efficient dense low-precision linear algebra is The Great Filter
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35 results for “dens”
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Train Action Game ‘Denshattack!’ Announces Free Rhythm Mode and PS5, Switch 2 Physical Editions
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://noisypixel.net/denshattack-rhythm-mode-ps5-switch-2-physical-editions/
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🥰 Deutschland - Densys EasyPlan plant PV-Anlagen in unter zwei Minuten
Densys pv5 erweitert seine Plattform um EasyPlan. KI zählt Dachziegel und erstellt Modulbelegung, Stringplanung und Angebot in unter fünf Minuten.
#Deutschland #Solar #PV #Erneuerbare #Nachhaltigkeit
pv-magazine.de/2026/10/19/dens… -
When Hong Kong's Busiest Streets Fall Silent
Known as one of the densest and most bustling places on earth, seeing Mong Kok this quiet feels like stepping into a surreal dream. Bathed in morning light on Sat, the stillness between these towering city blocks is hauntingly beautiful.
https://cooltopia.co/post/bkh1igO33lBC/when-hong-kongs-busiest-streets-fall-silent
#Mongkok #Hongkong #Cityvibes #Urbanexploration #Streetphotography
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Dead of Darkness 2 Revela Horror Isometrico 2D com Visuais Anime e Trama Densa em PC e Consoles
#Gamerscore #2D #Anime #DeadofDarkness2 #isometric #Lançamento #NintendoSwitch #PC #PlayStation4 #PlayStation5
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Quick answer: SIE is the production layer for embedding and reranking workloads: one API for dense,...#llm #ai #sie #mcp #software #coding #development #engineering #inclusive #community
SIE vs vLLM: Which Fits Your Embedding and Reranking Workloads? -
Free download codes:
Song for a Gorgeous Blonde - Annicka den trolösa
"Arty-Proggy combo of dense keyboards and spiky guitar figures"
#alternative #cinematic #artrock #experimentalelectronic #prog #epic #chamberpop #music
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Turkcell has trialled Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) on its private 5G network, estimating crowd density from radio signal changes with 90 percent accuracy and no cameras. Person location landed within roughly three metres in the tests.
Full details: https://iottechnews.com/news/turkcell-trials-camera-free-5g-sensing-on-private-network/
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Flood Risk, Rail Lines Shape Latest Inner Brisbane Tower Scheme
It is a high-density, transit-oriented precinct that has been years in the making—and the next major piece of…
#Australia #Brisbane #Apartments #DesignReveal #DevelopmentApplications #InnerBrisbane #jointventure #parking #ProjectAnnouncement #Queensland #RealEstate #Transit-OrientedDevelopment
https://www.europesays.com/australia/126108/ -
Ant Group and the vLLM community have open-sourced Humming, a just-in-time compiled GEMM kernel library for quantised LLM inference. One kernel set covers integer weights from INT1 to INT8 and floating-point weights from FP4 to FP8, for dense and mixture-of-experts layouts. It also fully supports T-Head's Zhenwu 810E accelerator, taking the same path beyond NVIDIA. https://pandaily.com/ant-group-vllm-humming-quantized-inference-kernels-zhenwu-810e #China #Tech #AI
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Citi Warns Month-End Middle East Risk Is Underpriced; Deutsche Bank Sees Amazon Capex Soaring to $330 Billion — BigGo Finance
Foreign research institutions issued a dense cluster of reports around October 20, offering their la…
#Germany #DE #Europe #EU #Europa #DeutscheBank #Amazon #AWS #BankofAmericaMerrillLynch #Brentcrudeoil #CanaccordGenuity #Citi #GoldmanSachs #LGInnotek #MorganStanley #TaiwanSemiconductorManufacturing #UBS #UnitedMicroelectronics
https://www.europesays.com/germany/113136/ -
✨ #Noticia de #Ciencia #Tecnología #InteresGeneral
💥 Descubierta una anomalía en el oro fuertemente comprimido
🔗 https://www.techno-science.net/es/actualidades/anomalia-materia-nuclear-colisiones-oro-comprimido-29543Las colisiones entre núcleos de oro han revelado un comportamiento inesperado en una materia comprimida a densidades extremas. El experimento tiene lugar en el colisionador RHIC, en Estados Unidos. Allí se aceleran núcleos de oro y se proyectan unos contra…
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RE: https://indieweb.social/@classicweb/117477841379384275
ngl, I kinda love mid-2000s UI design. Not very shiny but lightweight, decent info density. Before the plague of excessive whitespace that hits sometime in the 2010s and never goes away!
