#counseling — Public Fediverse posts

DATE: September 29, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------

TITLE: Brief exposure to uplifting YouTube clips eases depressive feelings

URL: https://www.psypost.org/watching-hopeful-videos-online-can-reduce-short-term-depression/

A new study suggests that watching short, uplifting videos online can reduce momentary feelings of depression. Participants who viewed hopeful video clips experienced increased positive emotions and greater motivation compared to those who watched merely pleasant content. The research was published in Psychology of Popular Media.

Depression affects millions of people globally, ranging from mild daily struggles to severe mood disorders. Despite this widespread burden, a large portion of those individuals never receive formal treatment. Barriers such as limited access to healthcare, financial constraints, and social stigma keep many from seeking traditional face-to-face therapy. This gap in care leaves a pressing need for accessible, low-cost methods to support emotional well-being in daily life.

Psychological research often focuses on positive emotions as a way to buffer against depressive feelings. Theories suggest that positive emotional states broaden a person’s cognitive flexibility, helping them build psychological resilience over time. A specific concept called hope theory breaks this future-oriented motivation down into two distinct parts.

The first is agency thinking, which is the internal motivation or drive to pursue goals. The second is pathway thinking, which involves the ability to create specific plans or strategies to reach those goals. Depression often diminishes both of these capacities, leaving individuals feeling helpless and unmotivated.

Yanhan Zhao, a psychology researcher at Beijing Normal University, led a team to investigate whether everyday digital content could tap into these specific cognitive mechanisms. Zhao and colleagues wanted to see if brief exposure to media tailored to elicit hope could improve mood more effectively than general positive entertainment. They focused on video-sharing platforms, which offer a vast, free library of emotional content that people already use to regulate their daily moods.

To conduct the experiment, the researchers first needed a systematic way to identify hopeful videos. They started with a pool of 236 public YouTube videos and used computer software to analyze the emotional tone of viewer comments. Rather than relying solely on the visual content of the videos, the team looked for content that generated specific reactions from the audience.

Using an established psychological model, they categorized hope as a combination of anticipation and trust. Videos that generated high levels of these two emotions in the comments were classified as hopeful. These clips often featured narratives of personal growth, overcoming adversity, and goal pursuit.

For comparison, the team identified a second set of videos that were generally positive but lacked the specific themes of hope. These control videos focused on humor, entertainment, and pleasant daily experiences without any explicit forward-looking narratives. The researchers selected a final pool of thirty hopeful videos and thirty non-hopeful positive videos to use in their experiment. Expert psychologists reviewed the final selections to verify that the videos matched their intended categories.

The study included 385 adult participants recruited online. The researchers started with a larger pool of volunteers but excluded those who failed attention checks or completed the task too quickly, ensuring the final data represented genuine engagement. Before watching any videos, participants completed questionnaires measuring their baseline levels of depression. They also answered questions to determine their general, long-term tendencies toward hopefulness, establishing a baseline for both their agency and pathway thinking.

The researchers then randomly assigned each person to watch either the hopeful videos or the positive control videos. Participants watched two videos from their assigned category, mimicking a natural browsing experience that lasted around ten minutes. Immediately after viewing the content, the participants filled out a second round of questionnaires. These surveys assessed their current momentary feelings of depression, their immediate positive and negative emotions, and their current state of hopefulness.

The researchers observed measurable differences between the two groups. Participants who watched the hopeful videos reported lower momentary depression scores than those who watched the standard positive videos. This benefit occurred consistently regardless of a person’s baseline depression level. The videos helped individuals with severe depression just as much as they helped those with mild or subclinical symptoms.

By analyzing the survey responses, the team identified how the hopeful videos altered the participants’ mindsets. The videos successfully elevated general positive emotions, which in turn contributed to the drop in depressive feelings. This boost in positive emotion accounted for a quarter of the overall reduction in momentary depression.

The hopeful content also sparked a distinct rise in state agency thinking. This means participants felt a temporary boost in their motivation and internal drive to pursue goals. This motivational shift accounted for about fifteen percent of the relief from depressive symptoms. The hopeful videos produced a direct benefit on mood that extended beyond these measured emotional and cognitive shifts, highlighting the unique impact of hope-oriented media.

While the videos improved motivation, they did not increase state pathway thinking. Participants felt more driven, but they did not feel any more equipped to formulate concrete strategies for their goals. The researchers suggest that pathway thinking might represent a more stable psychological trait. Generating concrete plans likely requires longer-term, skill-based interventions rather than a brief emotional boost.

The intervention also failed to alter negative emotions. While participants felt more positive and motivated, their underlying negative feelings remained unchanged. Negative emotions often involve persistent cognitive patterns, like repetitive worrying or rumination. A short video clip might elevate positive feelings without directly dismantling those ingrained negative thoughts.

The research relies entirely on self-reported questionnaires, which can sometimes fail to capture the full depth of a person’s emotional state. People might answer questions in ways they believe the researchers expect, introducing potential bias. The experiment also only tested a single, brief viewing session.

It remains unknown if repeated exposure to hopeful media over days or weeks could produce lasting benefits. Future studies could explore whether combining this accessible digital mood regulation with other psychological treatments offers stronger, more durable results for those struggling with depression.

The study, “Brief Exposure to Hopeful YouTube Videos Reduces Depressive Symptoms: Evidence From a Preliminary Study,” was authored by Yanhan Zhao, Danni Wang, Yang Yang, and Zhijin Hou.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/watching-hopeful-videos-online-can-reduce-short-term-depression/

-------------------------------------------------

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

-------------------------------------------------

#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #HopefulYouTube #MoodBoost #DepressionRelief #PositiveContent #StateAgency #HopeTheory #MentalHealthTech #DigitalWellBeing #ShortVideoTherapy #PsychologyResearch

DATE: September 29, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------

TITLE: Brief exposure to uplifting YouTube clips eases depressive feelings

URL: https://www.psypost.org/watching-hopeful-videos-online-can-reduce-short-term-depression/

A new study suggests that watching short, uplifting videos online can reduce momentary feelings of depression. Participants who viewed hopeful video clips experienced increased positive emotions and greater motivation compared to those who watched merely pleasant content. The research was published in Psychology of Popular Media.

Depression affects millions of people globally, ranging from mild daily struggles to severe mood disorders. Despite this widespread burden, a large portion of those individuals never receive formal treatment. Barriers such as limited access to healthcare, financial constraints, and social stigma keep many from seeking traditional face-to-face therapy. This gap in care leaves a pressing need for accessible, low-cost methods to support emotional well-being in daily life.

Psychological research often focuses on positive emotions as a way to buffer against depressive feelings. Theories suggest that positive emotional states broaden a person’s cognitive flexibility, helping them build psychological resilience over time. A specific concept called hope theory breaks this future-oriented motivation down into two distinct parts.

The first is agency thinking, which is the internal motivation or drive to pursue goals. The second is pathway thinking, which involves the ability to create specific plans or strategies to reach those goals. Depression often diminishes both of these capacities, leaving individuals feeling helpless and unmotivated.

Yanhan Zhao, a psychology researcher at Beijing Normal University, led a team to investigate whether everyday digital content could tap into these specific cognitive mechanisms. Zhao and colleagues wanted to see if brief exposure to media tailored to elicit hope could improve mood more effectively than general positive entertainment. They focused on video-sharing platforms, which offer a vast, free library of emotional content that people already use to regulate their daily moods.

To conduct the experiment, the researchers first needed a systematic way to identify hopeful videos. They started with a pool of 236 public YouTube videos and used computer software to analyze the emotional tone of viewer comments. Rather than relying solely on the visual content of the videos, the team looked for content that generated specific reactions from the audience.

Using an established psychological model, they categorized hope as a combination of anticipation and trust. Videos that generated high levels of these two emotions in the comments were classified as hopeful. These clips often featured narratives of personal growth, overcoming adversity, and goal pursuit.

For comparison, the team identified a second set of videos that were generally positive but lacked the specific themes of hope. These control videos focused on humor, entertainment, and pleasant daily experiences without any explicit forward-looking narratives. The researchers selected a final pool of thirty hopeful videos and thirty non-hopeful positive videos to use in their experiment. Expert psychologists reviewed the final selections to verify that the videos matched their intended categories.

The study included 385 adult participants recruited online. The researchers started with a larger pool of volunteers but excluded those who failed attention checks or completed the task too quickly, ensuring the final data represented genuine engagement. Before watching any videos, participants completed questionnaires measuring their baseline levels of depression. They also answered questions to determine their general, long-term tendencies toward hopefulness, establishing a baseline for both their agency and pathway thinking.

The researchers then randomly assigned each person to watch either the hopeful videos or the positive control videos. Participants watched two videos from their assigned category, mimicking a natural browsing experience that lasted around ten minutes. Immediately after viewing the content, the participants filled out a second round of questionnaires. These surveys assessed their current momentary feelings of depression, their immediate positive and negative emotions, and their current state of hopefulness.

The researchers observed measurable differences between the two groups. Participants who watched the hopeful videos reported lower momentary depression scores than those who watched the standard positive videos. This benefit occurred consistently regardless of a person’s baseline depression level. The videos helped individuals with severe depression just as much as they helped those with mild or subclinical symptoms.

By analyzing the survey responses, the team identified how the hopeful videos altered the participants’ mindsets. The videos successfully elevated general positive emotions, which in turn contributed to the drop in depressive feelings. This boost in positive emotion accounted for a quarter of the overall reduction in momentary depression.

The hopeful content also sparked a distinct rise in state agency thinking. This means participants felt a temporary boost in their motivation and internal drive to pursue goals. This motivational shift accounted for about fifteen percent of the relief from depressive symptoms. The hopeful videos produced a direct benefit on mood that extended beyond these measured emotional and cognitive shifts, highlighting the unique impact of hope-oriented media.

While the videos improved motivation, they did not increase state pathway thinking. Participants felt more driven, but they did not feel any more equipped to formulate concrete strategies for their goals. The researchers suggest that pathway thinking might represent a more stable psychological trait. Generating concrete plans likely requires longer-term, skill-based interventions rather than a brief emotional boost.

The intervention also failed to alter negative emotions. While participants felt more positive and motivated, their underlying negative feelings remained unchanged. Negative emotions often involve persistent cognitive patterns, like repetitive worrying or rumination. A short video clip might elevate positive feelings without directly dismantling those ingrained negative thoughts.

The research relies entirely on self-reported questionnaires, which can sometimes fail to capture the full depth of a person’s emotional state. People might answer questions in ways they believe the researchers expect, introducing potential bias. The experiment also only tested a single, brief viewing session.

It remains unknown if repeated exposure to hopeful media over days or weeks could produce lasting benefits. Future studies could explore whether combining this accessible digital mood regulation with other psychological treatments offers stronger, more durable results for those struggling with depression.

