampus,” Spritzer explained. “However, we did not know whether or not specific periods of neuron development were more strongly influenced by testosterone. Therefore, the current experiment involved giving rats testosterone during different stages of neural development to assess the effects on adult neurogenesis. The ultimate goal is to better understand how testosterone influences the brain and cognition.”
To resolve the contradictions in earlier work, Spritzer, lead author Tatum W. Hamilton, and their colleagues at Middlebury College designed an experiment to test how different windows of testosterone exposure affect neuron survival at 30 days of age. They directly compared a full 30-day treatment against two 15-day treatments covering either the first half or the second half of the cells’ 30-day maturation period.
The researchers worked with 43 adult male Sprague-Dawley rats that were approximately 60 days old at the start of the study. All rats were housed individually to control for social variables, as prior work showed that testosterone’s effects on the brain are easier to detect in individually housed animals. One week after arriving at the laboratory, all of the rats underwent surgical castration to remove their natural source of testosterone, allowing the scientists to precisely control hormone levels through injections.
Eleven days after surgery, every rat received a single abdominal injection of bromodeoxyuridine, a synthetic compound commonly known as BrdU. When cells divide, they incorporate BrdU into their newly synthesized DNA, which permanently tags the exact batch of cells born during the brief window after the injection. By waiting 30 days and then counting how many BrdU-tagged cells remain in the brain, scientists can measure the survival rate of that specific generation of cells.
Starting the day after the BrdU injection, the rats were divided into six groups of six to eight animals each. Half of the groups received daily injections of testosterone propionate at a high physiological dose of 0.500 milligrams per rat; earlier work by the same group found that a lower dose of 0.125 milligrams had no effect on new neuron survival. The other half received inert sesame oil injections as a comparison control. These injections were administered during one of three time windows following the BrdU tag: an early period (days 1 to 15), a late period (days 16 to 30), or the full period (days 1 to 30).
On day 31, the researchers collected blood samples to verify hormone levels and extracted the rats’ brains for microscopic analysis. They sliced the entire hippocampus into thin sections and used chemical staining techniques to make the BrdU-tagged cells visible under a light microscope. A researcher who was blinded to which treatment each rat received counted the labeled cells across the granule cell layer and subgranular zone, as well as in an adjacent area called the hilus to check whether any changes were specific to the neurogenic zone.
The team also divided their cell counts between the dorsal (top/front) and ventral (bottom/back) portions of the dentate gyrus, because these two zones serve different functions. The dorsal hippocampus is primarily involved in spatial navigation and memory, whereas the ventral hippocampus mainly regulates stress and anxiety. Finally, using a laser-scanning confocal microscope and fluorescent markers, the researchers examined 50 randomly selected BrdU-tagged cells per rat to see how many also contained NeuN, a nuclear protein found in mature neurons.
Blood tests confirmed that rats receiving testosterone during the late period and the full 30-day period had elevated serum testosterone concentrations at the end of the experiment, averaging about 5.7 nanograms per milliliter, compared to less than 0.3 nanograms per milliliter in the oil-treated groups and the early-period testosterone group, which had stopped receiving hormone injections 16 days earlier.
Across the entire dentate gyrus, rats treated with testosterone had higher numbers of surviving BrdU-labeled cells in the neurogenic zone than rats given oil. Planned statistical comparisons between the hormone and oil groups within each time window showed that only the full 30-day testosterone treatment produced a statistically significant increase across the whole structure. Rats given testosterone during the late window (days 16 to 30) showed a trend toward higher cell survival across the whole dentate gyrus that fell just short of statistical significance, while early treatment (days 1 to 15) had no effect.
“The results suggest that testosterone may have an additive effect, which is a novel finding,” Spritzer noted. “Namely, longer exposure to testosterone increased neurogenesis to a greater degree.”
When the researchers examined the dorsal and ventral regions separately, a more specific pattern emerged. In the dorsal dentate gyrus, testosterone increased cell survival in both the full 30-day group and the late 16-to-30-day group, while the early 1-to-15-day group showed no benefit over oil injections. In the ventral dentate gyrus, testosterone had no effect on cell survival during any of the three treatment windows, although rats injected during the early period unexpectedly had fewer surviving cells in this region than rats injected during the late or full periods regardless of whether they received hormone or oil.