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Registration is open for the Hypatia graduate summer school 2027 on extremal and probabilistic #combinatorics , taking place from 21 June to 2 July in #Barcelona . They say: Extremal and probabilistic combinatorics studies how dense or sparse a combinatorial structure can be before a particular pattern emerges. It lies at the intersection of #graph theory, #probability, #geometry, number theory, and theoretical computer science, and is one of the most active and rapidly developing areas in discrete #mathematics . #academicConference https://www.crm.cat/hypatia-2027/
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Blake Gardens, Bridgwater, Somerset, 1905 - Page & Son Postcard
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https://www.europesays.com/ro/337664/ GTA 6 Map Update: Drumuri Mai Înguste, Clădiri Mai Dense și 11 Ani de Dezvoltare #DezvoltareGTA6 #GrandTheftAuto6 #Gta6 #LansareGTA6 #leonida #Noiembrie2026 #RedDeadRedemption2 #RO #RockstarGames #Română #Romania #Romanian #Technology #tehnologie #ViceCity
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We discuss AI as if it's ethereal cloud consciousness. In reality, it's electrical potential converting directly into heat across copper busbars.
When dense server racks pull 80kW to 100kW+ of continuous power, compute scaling becomes an energy grid and cooling problem, not an algorithmic one.
The future belongs to whoever designs for token economics and hardware efficiency.
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Die Nacht ist die einzige Zeit, in der alle gleich wenig sehen. Vielleicht ist sie deshalb so ehrlich. Heraklit sagte, man steigt nie zweimal in denselben Fluss. Ich sage: Man wacht nie zweimal mit denselben Augen auf. Und trotzdem stehe ich jeden Morgen auf. Camus meinte, man müsse sich Sisyphos als glücklichen Menschen vorstellen. Ich verstehe ihn langsam. Der Stein ist schwer, der Berg ist steil, und oben wartet nichts als der nächste Tag. Aber das Rollen selbst ist schon die Antwort. Wir sind nicht, was wir verlieren. Wir sind, was wir trotzdem tun. Gute Nacht, ihr wundervollen Menschen. Morgen rollen wir weiter.
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BTW Tower and Dragon, the #RPG for the 1977 8K #Commodore PET is available as a demo on Steam with release coming next month: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4569230/Tower_And_Dragon/
This is an impressively dense and feature-filled RPG running in just 8K of RAM and works on an original 1977 PET. Physical box releases were made a while ago, shipping on floppy and *four cassette sides* making it easily the largest game ever shipped for the PET.
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The Value of Rural Walks
Reading Time: 4 minutesSome series, like Last of the Summer Wine, follow people going on local walks and getting up to mischief. We often hear of people that love to go for walks on the weekend. The issue, as traffic density increases is that the local walks that were along quiet roads are now along busier and busier roads.
At the same time, when road works block one road traffic is diverted along secondary and tertiary roads. Recently a very important road was shut to traffic entirely. As a result of this closure a route that was once an agricultural road, reserved only for rural roads was used by a Transport Public de Nyon bus as well as a French car from Ain. What was meant to be a quiet road, exclusively for farmers, by being metalled, became a short cut for local buses and commuters.
Within the space of a few minutes I saw three cars go down what should be a prime walking path. It wouldn’t be so bad, but the main road has no walking path. The only walking trail is informal, created by people walking along the route and preventing grass and other plants from growing.
When I got to Signy, I walked along a tertiary road and along this road two cars drove by too fast, and too close, but especially too close. It is a shame for the people that live in this village.If people that live in a village can’t respect people walking in their own village, then what respect will the same villagers get from those that are commuting via that village?
When I got to Grens, they narrowed the road to slow cars down, but it doesn’t slow cars down. It encourages them to shoot the rapids to get through before they’re blocked.