The study, “Brief Exposure to Hopeful YouTube Videos Reduces Depressive Symptoms: Evidence From a Preliminary Study,” was authored by Yanhan Zhao, Danni Wang, Yang Yang, and Zhijin Hou.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/watching-hopeful-videos-online-can-reduce-short-term-depression/

-------------------------------------------------

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

-------------------------------------------------

#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #HopefulYouTube #MoodBoost #DepressionRelief #PositiveContent #StateAgency #HopeTheory #MentalHealthTech #DigitalWellBeing #ShortVideoTherapy #PsychologyResearch

DATE: September 29, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------

TITLE: Brief exposure to uplifting YouTube clips eases depressive feelings

URL: https://www.psypost.org/watching-hopeful-videos-online-can-reduce-short-term-depression/

A new study suggests that watching short, uplifting videos online can reduce momentary feelings of depression. Participants who viewed hopeful video clips experienced increased positive emotions and greater motivation compared to those who watched merely pleasant content. The research was published in Psychology of Popular Media.

Depression affects millions of people globally, ranging from mild daily struggles to severe mood disorders. Despite this widespread burden, a large portion of those individuals never receive formal treatment. Barriers such as limited access to healthcare, financial constraints, and social stigma keep many from seeking traditional face-to-face therapy. This gap in care leaves a pressing need for accessible, low-cost methods to support emotional well-being in daily life.

Psychological research often focuses on positive emotions as a way to buffer against depressive feelings. Theories suggest that positive emotional states broaden a person’s cognitive flexibility, helping them build psychological resilience over time. A specific concept called hope theory breaks this future-oriented motivation down into two distinct parts.

The first is agency thinking, which is the internal motivation or drive to pursue goals. The second is pathway thinking, which involves the ability to create specific plans or strategies to reach those goals. Depression often diminishes both of these capacities, leaving individuals feeling helpless and unmotivated.

Yanhan Zhao, a psychology researcher at Beijing Normal University, led a team to investigate whether everyday digital content could tap into these specific cognitive mechanisms. Zhao and colleagues wanted to see if brief exposure to media tailored to elicit hope could improve mood more effectively than general positive entertainment. They focused on video-sharing platforms, which offer a vast, free library of emotional content that people already use to regulate their daily moods.

To conduct the experiment, the researchers first needed a systematic way to identify hopeful videos. They started with a pool of 236 public YouTube videos and used computer software to analyze the emotional tone of viewer comments. Rather than relying solely on the visual content of the videos, the team looked for content that generated specific reactions from the audience.

Using an established psychological model, they categorized hope as a combination of anticipation and trust. Videos that generated high levels of these two emotions in the comments were classified as hopeful. These clips often featured narratives of personal growth, overcoming adversity, and goal pursuit.

For comparison, the team identified a second set of videos that were generally positive but lacked the specific themes of hope. These control videos focused on humor, entertainment, and pleasant daily experiences without any explicit forward-looking narratives. The researchers selected a final pool of thirty hopeful videos and thirty non-hopeful positive videos to use in their experiment. Expert psychologists reviewed the final selections to verify that the videos matched their intended categories.

The study included 385 adult participants recruited online. The researchers started with a larger pool of volunteers but excluded those who failed attention checks or completed the task too quickly, ensuring the final data represented genuine engagement. Before watching any videos, participants completed questionnaires measuring their baseline levels of depression. They also answered questions to determine their general, long-term tendencies toward hopefulness, establishing a baseline for both their agency and pathway thinking.

The researchers then randomly assigned each person to watch either the hopeful videos or the positive control videos. Participants watched two videos from their assigned category, mimicking a natural browsing experience that lasted around ten minutes. Immediately after viewing the content, the participants filled out a second round of questionnaires. These surveys assessed their current momentary feelings of depression, their immediate positive and negative emotions, and their current state of hopefulness.

The researchers observed measurable differences between the two groups. Participants who watched the hopeful videos reported lower momentary depression scores than those who watched the standard positive videos. This benefit occurred consistently regardless of a person’s baseline depression level. The videos helped individuals with severe depression just as much as they helped those with mild or subclinical symptoms.

By analyzing the survey responses, the team identified how the hopeful videos altered the participants’ mindsets. The videos successfully elevated general positive emotions, which in turn contributed to the drop in depressive feelings. This boost in positive emotion accounted for a quarter of the overall reduction in momentary depression.

The hopeful content also sparked a distinct rise in state agency thinking. This means participants felt a temporary boost in their motivation and internal drive to pursue goals. This motivational shift accounted for about fifteen percent of the relief from depressive symptoms. The hopeful videos produced a direct benefit on mood that extended beyond these measured emotional and cognitive shifts, highlighting the unique impact of hope-oriented media.

While the videos improved motivation, they did not increase state pathway thinking. Participants felt more driven, but they did not feel any more equipped to formulate concrete strategies for their goals. The researchers suggest that pathway thinking might represent a more stable psychological trait. Generating concrete plans likely requires longer-term, skill-based interventions rather than a brief emotional boost.

The intervention also failed to alter negative emotions. While participants felt more positive and motivated, their underlying negative feelings remained unchanged. Negative emotions often involve persistent cognitive patterns, like repetitive worrying or rumination. A short video clip might elevate positive feelings without directly dismantling those ingrained negative thoughts.

The research relies entirely on self-reported questionnaires, which can sometimes fail to capture the full depth of a person’s emotional state. People might answer questions in ways they believe the researchers expect, introducing potential bias. The experiment also only tested a single, brief viewing session.

It remains unknown if repeated exposure to hopeful media over days or weeks could produce lasting benefits. Future studies could explore whether combining this accessible digital mood regulation with other psychological treatments offers stronger, more durable results for those struggling with depression.

The study, “Brief Exposure to Hopeful YouTube Videos Reduces Depressive Symptoms: Evidence From a Preliminary Study,” was authored by Yanhan Zhao, Danni Wang, Yang Yang, and Zhijin Hou.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/watching-hopeful-videos-online-can-reduce-short-term-depression/

-------------------------------------------------

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

-------------------------------------------------

#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #HopefulYouTube #MoodBoost #DepressionRelief #PositiveContent #StateAgency #HopeTheory #MentalHealthTech #DigitalWellBeing #ShortVideoTherapy #PsychologyResearch

DATE: September 29, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------

TITLE: Faces and bodies send matching signals of attractiveness, but voices tell a different story

URL: https://www.psypost.org/faces-and-bodies-send-matching-signals-of-attractiveness-but-voices-tell-a-diffe/

People often judge a potential partner based on a combination of their face, body, and voice. A recent study reveals that while facial and bodily attractiveness tend to match up, a person’s voice provides an independent cue about their traits. These findings, published in Evolution and Human Behavior, suggest that our physical features send a mix of redundant and distinct messages to observers.

Evolutionary psychology proposes that human physical traits communicate genetic quality and health to potential mates or rivals. During the search for a partner, individuals evaluate physical attractiveness to gauge underlying fitness. During competition with rivals, individuals might assess physical dominance to determine formidability. Researchers study how these visual and vocal cues combine to form an overall impression of an individual.

One major theoretical framework is the “one ornament hypothesis.” This concept suggests that different physical traits, such as the face and body, are shaped by the same underlying biological factors. In this view, various body parts act as a single, unified signal of health or genetic fitness. If a person has robust immune function or developmental stability, it should reflect across their entire physical appearance.

The second major framework is the “multiple messages hypothesis.” This theory argues that different parts of the body convey entirely separate pieces of information. For example, a face might signal immune system strength, while a voice might indicate physical dominance. If this theory holds true, a person’s individual physical features would not necessarily correlate with one another in the eyes of an observer.

Researchers also suspect that sex hormones like testosterone and estradiol might drive the synchronized development of these physical traits. These hormones guide sexual dimorphism, which refers to the biological differences in physical characteristics between men and women. Higher testosterone in men and higher estradiol in women are thought to influence the development of traits that others perceive as attractive, healthy, or dominant.

To test these competing hypotheses, a research team led by Tobias L. Kordsmeyer of the University of Goettingen designed an experiment. They wanted to examine how independent raters perceived the attractiveness, health, and physical dominance of faces, bodies, and voices. The researchers also sought to test whether sex hormones act as a biological bridge linking these disparate features.

The study included 165 men and 155 women as evaluation targets. The research team collected standardized facial photographs, three-dimensional body scans, and short audio recordings from each participant. The facial photographs featured participants standing against a white wall with a neutral expression.

The three-dimensional body scans were rendered as digital figures that rotated over an eight-second duration. The researchers deliberately removed skin color and texture from these digital models, converting them to a uniform gray. This step ensured that raters would focus entirely on physical shape and proportions, removing skin quality as a potential confounding factor.

To collect voice samples, male participants were recorded speaking about positive aspects of their lives for one minute. Female participants were recorded reading a standardized text known as the rainbow passage. The researchers extracted five-second audio clips from the men’s recordings and used the second sentence of the passage (about 3.5 seconds on average) from the women’s recordings for the final evaluation.

A separate group of 400 independent raters evaluated the collected stimuli. To prevent their judgments of one trait from influencing another, the raters were divided into specific groups. A single rater only evaluated one type of stimulus, such as male faces, female bodies, or male voices. The raters scored the targets for attractiveness, health, and physical dominance using standardized rating scales.

The research team also gathered saliva and hair samples from the targets to measure hormone levels. They measured baseline testosterone and reactive testosterone in men. Reactive testosterone was captured shortly after the men engaged in a competitive task. For women, the researchers assessed baseline testosterone and estradiol levels across different phases of the menstrual cycle.

When analyzing the rating data, the researchers found positive correlations between how raters perceived faces and bodies. Targets whose faces were rated highly for attractiveness and health also tended to receive high ratings for their body shapes. The effects were of medium size, showing a consistent pattern across both male and female targets.

This pattern also held true for physical dominance, though it was only observed for male targets. Men with faces rated as physically dominant also had bodies rated as physically dominant. Female targets did not exhibit a coordinated rating for physical dominance between their faces and bodies.

These positive associations between the face and the body align with the one ornament hypothesis. Observers seem to interpret facial and bodily cues redundantly, picking up on shared information about the individual’s physical condition. Even without skin texture, the bodies provided enough shape information to align with the health and attractiveness ratings of the faces.

The results for vocal recordings painted a different picture. The researchers found very few measurable associations between how raters judged a target’s voice and how they judged the target’s face or body. Voice ratings appeared to operate independently from visual appearance.

An individual might possess a highly rated face or body, but this did not guarantee their voice would be perceived in the same way. This independence supports the multiple messages hypothesis. The human voice seems to act as a separate channel of communication, offering non-redundant information to observers rather than echoing visual cues.