Fluorescent microscopy confirmed that roughly 79 to 87 percent of the surviving BrdU-tagged cells had matured into NeuN-positive neurons across all groups, regardless of whether the rats received testosterone or oil. Because the hormone did not alter the proportion of new cells that became neurons, the higher BrdU counts can be read as a greater number of surviving new neurons. No treatment differences were found in the overall tissue volume of the dentate gyrus or in cell counts within the neighboring hilus region.
Together, these results suggest that maturing neurons in the dorsal hippocampus are especially responsive to testosterone when they are between two and four weeks old. Because the dorsal hippocampus governs spatial learning, the authors note that this regional sensitivity aligns with past behavioral experiments showing that testosterone improves spatial working memory in male rats. The hormone may help preserve new cells during this late window by blocking programmed cell death, boosting supportive growth proteins like brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or aiding the transition of GABA signals as young neurons wire into existing brain circuits.
“We demonstrated that testosterone enhances adult neurogenesis, with the effects being strongest during the later stages of neuronal development,” Spritzer said. “These results suggest that testosterone may be a useful therapeutic target for helping to sustain neuroplasticity, among men in particular.”
There are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting these findings. First, the experiment was conducted in surgically castrated young adult rats housed in social isolation, which does not mirror the gradual, partial hormone decline experienced by aging men in daily life. Second, the blood and brain tissue were collected 24 hours after the final testosterone injection for the full and late groups, but 16 days after the final injection for the early group. The authors raise the possibility that this gap helps explain why early treatment showed no benefit, but note that this explanation would require new cells to die off at a steady rate throughout development, which earlier research does not support.
“This was preclinical research conducted with rats, so it cannot be extrapolated directly to humans,” Spritzer cautioned. “However, it is suggestive that testosterone may have therapeutic value. Of importance was that we used a high physiological dose of testosterone, and the effects of dose levels have not been considered carefully in past human clinical studies involving testosterone.”
Spritzer also pointed out that boosting cell survival without limit is not necessarily the goal. “One challenge with neurogenesis research is the assumption that more is always better,” he added. “There is likely an optimal level of adult neurogenesis for best brain functioning.”
In addition, the overall statistical analysis did not show that testosterone’s effect differed across the three time windows, so the conclusions about timing rest on separate comparisons within each window, each involving only six to eight rats per group. The study also did not directly measure the molecular pathways inside the cells, so it remains uncertain whether testosterone acted through androgen receptors, estrogen receptors, or downstream growth factors during that 16-to-30-day window. Nor did it test whether the extra neurons translated into better learning or memory. Future research will need to test these specific molecular mechanisms and examine whether similar timing effects apply to older animals or females.
“Now that we know more about the stages of neural development that are influenced by testosterone, assessing the molecular mechanism will be important,” Spritzer said. “Testosterone is metabolized in the brain and likely has many effects on neuronal development, which should be explored.”
The study, “Effects of testosterone upon the survival of new neurons in the dentate gyrus of adult male rats,” was authored by Tatum W. Hamilton, Ezra J. LeMole, Grace K. Nadecki, Jordan M. Gardner, Quinn P. Kennedy, Kathryn A. Blek, and Mark D. Spritzer.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/testosterone-may-help-new-brain-cells-survive-and-timing-could-matter/
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DATE: October 23, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG
** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
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TITLE: LSD pushes brain activity toward a more fractal, complex state, study finds
URL: https://www.psypost.org/lsd-pushes-brain-activity-toward-a-more-fractal-complex-state-study-finds/
A new neuroimaging study indicates that lysergic acid diethylamide, commonly known as LSD, alters human brain activity not just by weakening regular brain waves, but also by speeding them up and making neural signals more complex. The weakening of brain waves and the rise in signal complexity were most pronounced in regions tied to sensory processing, language, emotion, and mental imagery, while areas that control physical movement were largely spared. The findings, published in Communications Biology, also hint that listening to music may dampen rather than amplify these drug-induced changes, though that trend did not hold up after statistical correction.
LSD is a potent psychedelic drug that temporarily alters perception, mood, and the sense of self. Like other classic psychedelics, it works primarily by attaching to and activating serotonin 2A receptors on brain cells, though LSD also binds to dopamine receptors. Studying how this compound changes large-scale brain activity helps scientists understand the biological processes that generate conscious experience.