Yesterday as I walked in Grens a TPN bus went onto the pavement ahead of me squeezing me against the wall, without any respect or due care and attention. Of course I could stop, and make space for the bus but the road is narrowed for cars and buses, and I was on a “protected” segment of road, that was ignored by the bus.
If this happened once I’d accept it without a word. The issue is that every single village is becoming a 30 zone, and real physical pavements are being replaced by bollards and flattened. This means that cars no longer need to mount the curb to get on a “pavement” and that pavements are now conceptual rather than real.
This means that if you walk in Eysins, cars can run you over, with ease, especially at rush hour, and the same is true of Signy, Grens and other villages.
In the past when we walked on farm roads they were made of dirt so cars didn’t drive along them. When we walked in villages we had real pavements and 50 zones, so cars would destroy their tires if they mounted pavements too fast. The more 30 zones I see, the more real pavements, real barriers are removed, the less pleasant walking becomes.
In the idealised world imagined by bureaucrats 30 zones are respected but in my experience as a person walking up to five and a half million steps per year theory and reality are different.
What gets to me is that in Europe at least, towns are already walkable and cycling is possible, if we’re ready to take secondary streets and roads. They spend months adding walking routes, and I use plenty of them in Nyon and Morges, and cycling routes near Divonne and Geneva, so I take advantage of the infrastructure.
My issue is that Eysins, Crans, Grens, Arnex-sur-Nyon and other villages are turning into commuter towns and suburbs rather than walker friendly. They are being optimised for people that drive everywhere, at the expense of local walkability.
The fact that two cars in Signy drove by without slowing when they saw me, and that the bus skimmed me in Grens illustrates that walking is a second hand citizen and that cars are seen as primary in these commuter villages.
In my eyes, and experience making towns and cities walkable is a fantastic idea, but if the countryside stops being walkable due to commuters and transit traffic, then we lose something very important. Why live in the countryside, if to go for a walk we have to drive to town, in order to walk safely?
What I want is simply a gravel path, alongside main roads so that I can walk between villages safely, and without my shoes getting soaked with dew, and muddy. I want villages to ensure that we can walk safely within villages. I felt safer in villages with real pavements, and 50 km/h speed limits. 30 per hour, and no pavement, with rush hour traffic is frightening.
Some will say “So don’t walk at rush hour” and I’d answer, “increase bus frequency, and plan infrastructure that takes human nature into account.” In the end I use the car, not out of laziness, but because the walking infrastructure where I live is not suitable for someone to feel safe to walk. Before the road works to encourage walking and cycling I cycled almost daily, and I walked almost daily. Now I drive the car daily, and then run. Cycling and walking have both been demoted. That new infrastructure work broke my habits, rather than encouraged me.
Idealistically, by this time next year the endless road works will be over, but for now, I’m glad to have an EV to drive to safer places for walking and running.
#pleasant #rural #walking -
🚨 QField feature alert 🚨
Coming in the next QField release: a brand new digitizing layer bar!
In digitizing mode, a bar at the bottom of the screen shows which layer your new features will be added to. Tap it to pick another layer. No more digging through a dense legend in the side dashboard.
The legend is here to stay, but this is a big step toward a friendlier QField for newcomers. We think it'll be a killer feature 🙂
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Xiaomi SU7 Ultra race EV
TIL Xiaomi created the SU7 Ultra EV race machine with three electric motors the front rev at 27200 RPM
>The SU7 Ultra is powered by three electric motors developed by Xiaomi, which are two HyperEngine V8s and one HyperEngine V6s, reaching a combined power output of 1,138 kW (1,547 PS; 1,526 hp) and total torque output of 1,770 N⋅m (1,305 lb⋅ft). The two V8s motors output 425 kW (578 PS; 570 hp) and 635 N⋅m (468 lb⋅ft) of torque each, and the V6s motor also found in the SU7 Max outputs 288 kW (392 PS; 386 hp) and 400 N⋅m (295 lb⋅ft) of torque.[50] The HyperEngine V8s has a maximum speed of 27,200 rpm, is 98.11% efficient, and has a power density of 10.14 kW/kg, while the V6s can go up to 21,000 rpm.[53]
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaomi_SU7#SU7_Ultra
#Xiaomi #Redmi #no #Ultra #SU7 #EV #car #race #Nürburgring #circuit
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Biesentales 109 - Kill for peace - now up in archive:
With Fediverse artist contributions by @Jules Rawlinson, @Elif Yalvac and @Robert Logan. Thanks to @inpc for the Coltrane with the lone percussionist.