The hormone analysis yielded unexpected results. The researchers found that adult hormone levels did not mediate the correlated perceptions of faces and bodies. While men’s baseline testosterone levels did show some positive associations with facial dominance and vocal attractiveness, the hormones did not serve as the underlying link for synchronized ratings across body parts.

The proposed mechanism of adult sex hormones bridging these distinct traits was not supported by the data. Adjusting for the targets’ body mass index or relationship status did not alter these outcomes. The correlations between traits remained robust even when accounting for body fat.

The study measured adult baseline and reactive hormone levels rather than developmental hormones. Physical traits like bone structure and vocal cord length are heavily shaped by organizational hormones during fetal development and puberty. Adult hormone levels might not accurately reflect the specific hormonal environment that originally sculpted these physical characteristics.

Additionally, the body scans lacked skin color and texture. Skin quality is a known biological indicator of physical health. Stripping this information away might have altered how raters evaluated the overall condition of the targets, even though it successfully isolated the role of physical shape.

The researchers measured subjective impressions of health, dominance, and attractiveness rather than objective medical data. The ratings reveal how people perceive others based on evolutionary psychological cues. They do not confirm whether the highly rated individuals were objectively healthier or physically stronger in reality.

Future investigations could incorporate developmental hormone tracking during adolescence to better understand how biology links physical traits. Researchers might also include other sensory cues, such as body odor or dynamic movement, to build a more comprehensive picture of human nonverbal signaling.

The study, “Correlated perceptions and underlying hormonal factors of bodily, facial, and vocal attractiveness, health, and physical dominance,” was authored by Tobias L. Kordsmeyer, Philine A.C. Rasokat, Julia Stern, Christoph Schild, and Lars Penke.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/faces-and-bodies-send-matching-signals-of-attractiveness-but-voices-tell-a-diffe/

-------------------------------------------------

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

-------------------------------------------------

#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #attractiveness #facialandbodysignals #voicevsappearance #oneornamenthypothesis #multiplemessages #hormonesandtraits #physicaldominance #evolutionarypsychology #bodyshape #socialperception

DATE: September 29, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------

TITLE: Faces and bodies send matching signals of attractiveness, but voices tell a different story

URL: https://www.psypost.org/faces-and-bodies-send-matching-signals-of-attractiveness-but-voices-tell-a-diffe/

People often judge a potential partner based on a combination of their face, body, and voice. A recent study reveals that while facial and bodily attractiveness tend to match up, a person’s voice provides an independent cue about their traits. These findings, published in Evolution and Human Behavior, suggest that our physical features send a mix of redundant and distinct messages to observers.

Evolutionary psychology proposes that human physical traits communicate genetic quality and health to potential mates or rivals. During the search for a partner, individuals evaluate physical attractiveness to gauge underlying fitness. During competition with rivals, individuals might assess physical dominance to determine formidability. Researchers study how these visual and vocal cues combine to form an overall impression of an individual.

One major theoretical framework is the “one ornament hypothesis.” This concept suggests that different physical traits, such as the face and body, are shaped by the same underlying biological factors. In this view, various body parts act as a single, unified signal of health or genetic fitness. If a person has robust immune function or developmental stability, it should reflect across their entire physical appearance.

The second major framework is the “multiple messages hypothesis.” This theory argues that different parts of the body convey entirely separate pieces of information. For example, a face might signal immune system strength, while a voice might indicate physical dominance. If this theory holds true, a person’s individual physical features would not necessarily correlate with one another in the eyes of an observer.

Researchers also suspect that sex hormones like testosterone and estradiol might drive the synchronized development of these physical traits. These hormones guide sexual dimorphism, which refers to the biological differences in physical characteristics between men and women. Higher testosterone in men and higher estradiol in women are thought to influence the development of traits that others perceive as attractive, healthy, or dominant.

To test these competing hypotheses, a research team led by Tobias L. Kordsmeyer of the University of Goettingen designed an experiment. They wanted to examine how independent raters perceived the attractiveness, health, and physical dominance of faces, bodies, and voices. The researchers also sought to test whether sex hormones act as a biological bridge linking these disparate features.

The study included 165 men and 155 women as evaluation targets. The research team collected standardized facial photographs, three-dimensional body scans, and short audio recordings from each participant. The facial photographs featured participants standing against a white wall with a neutral expression.

The three-dimensional body scans were rendered as digital figures that rotated over an eight-second duration. The researchers deliberately removed skin color and texture from these digital models, converting them to a uniform gray. This step ensured that raters would focus entirely on physical shape and proportions, removing skin quality as a potential confounding factor.

To collect voice samples, male participants were recorded speaking about positive aspects of their lives for one minute. Female participants were recorded reading a standardized text known as the rainbow passage. The researchers extracted five-second audio clips from the men’s recordings and used the second sentence of the passage (about 3.5 seconds on average) from the women’s recordings for the final evaluation.

A separate group of 400 independent raters evaluated the collected stimuli. To prevent their judgments of one trait from influencing another, the raters were divided into specific groups. A single rater only evaluated one type of stimulus, such as male faces, female bodies, or male voices. The raters scored the targets for attractiveness, health, and physical dominance using standardized rating scales.

The research team also gathered saliva and hair samples from the targets to measure hormone levels. They measured baseline testosterone and reactive testosterone in men. Reactive testosterone was captured shortly after the men engaged in a competitive task. For women, the researchers assessed baseline testosterone and estradiol levels across different phases of the menstrual cycle.

When analyzing the rating data, the researchers found positive correlations between how raters perceived faces and bodies. Targets whose faces were rated highly for attractiveness and health also tended to receive high ratings for their body shapes. The effects were of medium size, showing a consistent pattern across both male and female targets.

This pattern also held true for physical dominance, though it was only observed for male targets. Men with faces rated as physically dominant also had bodies rated as physically dominant. Female targets did not exhibit a coordinated rating for physical dominance between their faces and bodies.

These positive associations between the face and the body align with the one ornament hypothesis. Observers seem to interpret facial and bodily cues redundantly, picking up on shared information about the individual’s physical condition. Even without skin texture, the bodies provided enough shape information to align with the health and attractiveness ratings of the faces.

The results for vocal recordings painted a different picture. The researchers found very few measurable associations between how raters judged a target’s voice and how they judged the target’s face or body. Voice ratings appeared to operate independently from visual appearance.

An individual might possess a highly rated face or body, but this did not guarantee their voice would be perceived in the same way. This independence supports the multiple messages hypothesis. The human voice seems to act as a separate channel of communication, offering non-redundant information to observers rather than echoing visual cues.

The hormone analysis yielded unexpected results. The researchers found that adult hormone levels did not mediate the correlated perceptions of faces and bodies. While men’s baseline testosterone levels did show some positive associations with facial dominance and vocal attractiveness, the hormones did not serve as the underlying link for synchronized ratings across body parts.

The proposed mechanism of adult sex hormones bridging these distinct traits was not supported by the data. Adjusting for the targets’ body mass index or relationship status did not alter these outcomes. The correlations between traits remained robust even when accounting for body fat.

The study measured adult baseline and reactive hormone levels rather than developmental hormones. Physical traits like bone structure and vocal cord length are heavily shaped by organizational hormones during fetal development and puberty. Adult hormone levels might not accurately reflect the specific hormonal environment that originally sculpted these physical characteristics.

Additionally, the body scans lacked skin color and texture. Skin quality is a known biological indicator of physical health. Stripping this information away might have altered how raters evaluated the overall condition of the targets, even though it successfully isolated the role of physical shape.

The researchers measured subjective impressions of health, dominance, and attractiveness rather than objective medical data. The ratings reveal how people perceive others based on evolutionary psychological cues. They do not confirm whether the highly rated individuals were objectively healthier or physically stronger in reality.

Future investigations could incorporate developmental hormone tracking during adolescence to better understand how biology links physical traits. Researchers might also include other sensory cues, such as body odor or dynamic movement, to build a more comprehensive picture of human nonverbal signaling.

The study, “Correlated perceptions and underlying hormonal factors of bodily, facial, and vocal attractiveness, health, and physical dominance,” was authored by Tobias L. Kordsmeyer, Philine A.C. Rasokat, Julia Stern, Christoph Schild, and Lars Penke.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/faces-and-bodies-send-matching-signals-of-attractiveness-but-voices-tell-a-diffe/

-------------------------------------------------

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

-------------------------------------------------

#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #attractiveness #facialandbodysignals #voicevsappearance #oneornamenthypothesis #multiplemessages #hormonesandtraits #physicaldominance #evolutionarypsychology #bodyshape #socialperception

DATE: September 29, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------

TITLE: Faces and bodies send matching signals of attractiveness, but voices tell a different story

URL: https://www.psypost.org/faces-and-bodies-send-matching-signals-of-attractiveness-but-voices-tell-a-diffe/

People often judge a potential partner based on a combination of their face, body, and voice. A recent study reveals that while facial and bodily attractiveness tend to match up, a person’s voice provides an independent cue about their traits. These findings, published in Evolution and Human Behavior, suggest that our physical features send a mix of redundant and distinct messages to observers.

Evolutionary psychology proposes that human physical traits communicate genetic quality and health to potential mates or rivals. During the search for a partner, individuals evaluate physical attractiveness to gauge underlying fitness. During competition with rivals, individuals might assess physical dominance to determine formidability. Researchers study how these visual and vocal cues combine to form an overall impression of an individual.

One major theoretical framework is the “one ornament hypothesis.” This concept suggests that different physical traits, such as the face and body, are shaped by the same underlying biological factors. In this view, various body parts act as a single, unified signal of health or genetic fitness. If a person has robust immune function or developmental stability, it should reflect across their entire physical appearance.

The second major framework is the “multiple messages hypothesis.” This theory argues that different parts of the body convey entirely separate pieces of information. For example, a face might signal immune system strength, while a voice might indicate physical dominance. If this theory holds true, a person’s individual physical features would not necessarily correlate with one another in the eyes of an observer.

Researchers also suspect that sex hormones like testosterone and estradiol might drive the synchronized development of these physical traits. These hormones guide sexual dimorphism, which refers to the biological differences in physical characteristics between men and women. Higher testosterone in men and higher estradiol in women are thought to influence the development of traits that others perceive as attractive, healthy, or dominant.

To test these competing hypotheses, a research team led by Tobias L. Kordsmeyer of the University of Goettingen designed an experiment. They wanted to examine how independent raters perceived the attractiveness, health, and physical dominance of faces, bodies, and voices. The researchers also sought to test whether sex hormones act as a biological bridge linking these disparate features.