In human studies, researchers often use magnetoencephalography, or MEG, to track the fast-paced electrical activity of the brain. MEG is a non-invasive procedure where a participant sits with their head inside a helmet-like scanner containing sensitive magnetic detectors. As groups of neurons fire together, they produce tiny magnetic fields that the scanner records at a millisecond-by-millisecond scale.
This electrical activity consists of two main types of signals: rhythmic brain waves and background noise. Rhythmic waves, or neural oscillations, happen when thousands of brain cells fire in a synchronized beat, much like a choir singing a specific note. Two of the most common resting rhythms are alpha waves, which cycle at about 8 to 13 times per second (measured in hertz, or Hz) during relaxed wakefulness, and beta waves, which cycle faster at 15 to 30 Hz and relate to active thinking and alertness. These rhythms ride on top of non-rhythmic, background electrical activity that naturally loses strength at higher frequencies.
Previous psychedelic studies consistently showed that drugs like LSD and psilocybin cause a widespread drop in the strength of alpha and beta waves, a process called cortical desynchronization. Because traditional brain wave analyses measure activity within fixed frequency windows, they can confuse a change in wave speed with a loss of wave strength, or mistake shifts in the background noise for changes in actual rhythms. If an alpha wave speeds up against a background that naturally falls off at higher frequencies, it can look as though the wave lost strength when it actually just shifted to a faster tempo.
Beyond brain wave speed and strength, psychedelics also change the unpredictability and structure of brain signals over time. Scientists measure this using two mathematical tools: Lempel-Ziv complexity, which counts how many new and distinct patterns appear in a signal over time, and Higuchi fractal dimension, which measures how “rough” or self-similar a signal looks when zoomed in and out across different time scales. Higher scores on both metrics indicate richer, less predictable brain activity.
The physical and social environment also plays a major role in shaping a psychedelic experience, with music frequently used in both traditional rituals and modern psychedelic-assisted therapy. For example, a study covered by PsyPost in 2018 showed that LSD heightened brain responses to music across regions tied to auditory processing, emotion, and memory. The new research was led by first author Venkatesh Subramani, who holds a doctorate in neuroscience, and senior author Karim Jerbi, a full professor in the psychology department, both of the Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience Laboratory (CoCo Lab) at the Université de Montréal. The team aimed to separate true changes in brain wave strength from shifts in wave speed and background activity, while also testing how music interacts with these electrical signatures.
“A characteristic effect of classic psychedelics is the desynchronization of rhythmic brain activity (that is, reduced coordination of activity among neural populations) in the alpha (8-13 Hz) and beta (15-30 Hz) bands,” Subramani told PsyPost. “LSD, however, appears somewhat unique because it also speeds up these intrinsic oscillations, by up to 2 Hz for alpha and up to 5 Hz for beta. This acceleration creates an ambiguity: it is unclear whether LSD genuinely desynchronizes these rhythms, or whether the previously reported desynchronization is an artifact of shifts in the spectral peaks.”
To investigate these questions, the researchers analyzed existing MEG data originally collected from 17 healthy volunteers. The experiment used a within-subject, single-blind, placebo-controlled design with a counterbalanced session order, meaning each participant completed two separate scanning sessions spaced 14 days apart without being told which treatment they were receiving. In one session, participants received an intravenous injection of 75 micrograms of LSD, and in the other, they received an inactive saline placebo.
Roughly four hours after the injection, participants underwent MEG brain scans under two different conditions, each lasting seven minutes. In the first condition, they rested with their eyes closed in silence. In the second condition, they kept their eyes closed while listening to ambient music excerpts. The research team used anatomical MRI scans of each participant’s head to map the MEG signals onto 360 distinct regions across the outer surface of the brain.
The authors then used a specialized mathematical tool to separate the rhythmic brain waves from the non-rhythmic background activity in each brain region. Instead of measuring wave strength inside rigid frequency boxes, they tracked the exact peak frequency where each participant’s alpha and beta waves were strongest. They also calculated Lempel-Ziv complexity and Higuchi fractal dimension for each region, and trained machine learning algorithms to see which brain features best distinguished the LSD state from the placebo state.