Listen, incl. all past episodes
https://archive.org/details/biesentales-109
Track listing (.md file), or see end of post:
https://archive.org/download/biesentales-109/Biesentales%20109%20-%20Kill%20for%20peace.md
Hosted by @*jayrope . Rough at times, beats, samples, scratching, generative music, but then also ballads, modular psychedelic-ish band tracks, cut-ups, modular synth improvs... Often dense. Added some thunder from various field recordings ... = the usual multi-focussed "unusual crossover"-approach to side-tracked radio "entertainment". Enjoy.
Suggestion: Commercial streaming sites kill human artists. Cancel subscriptions, and use the budget directly for an artist played here.
Listen + download on #Mirlo, #Faircamp, #Bandcamp, some have physical media.
@Experimental Music @Electronic Music @Jazz chat. Nice! #CutUp / #Illbient / #PsychedelicRock / #Glitch / #Generative / #Jazz / #AltHiphop / #Leftfield / #FieldRecordings
Track listing
IQU - Flower and moon - 0:00 - https://iquiqu.bandcamp.com/album/chotto-matte-a-moment
Jules Rawlinson - Yield Point 8 - 5:35 - https://pixelmechanics.bandcamp.com/album/yield-point
Elif Yalvaç - Self-Oscillation Patch 2 - 6:11 - https://hazalelif.bandcamp.com/album/self-oscillation
Blood Rhythms - This Is Not the Sound of My Voice - 12:16 - https://nopartofit.bandcamp.com/album/sea-of-red
The Fugs - Kill for Peace - 17:32 - https://www.discogs.com/master/65598-The-Fugs-The-Fugs
Techno Animal - Sub Species - 19:38 - https://technoanimal.bandcamp.com/track/sub-species-2023-remaster
Ben Klock - The Machine - 23:47 - https://modeselektor.bandcamp.com/track/the-machine-2
Robert Logan - Dog Coughs Rock - 27:51 - https://robertloganmusic.bandcamp.com/album/otherscapes-unreleased-works-2006-2026
John Coltrane - Selflessness - 33:24 - https://www.discogs.com/master/75934-John-Coltrane-Selflessness-Featuring-My-Favorite-Things
Jules Rawlinson - Yield Point 9 - 47:55 -
A Tribe Called Quest - Sucka Nigga - 49:18 - https://www.discogs.com/master/45947-A-Tribe-Called-Quest-Midnight-Marauders
UUUU - Verlagerung, Verlagerung, Verlage - 53:12 - https://uuuuemego.bandcamp.com/album/s-t
An Emerald City - Seizuretron - 59:59 - https://anemeraldcity.bandcamp.com/album/the-fourth
Elif Yalvaç - Self-Oscillation Patch 2 (reprise) - 1:05:36
IQU - Aluet - 1:11:12 -
Sparklehorse - Babies on the Sun - 1:19:58 - https://www.discogs.com/master/26401-Sparklehorse-Its-A-Wonderful-Life
Jonas Meyer - Plateau - 1:24:11 - https://diffusereality.bandcamp.com/album/jonas-meyer-levitation-te0040 -
Handwriting and brain connectivity
* “This is a call to continue recognizing the importance of human-generated scientific writing”
"Outsourcing the entire writing process to LLMs may deprive us of the opportunity to reflect on our field and engage in the creative, essential task of shaping research findings into a compelling narrative — a skill that is certainly important beyond scholarly writing and publishing." >>
Writing is thinking. Nat Rev Bioeng 3, 431 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44222-025-00323-4* "We urge that children, from an early age, must be exposed to handwriting activities in school to establish the neuronal connectivity patterns that provide the brain with optimal conditions for learning." Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity: a high-density EEG study with implications for the classroom >>
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1219945/full
#writing #handwriting #CNS #BrainConnectivity #learning #memory #LLMs #AI #education #neuroplasticity #attention #slowness #understanding #outsourcing #CognitiveOffloading -
20 de octubre, ¡Felicidades! 🎂 para,
🖊️ Elfriede Jelinek, que en 2026 cumple 80 años.