The study included 165 men and 155 women as evaluation targets. The research team collected standardized facial photographs, three-dimensional body scans, and short audio recordings from each participant. The facial photographs featured participants standing against a white wall with a neutral expression.

The three-dimensional body scans were rendered as digital figures that rotated over an eight-second duration. The researchers deliberately removed skin color and texture from these digital models, converting them to a uniform gray. This step ensured that raters would focus entirely on physical shape and proportions, removing skin quality as a potential confounding factor.

To collect voice samples, male participants were recorded speaking about positive aspects of their lives for one minute. Female participants were recorded reading a standardized text known as the rainbow passage. The researchers extracted five-second audio clips from the men’s recordings and used the second sentence of the passage (about 3.5 seconds on average) from the women’s recordings for the final evaluation.

A separate group of 400 independent raters evaluated the collected stimuli. To prevent their judgments of one trait from influencing another, the raters were divided into specific groups. A single rater only evaluated one type of stimulus, such as male faces, female bodies, or male voices. The raters scored the targets for attractiveness, health, and physical dominance using standardized rating scales.

The research team also gathered saliva and hair samples from the targets to measure hormone levels. They measured baseline testosterone and reactive testosterone in men. Reactive testosterone was captured shortly after the men engaged in a competitive task. For women, the researchers assessed baseline testosterone and estradiol levels across different phases of the menstrual cycle.

When analyzing the rating data, the researchers found positive correlations between how raters perceived faces and bodies. Targets whose faces were rated highly for attractiveness and health also tended to receive high ratings for their body shapes. The effects were of medium size, showing a consistent pattern across both male and female targets.

This pattern also held true for physical dominance, though it was only observed for male targets. Men with faces rated as physically dominant also had bodies rated as physically dominant. Female targets did not exhibit a coordinated rating for physical dominance between their faces and bodies.

These positive associations between the face and the body align with the one ornament hypothesis. Observers seem to interpret facial and bodily cues redundantly, picking up on shared information about the individual’s physical condition. Even without skin texture, the bodies provided enough shape information to align with the health and attractiveness ratings of the faces.

The results for vocal recordings painted a different picture. The researchers found very few measurable associations between how raters judged a target’s voice and how they judged the target’s face or body. Voice ratings appeared to operate independently from visual appearance.

An individual might possess a highly rated face or body, but this did not guarantee their voice would be perceived in the same way. This independence supports the multiple messages hypothesis. The human voice seems to act as a separate channel of communication, offering non-redundant information to observers rather than echoing visual cues.

The hormone analysis yielded unexpected results. The researchers found that adult hormone levels did not mediate the correlated perceptions of faces and bodies. While men’s baseline testosterone levels did show some positive associations with facial dominance and vocal attractiveness, the hormones did not serve as the underlying link for synchronized ratings across body parts.

The proposed mechanism of adult sex hormones bridging these distinct traits was not supported by the data. Adjusting for the targets’ body mass index or relationship status did not alter these outcomes. The correlations between traits remained robust even when accounting for body fat.

The study measured adult baseline and reactive hormone levels rather than developmental hormones. Physical traits like bone structure and vocal cord length are heavily shaped by organizational hormones during fetal development and puberty. Adult hormone levels might not accurately reflect the specific hormonal environment that originally sculpted these physical characteristics.

Additionally, the body scans lacked skin color and texture. Skin quality is a known biological indicator of physical health. Stripping this information away might have altered how raters evaluated the overall condition of the targets, even though it successfully isolated the role of physical shape.

The researchers measured subjective impressions of health, dominance, and attractiveness rather than objective medical data. The ratings reveal how people perceive others based on evolutionary psychological cues. They do not confirm whether the highly rated individuals were objectively healthier or physically stronger in reality.

Future investigations could incorporate developmental hormone tracking during adolescence to better understand how biology links physical traits. Researchers might also include other sensory cues, such as body odor or dynamic movement, to build a more comprehensive picture of human nonverbal signaling.

The study, “Correlated perceptions and underlying hormonal factors of bodily, facial, and vocal attractiveness, health, and physical dominance,” was authored by Tobias L. Kordsmeyer, Philine A.C. Rasokat, Julia Stern, Christoph Schild, and Lars Penke.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/faces-and-bodies-send-matching-signals-of-attractiveness-but-voices-tell-a-diffe/

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DATE: September 29, 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: The brain is built from two separate sources, not one, new research suggests

URL: https://www.psypost.org/the-brain-is-built-from-two-separate-sources-not-one-new-research-suggests/

The brain is often viewed as developing from a single starting pool of cells, but recent research suggests a different story. New evidence indicates that the brain actually arises from two distinct, parallel sets of early cells, one that builds the forebrain and midbrain and another that builds the hindbrain. These cells are restricted to forming specific regions from very early in development. These findings, detailed in a study published in Nature Neuroscience, point to an evolutionary strategy that has shaped nervous system development for hundreds of millions of years.

To understand how the brain forms, scientists study pluripotent stem cells. These are unique cells capable of developing into nearly any tissue in the body. During an early phase of embryonic development known as gastrulation, the basic body plan begins to take shape. At this stage, some stem cells become a tissue called the neural ectoderm, which eventually forms the brain, while other structures like the spinal cord arise from different early tissues.

Generating specific types of brain cells in the lab is a major goal in regenerative medicine. Scientists are particularly interested in the hindbrain, a region that manages vital body processes like breathing, swallowing, and sleep. Motor neuron diseases such as spinal muscular atrophy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which damage nerve cells in both the brainstem and spinal cord, are often fatal. A 2026 study found that stem cells guided to the same type of neuron through hindbrain-like versus spinal cord-like routes ended up with distinct patterns of gene activity, suggesting a cell’s developmental history leaves a lasting mark.

This highlights why researchers need an accurate roadmap of brain development. Historically, one popular model proposed that all brain regions emerge from a common pool of neural progenitor cells. A progenitor is an early, not-yet-specialized cell in the embryo that divides and gives rise to more specialized cells. Neural progenitors are the early cells whose descendants become the brain and spinal cord. While other early studies mapping cell fates hinted that cells might be dedicated to specific brain regions early on, they could not confirm if the cells were permanently committed to those paths or just following local chemical signals.

“We certainly didn’t expect to find that the brain comes from two different sources! In 1952, the trailblazing Dutch scientist Pieter Nieuwkoop proposed that the entire brain arises from a common source,” study author Kyle M. Loh of Stanford University told PsyPost. “This led to the prevailing model in the field. Therefore, finding two different brain origins surprised us.”

“I also want to emphasize that we built on important work by other scientists in the 1990s who also suggested that there are perhaps multiple origins of the brain,” Loh added. “The origins of the brain remain a longstanding question, with many twists and turns along the way, and we are excited to work with others to continue to explore this area.”

The research, led by Rayyan T. Jokhai, Carolyn E. Dundes, and Loh, aimed to resolve this debate. They wanted to see if the earliest brain cells are already restricted in what they can become. The team looked at both mouse embryos and human stem cells to track how these initial developmental decisions are made.

“The brain is one organ, but we found that it is built from two different sources while a baby is growing in a mother’s womb,” Loh explained. “These two pieces—the front part of the brain and the back part of the brain—are pushed together to create one integrated organ. For instance, a smartphone is built from many different pieces that come from different countries, but they are later connected to form one integrated unit.”

First, the researchers used a technique called genetic lineage tracing in mouse embryos. They applied a fluorescent tag to a specific group of early neural cells right as gastrulation was ending. This tag allowed them to track the exact locations of these cells and their descendants as the embryos continued to grow until just before birth.

The tagged cells, which expressed a specific gene called Gbx2, were almost exclusively found in the developing hindbrain. They were essentially absent from the forebrain and midbrain. This provided evidence that in a living embryo, this specific population of cells is already on a dedicated path to form the hindbrain.

To test if these cells could be forced to change their destiny, the team turned to human pluripotent stem cells grown in lab dishes. They exposed the stem cells to specific mixtures of chemical signals to mimic early embryonic development.

Using different chemical recipes, the researchers turned the stem cells into two separate types of early brain tissue within just two days. One recipe yielded anterior neural ectoderm, which naturally forms the forebrain and midbrain. Another recipe, which included the signaling molecules FGF and retinoic acid, produced posterior neural ectoderm, which naturally forms the hindbrain. The researchers then challenged these cells by exposing them to the opposite developmental signals.

The cells largely resisted the new instructions. When the anterior cells were given chemical signals meant to create a hindbrain, they mostly failed to make the switch. In the same way, the posterior cells could rarely be coaxed into becoming forebrain or midbrain cells. Both cell types generally held their identities even when the two were mixed together in the same dish.

To understand this stubbornness, the researchers looked at the cells’ chromatin, which is the way DNA is packaged and organized. They found that the anterior and posterior cells had markedly different chromatin landscapes. The genes required for forebrain development were accessible and ready for action in the anterior cells, while the hindbrain genes were locked away.

The most important takeaway is “that the neuroectoderm divides into two separate progenitor populations that diverge in their potential to generate different brain regions,” Eduardo Sequerra, a researcher at the Brain Institute at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte who was not involved in the study, told PsyPost. He emphasized that this split happens “much earlier than the neural tube formation,” referring to the formation of the early embryonic structure that eventually becomes the brain and spinal cord.

“I am quite confident in their very interesting finding,” Sequerra said. “They joined in vivo developmental studies across different species with in vitro differentiation systems to show their hypothesis is solid in different ways.” In vivo means studies done in living organisms, such as embryos, while in vitro means studies done on cells grown outside the body, such as in a lab dish. Differentiation is the process by which an unspecialized cell, like a stem cell, turns into a specific cell type, such as a neuron.

This early division aligns with older clues in the field. “During the ’90s Nicole Le Douarin’s group performed a series of transplantation studies showing that the folding neural tube is divided into two parts,” Sequerra explained. He noted that one part sits above the notochord, a flexible rod of tissue that helps organize the developing embryo, and “cannot differentiate into anterior structures.” The other part, which lacks a notochord below it, “differentiates into the midbrain and forebrain,” he said.

“This article shows that the split into two populations occurs much earlier than the established notochord and neural folds stage,” Sequerra added, referring to the ridges of tissue on the embryo’s back that rise up and merge to form the neural tube. “This split possibly occurs when the future notochord-mesoderm cells are still migrating.” The mesoderm is the middle layer of cells in an early embryo, which goes on to form muscles, bones, blood, and other tissues.

Using this new knowledge, the research team successfully directed the posterior neural ectoderm cells to grow into specialized hindbrain motor neurons. These particular neurons are responsible for controlling muscles in the face and neck, including those necessary for swallowing. The lab-grown neurons showed spontaneous calcium activity and fired electrical impulses when stimulated, signs that they were functional.