When the researchers separated the rhythmic waves from the background noise and accounted for shifting frequencies, they found that LSD still caused a genuine drop in the strength of alpha and beta waves. Alpha wave weakening was most pronounced in the temporal lobes, while beta wave weakening occurred broadly across the brain’s surface. However, ignoring the shifting frequencies made the wave weakening look much more widespread than it actually was, confirming that standard methods can inflate the apparent spatial extent of the drug’s effect.
“This study clarifies the ambiguity,” Subramani explained. “It shows that the weakening of oscillations, the usual marker of desynchronization, is genuine even after accounting for the peak shifts, a potential confound.”
Separating the signals also clarified what was happening in the posterior cingulate cortex, a major hub for self-reflection and daydreaming. In standard analyses that mix all signals together, this hub showed large drops in brain wave power under LSD. Once the background noise was removed, those rhythmic differences vanished, indicating that LSD mainly altered the background electrical activity in this region rather than its synchronized waves.
Alongside weakening the waves, LSD systematically sped them up across large portions of the brain. On average, the peak frequency of alpha waves increased by about 2 Hz, while beta wave peaks shifted upward by roughly 5 Hz. Machine learning models trained solely on these frequency shifts were able to correctly identify whether a scan came from an LSD or placebo session with over 82 percent accuracy, where chance would be 50 percent.
The background electrical activity also flattened out across the brain, meaning there was less slow background activity relative to fast activity. At the same time, both Lempel-Ziv complexity and fractal dimension rose substantially, especially in the back of the brain where visual information is processed. Machine learning decoders using these complexity and fractal measures distinguished the LSD state from placebo with over 76 percent accuracy, compared to a 50 percent chance level.
“In plain terms, LSD makes the brain’s main rhythms faster and weaker, and makes its activity more complex,” Subramani noted.
These results align with research covered by PsyPost in 2024, which examined brain activity under microdoses using EEG rather than full psychedelic doses using MEG, and similarly found that LSD increases neural signal complexity. The broader shift away from slower rhythms is also in line with a study covered by PsyPost in March 2026, which examined scalp EEG activity following psilocybin rather than source-resolved MEG following LSD and found that the drug weakened slower theta and alpha waves while strengthening faster beta and gamma activity. That study measured the strength of different frequency bands rather than the speed of individual rhythms, however, and the authors of the new paper note that a clear speeding of alpha and beta peaks has not been consistently observed with psilocybin.
To understand how these electrical changes relate to everyday mental functions, the researchers compared their brain maps against a massive database of over 14,000 prior brain imaging studies. They found that LSD’s effects followed distinct functional hierarchies across different brain systems. Reductions in alpha and beta wave strength, background flattening, and complexity increases were strongest in networks tied to vision, hearing, language, emotion, and mental imagery, while the motor cortex, which controls physical movement, remained largely unaffected.
The weakening and speeding of brain waves did not always line up. The functional systems that showed the largest drop in alpha wave strength, such as auditory and language networks, showed only minimal alpha speeding, while motor and attention networks retained relatively more of their alpha strength but showed the largest increases in alpha speed. In the beta range, the pattern reversed, with the biggest speed-ups occurring where beta strength dropped the most. Because the two effects were not statistically linked across the brain, the authors suggest that wave weakening and wave acceleration may reflect separate processes happening at the same time.
When the researchers examined the effect of music, they did not find any results that survived strict statistical corrections for multiple comparisons across the whole brain. However, uncorrected trends pointed in the opposite direction of what the team initially expected. Instead of boosting the brain effects of LSD, listening to music tended to slightly calm them down, resulting in less background flattening and lower signal complexity compared to experiencing LSD in silence.
The authors suggested that music might act as an external attentional anchor. Building on a 2024 analysis of this same dataset that found psychedelic-induced signal complexity was highest with eyes closed and dropped when attention turned outward, they propose that resting in silence allows the mind to wander freely into unconstrained internal states, whereas focusing on an external structured sound may gently ground and stabilize the brain’s electrical activity.
“Music can be very emotionally powerful, and music and psychedelics have been used together in rituals across many cultures,” Subramani said. “We wanted to formally test how music modulates the way LSD affects the brain. We hypothesized that music potentiates the effect of the drug. Somewhat surprisingly, and albeit not statistically robust, we found the opposite trend: music appeared to reduce the drug effect, which could suggest that the stimulus acts as an anchor that keeps subjects from fully experiencing the psychedelic state.”