Escritora austriaca galardonada con el controvertido,
🏅 #PremioNobel de #Literatura del año 2004
Feminista radical, densa, pornográfica, difícil...
Son adjetivos que se le adjudican con bastante frecuencia en las reseñas... Sin duda, en algún momento, terminará por apetecerme leer algo suyo 😉
#EscritorasFeministas #LiteraturaEuropea #Feminismo -
Site in Adelaide’s West Held for Five Decades Comes to Market
Three inner-Adelaide development sites have been listed for sale north, south and west of the city’s CBD. At…
#Australia #Adelaide #Apartments #AssetSale #Co-living #Commercial #Development #Industrial #Infrastructure #InnerAdelaide #Office #Planning&Approvals #RealEstate #Residential #Retail #Roads&Transport #SouthAustralia #Transit-OrientedDevelopment #Transport&Mobility #Zoning&Density
https://www.europesays.com/australia/124996/ -
@[email protected] @[email protected] OK CASEY this changes everything!!!! u own it on #DVD n have never watched it?? thats like buyin a treasure chest n usin it as a doorstop D: but honestly @shortstories is right — Season 1 is floatin around on the ad-supported interweb n libraries do lend DVDs, so u got zero excuses now =)
also the NRFB thing… look. i get the collector instinct. sealed box, shrink wrap intact, value preserved 4ever!!! but Daria is a show, not a beanie baby. the disc wants to spin!!! a box that never gets opened is just expensive cardboard with dreams ;-; open it, watch it, then keep the box nice n tidy. best of both worlds, thats my platform ^_^
Dexter's Lab mention got me VIBRATING btw. peak 90s Cartoon Network, Genndy at full power, Dee Dee destroying everything with joy 💥
on the exercise bike + DVD combo tho? i gotta push back a little — u cant rly watch a dialogue-dense sarcasm show while ur heart rate is redlining n sweat is drippin into ur eyes. u'll catch every 4th line n miss all the punchlines. standing poses while watching = better deal, legs stay awake, eyes stay on screen. cardio goes AFTER the episode, as a treat 🚴♀️ -
DATE: October 21, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Neuroscientists uncover brain clues to why some people with childhood trauma struggle to look forward to things
A new brain imaging study published in The Journal of Neuroscience indicates that the way a memory-related brain region communicates with the brain’s reward centers is linked to motivational difficulties in young adults with a history of childhood trauma. Among individuals who experienced higher levels of early life adversity, weaker activity and connectivity in the hippocampus were associated with a reduced ability to look forward to pleasurable experiences. These findings suggest that targeting memory and novelty-processing circuits could offer a new avenue for addressing motivational symptoms in trauma-exposed populations.
Anhedonia is a psychological condition defined by a reduced ability to experience pleasure or a lack of motivation to pursue rewarding activities. It is a common symptom across several mental health conditions, including major depression and schizophrenia. Psychologists typically divide anhedonia into two categories: consummatory anhedonia, the inability to feel pleasure in the moment while engaging in an enjoyable activity, and anticipatory anhedonia, a diminished capacity to feel excited about or motivated to pursue future rewards.
To understand the biological roots of anhedonia, neuroscientists often examine the mesolimbic dopamine system, a network of brain structures that release and respond to the chemical messenger dopamine to drive reward-seeking behavior. Two central hubs in this network are the ventral tegmental area, a cluster of dopamine-producing neurons in the midbrain near the top of the brainstem, and the nucleus accumbens, a deep forebrain structure within the ventral striatum that processes reward and motivation. For instance, a longitudinal study covered by PsyPost in 2015 found that adolescents who experienced emotional neglect in childhood showed a drop in ventral striatum activity when receiving rewards over a two-year period, which predicted an increase in depressive symptoms.