“We are excited by the ability to create human hindbrain neurons in a Petri dish,” Loh said. “The hindbrain—the back part of the brain, otherwise known as the brainstem—controls life-sustaining functions such as sleep, wakefulness, consciousness, hunger, and so on. The ability to create human hindbrain neurons in a Petri dish may help us better understand these fundamental, life-sustaining processes, and diseases that impact them.”

“Both amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and spinal muscular atrophy are deadly diseases,” Loh noted. “In particular, spinal muscular atrophy is the #1 genetic cause of death in babies under 1 year of age. Both diseases kill hindbrain motor neurons that control muscles involved in eating, swallowing, and speech.”

“We cannot sample living motor neurons from a patient’s hindbrain to watch how these diseases attack these neurons. Growing these hindbrain motor neurons in a dish gives us a way to investigate these diseases,” Loh explained. “We hope to explore how amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, spinal muscular atrophy, and other diseases affect human hindbrain motor neurons, with the hope of using this system to discover and test potential treatments.”

“The development of a method to differentiate motor neurons in vitro has the potential to bring hope for those with neuromuscular disorders,” Sequerra said. However, he cautioned that this approach relies on studying patient-specific cells in a dish, rather than replacing damaged tissue in the body. “Of course it has the potential of becoming a way of studying specific patients’ motor neurons through iPSCs [induced pluripotent stem cells] but it definitely is not close to a stem cell therapy for regeneration.”

The researchers also examined the embryos of several other species, including macaques, chickens, zebrafish, and acorn worms. Acorn worms are small marine worms that burrow in the seafloor and are distant relatives of animals with backbones. The researchers found distinct anterior and posterior neural cell groups in all of them. This suggests that the mechanism of using two parallel starting populations to build a brain has been conserved across different species for roughly 550 million years.

“We hope to learn more about how the brain was built during evolution,” Loh said. “In humans, mice, and other types of animals, the two parts of the brain develop next to one another, even though they originate from different sources. However, other pioneering scientists discovered that jellyfish—which diverged from us 600 million years ago—have two separate nerve rings at different ends of the body.”

“Our speculation is that early during evolution, there was perhaps no ‘grand plan’ to create a single brain, but rather potentially two separate nervous systems were created,” Loh continued. “Later in evolution, these two nervous systems may have been pushed together to give rise to the appearance of one integrated brain. It is important to emphasize that this is only an idea, and it might change as scientists learn more.”

“The expansion of the midbrain-forebrain progenitor field was probably an important phenomenon in the vertebrate nervous system evolution,” Sequerra noted. Moving forward, he said “it will be nice to go deeper into the mechanisms for the segregation of the two populations in both vertebrates and invertebrate chordates, or even other deuterostomes.” Invertebrate chordates are animals without a backbone that still share key body features with vertebrates, such as a notochord at some stage of life. Examples include sea squirts and lancelets, which belong to the broader deuterostome group alongside vertebrates.

As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. Growing human cells in a plastic dish does not perfectly recreate the complex, three-dimensional environment of a developing embryo. The cells might behave slightly differently when isolated from the intricate chemical exchanges that happen naturally in the body.

Additionally, the researchers emphasize that their findings should not be misinterpreted as suggesting the brain lacks unity. “Some people reading our paper sometimes think it suggests the brain is two separate organs. More precisely, the brain is one organ, but it is built from two different sources,” Loh explained. “By the analogy, the heart is likewise built from two different sources: one source creates the right ventricle, and another source creates the three other chambers of the heart. But ultimately, all four chambers of the heart work together, similar to how different parts of the brain all work together to give rise to all the amazing things that the brain can do.”

In addition, while the lab-grown cells appeared strongly committed to their specific paths, other unknown chemical combinations might exist that could force them to switch identities. Testing this in living mammals is technically difficult and would require placing labeled progenitor cells into the wrong location in a growing mammalian embryo. Despite these caveats, the ability to predictably grow specialized hindbrain neurons offers a highly useful tool for studying fatal neurodegenerative diseases in the lab. These are diseases in which nerve cells gradually break down and die over time, such as ALS.

The study, “Two parallel neural ectoderm progenitors contribute to the developing brain,” was authored by Rayyan T. Jokhai, Carolyn E. Dundes, Hadia S. Ahsan, Rachel S. Kang, Rachel E.A. Salomon-Shulman, Arjun Rajan, Yoon Seok Kim, Liam J. Stanton, Christine Xu, Stephanie Do, Brennan D. McDonald, José Miguel Andrade López, Hugo A. Urrutia, Hannah Greenfeld, Alicia Wong, Yimiao Qu, Andrew S. Petkovic, Yi Miao, K. Christopher Garcia, Michelle Monje, Daniel E. Wagner, Marianne E. Bronner, Christopher J. Lowe, and Kyle M. Loh.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/the-brain-is-built-from-two-separate-sources-not-one-new-research-suggests/

-------------------------------------------------

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DATE: September 29, 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: The brain is built from two separate sources, not one, new research suggests

URL: https://www.psypost.org/the-brain-is-built-from-two-separate-sources-not-one-new-research-suggests/

The brain is often viewed as developing from a single starting pool of cells, but recent research suggests a different story. New evidence indicates that the brain actually arises from two distinct, parallel sets of early cells, one that builds the forebrain and midbrain and another that builds the hindbrain. These cells are restricted to forming specific regions from very early in development. These findings, detailed in a study published in Nature Neuroscience, point to an evolutionary strategy that has shaped nervous system development for hundreds of millions of years.

To understand how the brain forms, scientists study pluripotent stem cells. These are unique cells capable of developing into nearly any tissue in the body. During an early phase of embryonic development known as gastrulation, the basic body plan begins to take shape. At this stage, some stem cells become a tissue called the neural ectoderm, which eventually forms the brain, while other structures like the spinal cord arise from different early tissues.

Generating specific types of brain cells in the lab is a major goal in regenerative medicine. Scientists are particularly interested in the hindbrain, a region that manages vital body processes like breathing, swallowing, and sleep. Motor neuron diseases such as spinal muscular atrophy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which damage nerve cells in both the brainstem and spinal cord, are often fatal. A 2026 study found that stem cells guided to the same type of neuron through hindbrain-like versus spinal cord-like routes ended up with distinct patterns of gene activity, suggesting a cell’s developmental history leaves a lasting mark.

This highlights why researchers need an accurate roadmap of brain development. Historically, one popular model proposed that all brain regions emerge from a common pool of neural progenitor cells. A progenitor is an early, not-yet-specialized cell in the embryo that divides and gives rise to more specialized cells. Neural progenitors are the early cells whose descendants become the brain and spinal cord. While other early studies mapping cell fates hinted that cells might be dedicated to specific brain regions early on, they could not confirm if the cells were permanently committed to those paths or just following local chemical signals.

“We certainly didn’t expect to find that the brain comes from two different sources! In 1952, the trailblazing Dutch scientist Pieter Nieuwkoop proposed that the entire brain arises from a common source,” study author Kyle M. Loh of Stanford University told PsyPost. “This led to the prevailing model in the field. Therefore, finding two different brain origins surprised us.”

“I also want to emphasize that we built on important work by other scientists in the 1990s who also suggested that there are perhaps multiple origins of the brain,” Loh added. “The origins of the brain remain a longstanding question, with many twists and turns along the way, and we are excited to work with others to continue to explore this area.”

The research, led by Rayyan T. Jokhai, Carolyn E. Dundes, and Loh, aimed to resolve this debate. They wanted to see if the earliest brain cells are already restricted in what they can become. The team looked at both mouse embryos and human stem cells to track how these initial developmental decisions are made.

“The brain is one organ, but we found that it is built from two different sources while a baby is growing in a mother’s womb,” Loh explained. “These two pieces—the front part of the brain and the back part of the brain—are pushed together to create one integrated organ. For instance, a smartphone is built from many different pieces that come from different countries, but they are later connected to form one integrated unit.”

First, the researchers used a technique called genetic lineage tracing in mouse embryos. They applied a fluorescent tag to a specific group of early neural cells right as gastrulation was ending. This tag allowed them to track the exact locations of these cells and their descendants as the embryos continued to grow until just before birth.

The tagged cells, which expressed a specific gene called Gbx2, were almost exclusively found in the developing hindbrain. They were essentially absent from the forebrain and midbrain. This provided evidence that in a living embryo, this specific population of cells is already on a dedicated path to form the hindbrain.

To test if these cells could be forced to change their destiny, the team turned to human pluripotent stem cells grown in lab dishes. They exposed the stem cells to specific mixtures of chemical signals to mimic early embryonic development.

Using different chemical recipes, the researchers turned the stem cells into two separate types of early brain tissue within just two days. One recipe yielded anterior neural ectoderm, which naturally forms the forebrain and midbrain. Another recipe, which included the signaling molecules FGF and retinoic acid, produced posterior neural ectoderm, which naturally forms the hindbrain. The researchers then challenged these cells by exposing them to the opposite developmental signals.

The cells largely resisted the new instructions. When the anterior cells were given chemical signals meant to create a hindbrain, they mostly failed to make the switch. In the same way, the posterior cells could rarely be coaxed into becoming forebrain or midbrain cells. Both cell types generally held their identities even when the two were mixed together in the same dish.

To understand this stubbornness, the researchers looked at the cells’ chromatin, which is the way DNA is packaged and organized. They found that the anterior and posterior cells had markedly different chromatin landscapes. The genes required for forebrain development were accessible and ready for action in the anterior cells, while the hindbrain genes were locked away.

The most important takeaway is “that the neuroectoderm divides into two separate progenitor populations that diverge in their potential to generate different brain regions,” Eduardo Sequerra, a researcher at the Brain Institute at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte who was not involved in the study, told PsyPost. He emphasized that this split happens “much earlier than the neural tube formation,” referring to the formation of the early embryonic structure that eventually becomes the brain and spinal cord.

“I am quite confident in their very interesting finding,” Sequerra said. “They joined in vivo developmental studies across different species with in vitro differentiation systems to show their hypothesis is solid in different ways.” In vivo means studies done in living organisms, such as embryos, while in vitro means studies done on cells grown outside the body, such as in a lab dish. Differentiation is the process by which an unspecialized cell, like a stem cell, turns into a specific cell type, such as a neuron.

This early division aligns with older clues in the field. “During the ’90s Nicole Le Douarin’s group performed a series of transplantation studies showing that the folding neural tube is divided into two parts,” Sequerra explained. He noted that one part sits above the notochord, a flexible rod of tissue that helps organize the developing embryo, and “cannot differentiate into anterior structures.” The other part, which lacks a notochord below it, “differentiates into the midbrain and forebrain,” he said.