“As noted in the paper, this is only hypothesis-generating,” he added. “It calls for studies with more subjects and targeted experimental designs with better controls.” He cautioned that “the music result is exploratory and should not be over-interpreted.”
There are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting these results. The study relied on a relatively small sample of 17 participants, which limits the statistical power needed to detect subtle interactions between the drug and external factors like music. In addition, the MEG scans were recorded about four hours after the LSD injection, roughly two and a half hours after the drug’s subjective effects had peaked. This timing gap may explain why the researchers found few strong links between the brain measurements and participants’ questionnaire ratings.
Looking at music over a single seven-minute average also treats a dynamic song as if it were a static event. Future studies with larger groups could track how brain waves respond to changing musical moments in real time, and use muscle sensors to help rule out muscle activity as a source of the fastest brain signals. Comparing LSD directly with other psychedelics using these same signal-separation methods will also help determine whether speeding up alpha and beta rhythms is a unique signature of LSD’s pharmacology.
The team is already extending their analytical approach to see how these faster brain wave frequencies might affect other common measures of brain communication, such as functional connectivity, which tracks how closely pairs of brain regions coordinate their activity over time.
“This study shows that LSD shifts the oscillatory peaks and that there is a genuine weakening of oscillations beyond these shifts,” Subramani said. “Power is one measure that could be confounded by peak shifts. Another is functional connectivity between pairs of brain regions. We have been actively working on this, and a preprint will be out shortly!”
The study, “LSD reconfigures cortical dynamics through faster brain rhythms and increased fractal dimension,” was authored by Venkatesh Subramani, Timothy Nest, Annalisa Pascarella, Jérémy Brunel, Yorguin José Mantilla Ramos, Yann Harel, Suresh Muthukumaraswamy, Robin Carhart-Harris, Giulia Lioi, Nicolas Farrugia, and Karim Jerbi.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/lsd-pushes-brain-activity-toward-a-more-fractal-complex-state-study-finds/
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DATE: October 22, 2026 at 10:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG
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TITLE: New biological marker could end trial and error in depression care
URL: https://www.psypost.org/blood-test-could-predict-if-an-antidepressant-will-work-for-you/
Major depressive disorder is often treated through trial and error, but a blood test may soon help doctors choose the right medication on the first try. Researchers have identified a circular RNA molecule in the blood that predicts whether a patient will respond to a common class of antidepressants. The findings were published in Molecular Psychiatry.
Millions of people globally experience major depressive disorder. Doctors frequently prescribe selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, commonly known as SSRIs, as a first line of medical defense. These drugs block the reabsorption of serotonin in the brain, leaving more of the chemical available to help transmit messages between nerve cells.
Less than half of patients experience relief from their symptoms after trying their first prescribed antidepressant. This forces patients to spend months trying different medications before finding one that works. The prolonged wait imposes a heavy burden on individuals and adds substantial costs to the healthcare system.
Medical professionals currently lack biological tests to predict which drug will work for a specific person. Genetic tests exist to show how fast a person’s body might metabolize a drug. They cannot, however, forecast if the drug will actually relieve depression symptoms.
To find a better biological indicator, a team of researchers investigated circular RNAs. These are stable, loop-shaped genetic molecules that influence how other genes operate. Because they lack exposed ends, they resist degrading enzymes in the body, giving them a much longer lifespan than standard linear RNA molecules.
Circular RNAs are highly concentrated in the brain and help regulate how neurons connect and communicate. Some of these molecules can pass through the blood-brain barrier, the semi-permeable membrane that separates circulating blood from brain fluid. Because they leak into the bloodstream in a stable form, researchers can detect brain-derived circular RNAs using a standard blood draw.
The investigation was led by scientists Grigorios Papageorgiou, Eleni T. Tzavara, and Nikolaos Mellios of Circular Genomics and various research institutes in the United States and France, along with Madhukar H. Trivedi at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. They focused on a specific circular RNA called CDR1as. This molecule is highly abundant in the brain but rarely found in other human tissues.
The researchers first analyzed baseline blood samples from patients enrolled in two independent clinical trials. They extracted RNA from the blood of patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder who were about to begin taking the SSRI sertraline. Using a technique that amplifies genetic material, the team measured the starting levels of CDR1as for each patient.