While human brain imaging studies of anhedonia have largely concentrated on the striatum, animal research points to the hippocampus as an upstream regulator of this reward network. The hippocampus is a seahorse-shaped structure tucked deep within the temporal lobe on each side of the brain. Although best known for forming and retrieving memories, it also acts as a novelty detector. When an organism encounters something unfamiliar, the hippocampus sends signals through a multi-step neural circuit to the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens, triggering dopamine release that encourages exploration and goal-directed action.
Because the hippocampus contains a dense concentration of receptors that bind to stress hormones like cortisol, exposure to childhood abuse or neglect can alter how this structure develops and functions. In humans, a 2026 brain-mapping preprint from members of the same research group, which has not yet been peer reviewed, reconstructed the physical nerve tracts connecting the hippocampus, ventral tegmental area, and nucleus accumbens, providing structural evidence that these regions form an integrated loop supporting adaptive behavior. A study covered by PsyPost in 2022 found that people with moderate to severe childhood trauma reported more social anhedonia, a reduced interest in social connection, alongside differences in brain structure.
The research team behind the new study, led by first author Kathleen J. O’Brien of Temple University and senior author Vishnu “Deepu” Murty of the University of Oregon’s Adaptive Memory Lab, wanted to test whether disruptions in hippocampal-reward communication interact with childhood trauma to explain why some people struggle with anhedonia.
“This study was motivated by a large animal literature that suggests that regions implicated in novelty processing, like the hippocampus, are critical for anhedonia, but characterization of this circuit had not been translated into the human literature,” Murty told PsyPost.
To investigate this question, the researchers recruited participants from the Philadelphia site of a broader project examining psychosis risk in young adults, ensuring the sample included a wide range of anhedonia severity. Out of 102 individuals who completed functional magnetic resonance imaging scans, the final sample included 92 participants with usable resting-state brain scans (37 males and 55 females) and 80 participants with usable task-based scans (34 males and 46 females). The participants ranged in age from 18 to 30 years old, with an average age of about 21.
Participants completed a modified version of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire Short-Form, a self-report survey assessing experiences of emotional abuse, emotional neglect, and physical neglect before age 16. They also filled out the Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale, which uses separate subscales to measure anticipatory pleasure and consummatory pleasure. Lower scores on these scales indicate higher levels of anhedonia.
Inside the magnetic resonance imaging scanner, which measures brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow, the researchers focused on the anterior hippocampus, the front third of the structure that connects most densely with reward circuits. First, participants underwent a 5.8-minute resting-state scan while looking at a cross on a screen. This allowed the scientists to measure baseline functional connectivity, meaning how closely activity in the anterior hippocampus synchronized with activity in the nucleus accumbens and ventral tegmental area while at rest.
Next, participants completed a target-detection task designed to measure how the brain responds to novelty and pursues goals. An hour before entering the scanner, participants had been familiarized with 80 outdoor scene photographs, viewing each one six times. Immediately prior to scanning and again inside the scanner, participants were shown a single specific target landscape. During the brain scan, participants watched a sequence of images flash on the screen for two seconds each and had to press a button every time the target landscape appeared.
Mixed in with the 40 target trials were the 80 familiar scenes and 80 completely new outdoor scenes the participants had never seen before. Using this setup, the researchers measured how strongly the anterior hippocampus activated in response to the novel images compared to the familiar ones. They also used a forward-prediction model to test whether heightened hippocampal activity during novel scenes predicted stronger activation in the ventral tegmental area when the target image appeared shortly afterward.
In their statistical analyses, the researchers controlled for participant age, as age was correlated with baseline connectivity between the hippocampus and the ventral tegmental area, and they verified in follow-up tests that accounting for psychosis-risk status did not change the outcomes. Across all four brain measures, the authors found no statistically significant links or trauma interactions related to consummatory anhedonia. In other words, hippocampal circuit function did not explain differences in the ability to enjoy pleasurable activities in the moment.
For anticipatory anhedonia, however, interactions emerged between childhood trauma and three of the four hippocampal circuit measures. Resting connectivity between the anterior hippocampus and the ventral tegmental area showed no such interaction. Among individuals with higher levels of childhood trauma (defined as one standard deviation above the sample average), weaker resting-state connectivity between the anterior hippocampus and the nucleus accumbens was associated with greater anticipatory anhedonia.