“This article shows that the split into two populations occurs much earlier than the established notochord and neural folds stage,” Sequerra added, referring to the ridges of tissue on the embryo’s back that rise up and merge to form the neural tube. “This split possibly occurs when the future notochord-mesoderm cells are still migrating.” The mesoderm is the middle layer of cells in an early embryo, which goes on to form muscles, bones, blood, and other tissues.

Using this new knowledge, the research team successfully directed the posterior neural ectoderm cells to grow into specialized hindbrain motor neurons. These particular neurons are responsible for controlling muscles in the face and neck, including those necessary for swallowing. The lab-grown neurons showed spontaneous calcium activity and fired electrical impulses when stimulated, signs that they were functional.

“We are excited by the ability to create human hindbrain neurons in a Petri dish,” Loh said. “The hindbrain—the back part of the brain, otherwise known as the brainstem—controls life-sustaining functions such as sleep, wakefulness, consciousness, hunger, and so on. The ability to create human hindbrain neurons in a Petri dish may help us better understand these fundamental, life-sustaining processes, and diseases that impact them.”

“Both amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and spinal muscular atrophy are deadly diseases,” Loh noted. “In particular, spinal muscular atrophy is the #1 genetic cause of death in babies under 1 year of age. Both diseases kill hindbrain motor neurons that control muscles involved in eating, swallowing, and speech.”

“We cannot sample living motor neurons from a patient’s hindbrain to watch how these diseases attack these neurons. Growing these hindbrain motor neurons in a dish gives us a way to investigate these diseases,” Loh explained. “We hope to explore how amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, spinal muscular atrophy, and other diseases affect human hindbrain motor neurons, with the hope of using this system to discover and test potential treatments.”

“The development of a method to differentiate motor neurons in vitro has the potential to bring hope for those with neuromuscular disorders,” Sequerra said. However, he cautioned that this approach relies on studying patient-specific cells in a dish, rather than replacing damaged tissue in the body. “Of course it has the potential of becoming a way of studying specific patients’ motor neurons through iPSCs [induced pluripotent stem cells] but it definitely is not close to a stem cell therapy for regeneration.”

The researchers also examined the embryos of several other species, including macaques, chickens, zebrafish, and acorn worms. Acorn worms are small marine worms that burrow in the seafloor and are distant relatives of animals with backbones. The researchers found distinct anterior and posterior neural cell groups in all of them. This suggests that the mechanism of using two parallel starting populations to build a brain has been conserved across different species for roughly 550 million years.

“We hope to learn more about how the brain was built during evolution,” Loh said. “In humans, mice, and other types of animals, the two parts of the brain develop next to one another, even though they originate from different sources. However, other pioneering scientists discovered that jellyfish—which diverged from us 600 million years ago—have two separate nerve rings at different ends of the body.”

“Our speculation is that early during evolution, there was perhaps no ‘grand plan’ to create a single brain, but rather potentially two separate nervous systems were created,” Loh continued. “Later in evolution, these two nervous systems may have been pushed together to give rise to the appearance of one integrated brain. It is important to emphasize that this is only an idea, and it might change as scientists learn more.”

“The expansion of the midbrain-forebrain progenitor field was probably an important phenomenon in the vertebrate nervous system evolution,” Sequerra noted. Moving forward, he said “it will be nice to go deeper into the mechanisms for the segregation of the two populations in both vertebrates and invertebrate chordates, or even other deuterostomes.” Invertebrate chordates are animals without a backbone that still share key body features with vertebrates, such as a notochord at some stage of life. Examples include sea squirts and lancelets, which belong to the broader deuterostome group alongside vertebrates.

As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. Growing human cells in a plastic dish does not perfectly recreate the complex, three-dimensional environment of a developing embryo. The cells might behave slightly differently when isolated from the intricate chemical exchanges that happen naturally in the body.

Additionally, the researchers emphasize that their findings should not be misinterpreted as suggesting the brain lacks unity. “Some people reading our paper sometimes think it suggests the brain is two separate organs. More precisely, the brain is one organ, but it is built from two different sources,” Loh explained. “By the analogy, the heart is likewise built from two different sources: one source creates the right ventricle, and another source creates the three other chambers of the heart. But ultimately, all four chambers of the heart work together, similar to how different parts of the brain all work together to give rise to all the amazing things that the brain can do.”

In addition, while the lab-grown cells appeared strongly committed to their specific paths, other unknown chemical combinations might exist that could force them to switch identities. Testing this in living mammals is technically difficult and would require placing labeled progenitor cells into the wrong location in a growing mammalian embryo. Despite these caveats, the ability to predictably grow specialized hindbrain neurons offers a highly useful tool for studying fatal neurodegenerative diseases in the lab. These are diseases in which nerve cells gradually break down and die over time, such as ALS.

The study, “Two parallel neural ectoderm progenitors contribute to the developing brain,” was authored by Rayyan T. Jokhai, Carolyn E. Dundes, Hadia S. Ahsan, Rachel S. Kang, Rachel E.A. Salomon-Shulman, Arjun Rajan, Yoon Seok Kim, Liam J. Stanton, Christine Xu, Stephanie Do, Brennan D. McDonald, José Miguel Andrade López, Hugo A. Urrutia, Hannah Greenfeld, Alicia Wong, Yimiao Qu, Andrew S. Petkovic, Yi Miao, K. Christopher Garcia, Michelle Monje, Daniel E. Wagner, Marianne E. Bronner, Christopher J. Lowe, and Kyle M. Loh.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/the-brain-is-built-from-two-separate-sources-not-one-new-research-suggests/

-------------------------------------------------

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-------------------------------------------------

#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #braindevelopment #neurogenesis #TwoSourcesBrain #forebrainmidbrain #hindbrain #neuralectoderm #stemcells #neuroscience #neuroregeneration #NatureNeuroscience

DATE: September 29, 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: The brain is built from two separate sources, not one, new research suggests

URL: https://www.psypost.org/the-brain-is-built-from-two-separate-sources-not-one-new-research-suggests/

The brain is often viewed as developing from a single starting pool of cells, but recent research suggests a different story. New evidence indicates that the brain actually arises from two distinct, parallel sets of early cells, one that builds the forebrain and midbrain and another that builds the hindbrain. These cells are restricted to forming specific regions from very early in development. These findings, detailed in a study published in Nature Neuroscience, point to an evolutionary strategy that has shaped nervous system development for hundreds of millions of years.

To understand how the brain forms, scientists study pluripotent stem cells. These are unique cells capable of developing into nearly any tissue in the body. During an early phase of embryonic development known as gastrulation, the basic body plan begins to take shape. At this stage, some stem cells become a tissue called the neural ectoderm, which eventually forms the brain, while other structures like the spinal cord arise from different early tissues.

Generating specific types of brain cells in the lab is a major goal in regenerative medicine. Scientists are particularly interested in the hindbrain, a region that manages vital body processes like breathing, swallowing, and sleep. Motor neuron diseases such as spinal muscular atrophy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which damage nerve cells in both the brainstem and spinal cord, are often fatal. A 2026 study found that stem cells guided to the same type of neuron through hindbrain-like versus spinal cord-like routes ended up with distinct patterns of gene activity, suggesting a cell’s developmental history leaves a lasting mark.

This highlights why researchers need an accurate roadmap of brain development. Historically, one popular model proposed that all brain regions emerge from a common pool of neural progenitor cells. A progenitor is an early, not-yet-specialized cell in the embryo that divides and gives rise to more specialized cells. Neural progenitors are the early cells whose descendants become the brain and spinal cord. While other early studies mapping cell fates hinted that cells might be dedicated to specific brain regions early on, they could not confirm if the cells were permanently committed to those paths or just following local chemical signals.

“We certainly didn’t expect to find that the brain comes from two different sources! In 1952, the trailblazing Dutch scientist Pieter Nieuwkoop proposed that the entire brain arises from a common source,” study author Kyle M. Loh of Stanford University told PsyPost. “This led to the prevailing model in the field. Therefore, finding two different brain origins surprised us.”

“I also want to emphasize that we built on important work by other scientists in the 1990s who also suggested that there are perhaps multiple origins of the brain,” Loh added. “The origins of the brain remain a longstanding question, with many twists and turns along the way, and we are excited to work with others to continue to explore this area.”

The research, led by Rayyan T. Jokhai, Carolyn E. Dundes, and Loh, aimed to resolve this debate. They wanted to see if the earliest brain cells are already restricted in what they can become. The team looked at both mouse embryos and human stem cells to track how these initial developmental decisions are made.

“The brain is one organ, but we found that it is built from two different sources while a baby is growing in a mother’s womb,” Loh explained. “These two pieces—the front part of the brain and the back part of the brain—are pushed together to create one integrated organ. For instance, a smartphone is built from many different pieces that come from different countries, but they are later connected to form one integrated unit.”

First, the researchers used a technique called genetic lineage tracing in mouse embryos. They applied a fluorescent tag to a specific group of early neural cells right as gastrulation was ending. This tag allowed them to track the exact locations of these cells and their descendants as the embryos continued to grow until just before birth.

The tagged cells, which expressed a specific gene called Gbx2, were almost exclusively found in the developing hindbrain. They were essentially absent from the forebrain and midbrain. This provided evidence that in a living embryo, this specific population of cells is already on a dedicated path to form the hindbrain.

To test if these cells could be forced to change their destiny, the team turned to human pluripotent stem cells grown in lab dishes. They exposed the stem cells to specific mixtures of chemical signals to mimic early embryonic development.

Using different chemical recipes, the researchers turned the stem cells into two separate types of early brain tissue within just two days. One recipe yielded anterior neural ectoderm, which naturally forms the forebrain and midbrain. Another recipe, which included the signaling molecules FGF and retinoic acid, produced posterior neural ectoderm, which naturally forms the hindbrain. The researchers then challenged these cells by exposing them to the opposite developmental signals.

The cells largely resisted the new instructions. When the anterior cells were given chemical signals meant to create a hindbrain, they mostly failed to make the switch. In the same way, the posterior cells could rarely be coaxed into becoming forebrain or midbrain cells. Both cell types generally held their identities even when the two were mixed together in the same dish.

To understand this stubbornness, the researchers looked at the cells’ chromatin, which is the way DNA is packaged and organized. They found that the anterior and posterior cells had markedly different chromatin landscapes. The genes required for forebrain development were accessible and ready for action in the anterior cells, while the hindbrain genes were locked away.

The most important takeaway is “that the neuroectoderm divides into two separate progenitor populations that diverge in their potential to generate different brain regions,” Eduardo Sequerra, a researcher at the Brain Institute at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte who was not involved in the study, told PsyPost. He emphasized that this split happens “much earlier than the neural tube formation,” referring to the formation of the early embryonic structure that eventually becomes the brain and spinal cord.