The team found that patients who did not respond to sertraline after eight weeks of treatment had notably higher baseline levels of CDR1as in their blood. Patients who experienced symptom relief had lower starting levels of the molecule. The researchers observed that unaffected control subjects also showed lower baseline levels of the molecule.
Taking advantage of the clinical trial design, the researchers also measured the patients’ blood at different intervals after they started taking sertraline. They discovered that patients who responded well to the drug experienced an increase in CDR1as levels after treatment began. Patients who did not respond to the medication saw no such increase in the molecule’s concentration.
To test if this molecule simply predicts general improvement rather than specific drug responses, the researchers looked at other treatment groups. They measured baseline blood levels in patients who were given a placebo pill. They also evaluated patients who failed to respond to sertraline and were subsequently switched to bupropion, a different type of antidepressant.
Baseline levels of CDR1as did not predict whether a patient would feel better on a placebo. The molecule also failed to predict if a patient would go on to experience remission while taking bupropion. This suggested the biomarker is specifically tied to the mechanisms of sertraline.
The research team then wanted to know if this predictive power applied to the entire SSRI drug class. They examined blood samples from patients in other clinical programs who were taking fluoxetine, citalopram, or escitalopram. They also analyzed samples from a small study of patients taking alternative medications like serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors.
The researchers observed that CDR1as levels successfully identified patients who were faring well on various SSRIs, not just sertraline. When evaluating patients taking other classes of antidepressants, the molecule’s levels did not predict symptom relief. This pointed to a specific relationship between the circular RNA and SSRI medications as a whole.
To understand exactly how the brain produces this circular RNA, the team conducted experiments on mice. They administered different chemical compounds to the animals to block specific brain receptors. They then extracted brain tissue to measure changes in Cdr1as, the mouse equivalent of the human molecule.
When the researchers blocked the serotonin 5-HT2A receptor, levels of the circular RNA dropped across three different regions of the mouse brain. Blocking dopamine or glutamate receptors did not produce a similar drop in the molecule. This established a direct link between serotonin system activity and the production of the circular RNA.
The investigators conducted a final set of experiments on lab-grown human and mouse nerve cells. They treated the cells with chemicals that inhibit brain-derived neurotrophic factor, a protein that promotes the survival and growth of neurons. Inhibiting this protein’s receptors caused the cells to produce less of the circular RNA.
The researchers noted that certain medical conditions could interfere with the accuracy of this blood test. For instance, the test performed poorly in depressed patients who had a family history of mania, which is often a sign of undiagnosed bipolar disorder. When the researchers excluded these patients from their analysis, the test’s predictive accuracy improved.
Medical events that disrupt the blood-brain barrier might also artificially alter the amount of circular RNA in the bloodstream. Severe head trauma or strokes could potentially cause these brain molecules to leak into the blood at abnormal rates. Future research will need to verify how such physical injuries influence the test results.
The study authors noted that high baseline levels of the molecule correlated with specific depression symptoms like anhedonia and social withdrawal. These symptoms are often associated with a subtype of depression that is historically harder to treat with SSRIs. Further studies will need to explore exactly how this biological marker overlaps with different clinical subtypes of the disorder.
The study, “A brain-enriched circRNA blood biomarker can predict response to SSRI antidepressants,” was authored by Grigorios Papageorgiou, El Chérif Ibrahim, Victor Gorgievski, Gabriella Maxson, Evelyn Lozano, Eric Gordon, Antoine Lefrere, Marie-Julie Toupet, Philippe Courtet, Raoul Belzeaux, Jane Foster, Thomas Carmody, Roy H. Perlis, Madhukar H. Trivedi, Eleni T. Tzavara, and Nikolaos Mellios.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/blood-test-could-predict-if-an-antidepressant-will-work-for-you/
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𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗜’𝗺 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴: "𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗙𝗶𝗹𝗺" 𝗯𝘆 𝗚𝗲𝗺𝗺𝗮 𝗙𝗶𝗹𝗲𝘀 -
Oh man, what is going on here? One of my favorite folklore critters, the Noonday Demon, a tainted film, neurodivergence, celluloid horror!
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I hope you like it, I know I had a ton of fun and I’m excited to play around some more !
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