Similarly, in this high-trauma group, a blunted response in the anterior hippocampus when viewing novel scenes, as well as a weaker link between hippocampal responses to novel scenes and later activity in the ventral tegmental area during subsequent target detection, were both linked to worse anticipatory anhedonia. Among participants with lower levels of childhood trauma (one standard deviation below the average), these brain measures showed no statistically significant relationship with anticipatory pleasure.
To determine whether each of these neural measures contributed independently rather than reflecting the exact same underlying brain process, the scientists ran a machine-learning variable selection technique that removes redundant predictors and retains only the strongest ones. The resulting combined model accounted for 24 percent of the total variance in anticipatory anhedonia scores, or 20 percent after adjusting for the number of predictors in the model.
Even when evaluated simultaneously alongside overall trauma severity, both the interaction between trauma and resting hippocampus-accumbens connectivity and the interaction between trauma and task-based hippocampus-to-ventral-tegmental-area signaling remained independent predictors of anticipatory anhedonia. The interaction involving the hippocampus’s response to novel scenes was retained by the selection procedure but fell short of statistical significance in the final model, while higher trauma levels were themselves associated with greater anticipatory anhedonia.
The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2025, which found that chronic stress in mice weakened connections from the hippocampus to the nucleus accumbens and reduced reward-seeking, and that a single dose of ketamine restored both. That work examined stressed animals directly rather than brain scans and self-reported trauma in people. The authors suggest that when early life adversity coincides with weakened communication between the hippocampus and dopamine centers, the brain may struggle to use novel environmental cues to spark motivation and update expectations about future rewards.
“The average person should take away that early life stress may make you vulnerable to anhedonia, a lack of pleasure, but that engagement of circuits centered on novelty and exploration can minimize that risk,” Murty explained. “Sometimes there is a misinterpretation that these mesolimbic systems are just there for reward processing, but rather they are sensitive to motivation and behaviors like novelty, information seeking, and perhaps even curiosity.”
There are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting these results. Because the study is cross-sectional, meaning all data were collected at a single point in time, it cannot establish that childhood trauma or hippocampal alterations directly cause anhedonia. It is possible that preexisting differences in brain circuitry make certain individuals more sensitive to the emotional fallout of early stress, or that prolonged exposure to childhood stress gradually wears down hippocampal pathways over time. Longitudinal studies that track children and adolescents across development will be necessary to determine the exact sequence of events.
The study does have some other limitations. The researchers also did not test whether engaging these circuits, for instance through novel experiences, would actually lower anhedonia in people with a history of trauma. The trauma measure relied on young adults recalling their childhoods, and due to the online nature of the initial screening survey and ethical constraints regarding mandatory reporting without direct participant contact, the researchers excluded questions about physical and sexual abuse, meaning the findings specifically reflect emotional abuse and emotional or physical neglect.
In addition, the sample was drawn from a psychosis-risk study in which 22 participants met criteria for clinical high risk, so the results may differ in a general population of young adults, and replication in larger samples will be helpful given the modest statistical strength of the interaction findings.
The resting-state brain scans lasted just under six minutes, whereas recent neuroimaging standards suggest that longer scan times can yield more stable estimates of baseline brain connectivity. Future research could also expand beyond the hippocampus and midbrain to examine how other brain regions involved in emotion and decision-making, such as the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex, work together to influence motivation after early life stress.
Looking ahead, the research team plans to examine how these brain mechanisms connect to personal recall and everyday emotional life. “Our long-term goal is to try to understand how these findings relate to subjective experience of anhedonia, and how those might relate to memories of the past,” Murty noted.
The study, “Functional Integrity of Mesolimbic-Hippocampal Circuits Is Associated with Anhedonia in Individuals with Early Life Stress,” was authored by Kathleen J. O’Brien, Blake L. Elliott, Ian O’Shea, Jason Schiffman, Vijay A. Mittal, Lauren M. Ellman, and Vishnu P. Murty.