“I am quite confident in their very interesting finding,” Sequerra said. “They joined in vivo developmental studies across different species with in vitro differentiation systems to show their hypothesis is solid in different ways.” In vivo means studies done in living organisms, such as embryos, while in vitro means studies done on cells grown outside the body, such as in a lab dish. Differentiation is the process by which an unspecialized cell, like a stem cell, turns into a specific cell type, such as a neuron.

This early division aligns with older clues in the field. “During the ’90s Nicole Le Douarin’s group performed a series of transplantation studies showing that the folding neural tube is divided into two parts,” Sequerra explained. He noted that one part sits above the notochord, a flexible rod of tissue that helps organize the developing embryo, and “cannot differentiate into anterior structures.” The other part, which lacks a notochord below it, “differentiates into the midbrain and forebrain,” he said.

“This article shows that the split into two populations occurs much earlier than the established notochord and neural folds stage,” Sequerra added, referring to the ridges of tissue on the embryo’s back that rise up and merge to form the neural tube. “This split possibly occurs when the future notochord-mesoderm cells are still migrating.” The mesoderm is the middle layer of cells in an early embryo, which goes on to form muscles, bones, blood, and other tissues.

Using this new knowledge, the research team successfully directed the posterior neural ectoderm cells to grow into specialized hindbrain motor neurons. These particular neurons are responsible for controlling muscles in the face and neck, including those necessary for swallowing. The lab-grown neurons showed spontaneous calcium activity and fired electrical impulses when stimulated, signs that they were functional.

“We are excited by the ability to create human hindbrain neurons in a Petri dish,” Loh said. “The hindbrain—the back part of the brain, otherwise known as the brainstem—controls life-sustaining functions such as sleep, wakefulness, consciousness, hunger, and so on. The ability to create human hindbrain neurons in a Petri dish may help us better understand these fundamental, life-sustaining processes, and diseases that impact them.”

“Both amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and spinal muscular atrophy are deadly diseases,” Loh noted. “In particular, spinal muscular atrophy is the #1 genetic cause of death in babies under 1 year of age. Both diseases kill hindbrain motor neurons that control muscles involved in eating, swallowing, and speech.”

“We cannot sample living motor neurons from a patient’s hindbrain to watch how these diseases attack these neurons. Growing these hindbrain motor neurons in a dish gives us a way to investigate these diseases,” Loh explained. “We hope to explore how amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, spinal muscular atrophy, and other diseases affect human hindbrain motor neurons, with the hope of using this system to discover and test potential treatments.”

“The development of a method to differentiate motor neurons in vitro has the potential to bring hope for those with neuromuscular disorders,” Sequerra said. However, he cautioned that this approach relies on studying patient-specific cells in a dish, rather than replacing damaged tissue in the body. “Of course it has the potential of becoming a way of studying specific patients’ motor neurons through iPSCs [induced pluripotent stem cells] but it definitely is not close to a stem cell therapy for regeneration.”

The researchers also examined the embryos of several other species, including macaques, chickens, zebrafish, and acorn worms. Acorn worms are small marine worms that burrow in the seafloor and are distant relatives of animals with backbones. The researchers found distinct anterior and posterior neural cell groups in all of them. This suggests that the mechanism of using two parallel starting populations to build a brain has been conserved across different species for roughly 550 million years.

“We hope to learn more about how the brain was built during evolution,” Loh said. “In humans, mice, and other types of animals, the two parts of the brain develop next to one another, even though they originate from different sources. However, other pioneering scientists discovered that jellyfish—which diverged from us 600 million years ago—have two separate nerve rings at different ends of the body.”

“Our speculation is that early during evolution, there was perhaps no ‘grand plan’ to create a single brain, but rather potentially two separate nervous systems were created,” Loh continued. “Later in evolution, these two nervous systems may have been pushed together to give rise to the appearance of one integrated brain. It is important to emphasize that this is only an idea, and it might change as scientists learn more.”

“The expansion of the midbrain-forebrain progenitor field was probably an important phenomenon in the vertebrate nervous system evolution,” Sequerra noted. Moving forward, he said “it will be nice to go deeper into the mechanisms for the segregation of the two populations in both vertebrates and invertebrate chordates, or even other deuterostomes.” Invertebrate chordates are animals without a backbone that still share key body features with vertebrates, such as a notochord at some stage of life. Examples include sea squirts and lancelets, which belong to the broader deuterostome group alongside vertebrates.

As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. Growing human cells in a plastic dish does not perfectly recreate the complex, three-dimensional environment of a developing embryo. The cells might behave slightly differently when isolated from the intricate chemical exchanges that happen naturally in the body.

Additionally, the researchers emphasize that their findings should not be misinterpreted as suggesting the brain lacks unity. “Some people reading our paper sometimes think it suggests the brain is two separate organs. More precisely, the brain is one organ, but it is built from two different sources,” Loh explained. “By the analogy, the heart is likewise built from two different sources: one source creates the right ventricle, and another source creates the three other chambers of the heart. But ultimately, all four chambers of the heart work together, similar to how different parts of the brain all work together to give rise to all the amazing things that the brain can do.”

In addition, while the lab-grown cells appeared strongly committed to their specific paths, other unknown chemical combinations might exist that could force them to switch identities. Testing this in living mammals is technically difficult and would require placing labeled progenitor cells into the wrong location in a growing mammalian embryo. Despite these caveats, the ability to predictably grow specialized hindbrain neurons offers a highly useful tool for studying fatal neurodegenerative diseases in the lab. These are diseases in which nerve cells gradually break down and die over time, such as ALS.

The study, “Two parallel neural ectoderm progenitors contribute to the developing brain,” was authored by Rayyan T. Jokhai, Carolyn E. Dundes, Hadia S. Ahsan, Rachel S. Kang, Rachel E.A. Salomon-Shulman, Arjun Rajan, Yoon Seok Kim, Liam J. Stanton, Christine Xu, Stephanie Do, Brennan D. McDonald, José Miguel Andrade López, Hugo A. Urrutia, Hannah Greenfeld, Alicia Wong, Yimiao Qu, Andrew S. Petkovic, Yi Miao, K. Christopher Garcia, Michelle Monje, Daniel E. Wagner, Marianne E. Bronner, Christopher J. Lowe, and Kyle M. Loh.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/the-brain-is-built-from-two-separate-sources-not-one-new-research-suggests/

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DATE: September 28, 2026 at 06:00PM
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: The link between parental divorce and depression might not be what it seems

URL: https://www.psypost.org/the-link-between-parental-divorce-and-depression-might-not-be-what-it-seems/

A recent study suggests that the increased risk of adult depression often associated with childhood parental divorce is largely explained by the parents’ own mental health and substance use challenges, rather than the divorce itself. By analyzing data from over 128,000 adults, researchers found that once factors like parental mental illness are taken into account, the statistical link between family structure and adult emotional distress mostly disappears. The findings were published in Psychiatry Research.

Past research, such as a 2019 meta-analysis, found that adults who experienced parental divorce during childhood tend to suffer from higher rates of depression and psychological distress. This observation led to a general assumption that the separation itself creates lasting emotional damage. However, family dynamics are complicated, and a marital split is rarely an isolated event. Many children who experience a family breakup also live through other household adversities.

For instance, a 2024 study indicated that adults who go through a divorce often carry higher underlying risks for mental illnesses, such as depression or anxiety. This raises a question about whether shared family vulnerabilities might explain both the breakdown of the marriage and the child’s later struggles. Previous researchers have used large health surveys to look at the long-term consequences of a changing family structure, such as a study covered by PsyPost in 2025 that linked parental divorce to an elevated risk of stroke in older adulthood.

The research, led by Mary Kate Schilke of Tyndale University and Esme Fuller-Thomson of the University of Toronto, set out to see if the apparent impact of parental divorce holds up when other negative childhood experiences are factored in. They also wanted to look at a growing but under-studied group: adults whose parents never married.

To answer these questions, the authors analyzed data from the 2021-2024 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. This is a massive telephone survey that collects health information from adults across the United States. The researchers focused on a sample of 128,264 adults. To ensure they were looking at the effects of family structure rather than severe trauma, they excluded anyone who reported experiencing physical or sexual abuse during childhood.

The respondents answered questions about their parents’ marital status before they turned 18, categorized as continuously married, divorced, or never married. The researchers looked at two primary measures of mental health. The first was a self-reported lifetime diagnosis of depression. The second was frequent mental distress, which means the respondent experienced 14 or more days of poor mental health in the past month.

Before taking other background factors into account, the researchers observed a noticeable gap in mental health based on family structure. Adults whose parents were divorced reported a lifetime depression rate of 19.2 percent, and those with unmarried parents reported a rate of 18.7 percent. Both groups were higher than the 14.1 percent rate among adults whose parents stayed married.

A similar pattern appeared for frequent mental distress in the past month. The rates were 13.6 percent for those with divorced parents, 16.3 percent for those with unmarried parents, and 8.5 percent for those with continuously married parents.

The picture changed when the researchers adjusted their statistical models to account for other adverse childhood experiences. They looked at factors like household neglect, domestic violence, emotional abuse, and having a parent who was incarcerated. Two specific factors stood out for their massive impact on the results: parental mental illness and parental substance use.

When the researchers factored in parental mental illness, the association between parental divorce and the adult child’s depression dropped by 68 percent. For adults with unmarried parents, accounting for parental mental illness reduced the association with depression by 52 percent. Parental substance use also played a large role, reducing the link between parental divorce and adult depression by 49 percent.

When all childhood adversities, sociodemographic factors like income and education, and adult health behaviors were accounted for, the link between childhood family structure and adult mental illness was no longer statistically significant. This suggests that a divorce itself is not necessarily the root cause of later mental health struggles. Instead, a cluster of environmental and genetic factors that often accompany a divorce or an unmarried household seem to drive the increased risk.

As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study relies on self-reported data, which means participants might not remember their childhood experiences perfectly. The cross-sectional nature of the survey also means the researchers cannot establish a timeline of events. They do not know if a parent’s mental illness started before or after a divorce, or exactly how old the child was when the separation occurred.

The category for unmarried parents is also quite broad. It lumps together single parents and parents who lived together but never legally married, which are two very different family environments. In addition, the survey only recorded the respondents’ socioeconomic status in adulthood, not during their childhood. A family’s financial situation during a divorce could play a large role in a child’s development, but the researchers did not have the data to track that specific pathway.