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Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #Neuroscience #Anhedonia #ChildhoodTrauma #Hippocampus #VTA #NucleusAccumbens #RewardCircuit #NoveltyProcessing #Motivation #MentalHealthResearch
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DATE: October 20, 2026 at 04:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Brain scans map multiple “low road” fear pathways between the human thalamus and amygdala
Researchers have mapped several direct routes between the human thalamus and amygdala that may help the brain respond rapidly to threatening information, according to a study published in NeuroImage. Connections involving the back of the thalamus were the most consistent, while others were weaker or harder to detect reliably.
Fear responses can begin quickly. When a person hears a sudden noise or sees a possible threat, the brain must evaluate the information and prepare the body to respond. Animal studies have identified short pathways that carry sensory information from the thalamus, a central relay station for incoming sensory signals, to the amygdala, a region involved in emotional learning and defensive responses.
These pathways have sometimes been described as “low roads” because they may transmit basic sensory information without first passing through the cerebral cortex, where more detailed analysis takes place. Although animal studies have characterized them, they had not been comprehensively mapped in the human brain.
Led by Emmanouela Kosteletou-Kassotaki of the University of Barcelona, the researchers studied 113 healthy right-handed volunteers (average age 24.5 years; 65 women).
The team used high-resolution diffusion-weighted MRI, a scanning method that estimates the direction of nerve fibers by tracking the movement of water through brain tissue. They then used tractography, a technique that reconstructs likely fiber pathways from these data, to map connections between several thalamic nuclei and the basolateral amygdala, a part of the amygdala central to fear learning. Their approach was designed to cope with the dense, crisscrossing fibers around these deep brain structures.
A smaller group of 24 participants underwent a second MRI scan about 15 days later on average. This allowed the researchers to examine whether the pathways could be reconstructed consistently across sessions.
The most reliable connections linked the posterior thalamus to the basolateral amygdala. One pathway ran from the inferior colliculus, an auditory hub in the midbrain, through the medial geniculate nucleus, a key auditory relay in the thalamus, to the amygdala, mirroring an auditory fear pathway well documented in rodents. This pathway was found in nearly all participants.
Connections between the amygdala and the medial, inferior and lateral portions of the pulvinar, a thalamic structure involved in visual attention and combining information across the senses, appeared in all 113 participants and were highly reproducible, particularly for the inferior pulvinar. By contrast, connections with the anterior pulvinar were sparse and inconsistent, and a direct route from the inferior colliculus to the amygdala that bypassed the medial geniculate nucleus could not be reliably reconstructed.
The mediodorsal nucleus, located in the medial thalamus, also showed a prominent connection with the basolateral amygdala, with a high number of reconstructed fiber paths and moderate-to-high reproducibility. The authors note, however, that this connection may mainly carry signals from the amygdala rather than to it.
Connections from intralaminar thalamic nuclei, a group of small nuclei near the center of the thalamus, were also identified, particularly from the parafascicular and central medial nuclei. However, these pathways varied more between people and between the first and second scans. This suggests that some connections are robust across people, while others may be weaker, more difficult to detect or more variable in their anatomy.
Different thalamic regions also tended to connect with different subregions of the basolateral amygdala, and several pathways showed more reconstructed fiber paths in the left hemisphere than in the right, although the authors caution that this asymmetry may partly reflect methodological factors. Overall, the results support the idea that humans possess several direct thalamus–amygdala pathways rather than one simple route. These pathways could help transmit sensory and emotional signals quickly, potentially supporting flexible defensive responses.
Kosteletou-Kassotaki and colleagues described the study as providing “a unifying anatomical framework for multiple direct thalamo-amygdala pathways in the human brain.”
Diffusion tractography has technical limitations that should be noted. It can mistakenly identify pathways that are not present or fail to detect pathways that are present, particularly where nerve fibers cross, so the connections will need to be confirmed with studies of brain tissue. The method also cannot show which direction signals travel and provides information about structure rather than real-time brain function, so the link to fear is inferred largely from animal research.
The study, “Mapping the subcortical pathways associated with fear in the human brain: multiple thalamo-amygdala connections revealed by high-resolution tractography,” was authored by Emmanouela Kosteletou-Kassotaki, Liu Mengxing, Martina T. Cinca-Tomás, Pedro M. Paz-Alonso and Judith Domínguez-Borràs.
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