The study, “Long After the Split: The Association Between Parental Divorce and Mental Health in Adults,” was authored by Mary Kate Schilke, Philip Baiden, and Esme Fuller-Thomson.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/the-link-between-parental-divorce-and-depression-might-not-be-what-it-seems/

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DATE: September 28, 2026 at 06:00PM
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: The link between parental divorce and depression might not be what it seems

URL: https://www.psypost.org/the-link-between-parental-divorce-and-depression-might-not-be-what-it-seems/

A recent study suggests that the increased risk of adult depression often associated with childhood parental divorce is largely explained by the parents’ own mental health and substance use challenges, rather than the divorce itself. By analyzing data from over 128,000 adults, researchers found that once factors like parental mental illness are taken into account, the statistical link between family structure and adult emotional distress mostly disappears. The findings were published in Psychiatry Research.

Past research, such as a 2019 meta-analysis, found that adults who experienced parental divorce during childhood tend to suffer from higher rates of depression and psychological distress. This observation led to a general assumption that the separation itself creates lasting emotional damage. However, family dynamics are complicated, and a marital split is rarely an isolated event. Many children who experience a family breakup also live through other household adversities.

For instance, a 2024 study indicated that adults who go through a divorce often carry higher underlying risks for mental illnesses, such as depression or anxiety. This raises a question about whether shared family vulnerabilities might explain both the breakdown of the marriage and the child’s later struggles. Previous researchers have used large health surveys to look at the long-term consequences of a changing family structure, such as a study covered by PsyPost in 2025 that linked parental divorce to an elevated risk of stroke in older adulthood.

The research, led by Mary Kate Schilke of Tyndale University and Esme Fuller-Thomson of the University of Toronto, set out to see if the apparent impact of parental divorce holds up when other negative childhood experiences are factored in. They also wanted to look at a growing but under-studied group: adults whose parents never married.

To answer these questions, the authors analyzed data from the 2021-2024 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. This is a massive telephone survey that collects health information from adults across the United States. The researchers focused on a sample of 128,264 adults. To ensure they were looking at the effects of family structure rather than severe trauma, they excluded anyone who reported experiencing physical or sexual abuse during childhood.

The respondents answered questions about their parents’ marital status before they turned 18, categorized as continuously married, divorced, or never married. The researchers looked at two primary measures of mental health. The first was a self-reported lifetime diagnosis of depression. The second was frequent mental distress, which means the respondent experienced 14 or more days of poor mental health in the past month.

Before taking other background factors into account, the researchers observed a noticeable gap in mental health based on family structure. Adults whose parents were divorced reported a lifetime depression rate of 19.2 percent, and those with unmarried parents reported a rate of 18.7 percent. Both groups were higher than the 14.1 percent rate among adults whose parents stayed married.

A similar pattern appeared for frequent mental distress in the past month. The rates were 13.6 percent for those with divorced parents, 16.3 percent for those with unmarried parents, and 8.5 percent for those with continuously married parents.

The picture changed when the researchers adjusted their statistical models to account for other adverse childhood experiences. They looked at factors like household neglect, domestic violence, emotional abuse, and having a parent who was incarcerated. Two specific factors stood out for their massive impact on the results: parental mental illness and parental substance use.

When the researchers factored in parental mental illness, the association between parental divorce and the adult child’s depression dropped by 68 percent. For adults with unmarried parents, accounting for parental mental illness reduced the association with depression by 52 percent. Parental substance use also played a large role, reducing the link between parental divorce and adult depression by 49 percent.

When all childhood adversities, sociodemographic factors like income and education, and adult health behaviors were accounted for, the link between childhood family structure and adult mental illness was no longer statistically significant. This suggests that a divorce itself is not necessarily the root cause of later mental health struggles. Instead, a cluster of environmental and genetic factors that often accompany a divorce or an unmarried household seem to drive the increased risk.

As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study relies on self-reported data, which means participants might not remember their childhood experiences perfectly. The cross-sectional nature of the survey also means the researchers cannot establish a timeline of events. They do not know if a parent’s mental illness started before or after a divorce, or exactly how old the child was when the separation occurred.

The category for unmarried parents is also quite broad. It lumps together single parents and parents who lived together but never legally married, which are two very different family environments. In addition, the survey only recorded the respondents’ socioeconomic status in adulthood, not during their childhood. A family’s financial situation during a divorce could play a large role in a child’s development, but the researchers did not have the data to track that specific pathway.

The study, “Long After the Split: The Association Between Parental Divorce and Mental Health in Adults,” was authored by Mary Kate Schilke, Philip Baiden, and Esme Fuller-Thomson.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/the-link-between-parental-divorce-and-depression-might-not-be-what-it-seems/

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DATE: September 28, 2026 at 06:00PM
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: The link between parental divorce and depression might not be what it seems

URL: https://www.psypost.org/the-link-between-parental-divorce-and-depression-might-not-be-what-it-seems/

A recent study suggests that the increased risk of adult depression often associated with childhood parental divorce is largely explained by the parents’ own mental health and substance use challenges, rather than the divorce itself. By analyzing data from over 128,000 adults, researchers found that once factors like parental mental illness are taken into account, the statistical link between family structure and adult emotional distress mostly disappears. The findings were published in Psychiatry Research.

Past research, such as a 2019 meta-analysis, found that adults who experienced parental divorce during childhood tend to suffer from higher rates of depression and psychological distress. This observation led to a general assumption that the separation itself creates lasting emotional damage. However, family dynamics are complicated, and a marital split is rarely an isolated event. Many children who experience a family breakup also live through other household adversities.

For instance, a 2024 study indicated that adults who go through a divorce often carry higher underlying risks for mental illnesses, such as depression or anxiety. This raises a question about whether shared family vulnerabilities might explain both the breakdown of the marriage and the child’s later struggles. Previous researchers have used large health surveys to look at the long-term consequences of a changing family structure, such as a study covered by PsyPost in 2025 that linked parental divorce to an elevated risk of stroke in older adulthood.

The research, led by Mary Kate Schilke of Tyndale University and Esme Fuller-Thomson of the University of Toronto, set out to see if the apparent impact of parental divorce holds up when other negative childhood experiences are factored in. They also wanted to look at a growing but under-studied group: adults whose parents never married.

To answer these questions, the authors analyzed data from the 2021-2024 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. This is a massive telephone survey that collects health information from adults across the United States. The researchers focused on a sample of 128,264 adults. To ensure they were looking at the effects of family structure rather than severe trauma, they excluded anyone who reported experiencing physical or sexual abuse during childhood.

The respondents answered questions about their parents’ marital status before they turned 18, categorized as continuously married, divorced, or never married. The researchers looked at two primary measures of mental health. The first was a self-reported lifetime diagnosis of depression. The second was frequent mental distress, which means the respondent experienced 14 or more days of poor mental health in the past month.

Before taking other background factors into account, the researchers observed a noticeable gap in mental health based on family structure. Adults whose parents were divorced reported a lifetime depression rate of 19.2 percent, and those with unmarried parents reported a rate of 18.7 percent. Both groups were higher than the 14.1 percent rate among adults whose parents stayed married.

A similar pattern appeared for frequent mental distress in the past month. The rates were 13.6 percent for those with divorced parents, 16.3 percent for those with unmarried parents, and 8.5 percent for those with continuously married parents.

The picture changed when the researchers adjusted their statistical models to account for other adverse childhood experiences. They looked at factors like household neglect, domestic violence, emotional abuse, and having a parent who was incarcerated. Two specific factors stood out for their massive impact on the results: parental mental illness and parental substance use.

When the researchers factored in parental mental illness, the association between parental divorce and the adult child’s depression dropped by 68 percent. For adults with unmarried parents, accounting for parental mental illness reduced the association with depression by 52 percent. Parental substance use also played a large role, reducing the link between parental divorce and adult depression by 49 percent.

When all childhood adversities, sociodemographic factors like income and education, and adult health behaviors were accounted for, the link between childhood family structure and adult mental illness was no longer statistically significant. This suggests that a divorce itself is not necessarily the root cause of later mental health struggles. Instead, a cluster of environmental and genetic factors that often accompany a divorce or an unmarried household seem to drive the increased risk.

As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study relies on self-reported data, which means participants might not remember their childhood experiences perfectly. The cross-sectional nature of the survey also means the researchers cannot establish a timeline of events. They do not know if a parent’s mental illness started before or after a divorce, or exactly how old the child was when the separation occurred.

The category for unmarried parents is also quite broad. It lumps together single parents and parents who lived together but never legally married, which are two very different family environments. In addition, the survey only recorded the respondents’ socioeconomic status in adulthood, not during their childhood. A family’s financial situation during a divorce could play a large role in a child’s development, but the researchers did not have the data to track that specific pathway.

The study, “Long After the Split: The Association Between Parental Divorce and Mental Health in Adults,” was authored by Mary Kate Schilke, Philip Baiden, and Esme Fuller-Thomson.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/the-link-between-parental-divorce-and-depression-might-not-be-what-it-seems/

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DATE: September 28, 2026 at 05:07PM
SOURCE: STAT NEWS MENTAL HEALTH

TITLE: Risk from toxic metals can persist months after wildfires, Maui study finds

URL: https://www.statnews.com/2026/09/28/hawaii-wildfire-air-quality-risk-study/?utm_campaign=rss

Metal mixtures found in the leftover smoke, ash and debris from the deadly 2023 Maui wildfires were harmful to the lung health of people living nearby long after the burning ended, a new study says.

The work shows that major wildfires, which are worsening with the planet’s warming, could have lasting effects beyond immediate exposure.

Read the rest…

URL: https://www.statnews.com/2026/09/28/hawaii-wildfire-air-quality-risk-study/?utm_campaign=rss

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DATE: September 28, 2026 at 05:07PM
SOURCE: STAT NEWS MENTAL HEALTH

TITLE: Risk from toxic metals can persist months after wildfires, Maui study finds

URL: https://www.statnews.com/2026/09/28/hawaii-wildfire-air-quality-risk-study/?utm_campaign=rss

Metal mixtures found in the leftover smoke, ash and debris from the deadly 2023 Maui wildfires were harmful to the lung health of people living nearby long after the burning ended, a new study says.

The work shows that major wildfires, which are worsening with the planet’s warming, could have lasting effects beyond immediate exposure.

Read the rest…

URL: https://www.statnews.com/2026/09/28/hawaii-wildfire-air-quality-risk-study/?utm_campaign=rss

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STAT News reports "from the frontiers of health and medicine".

Learn more at https://www.statnews.com/topic/mental-health/ .

See also their complete Mastodon account at @STAT .

This robot is NOT affiliated with STAT news and merely rebroadcasts from their site. Responses posted here are not monitored.

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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #MauiWildfires #ToxicMetalExposure #AirQualityRisks #LungHealth #WildfireImpact #EnvironmentalHealth #SmokeAshDebris #ClimateChangeEffects #PublicHealthAlert #LongTermExposure

DATE: September 28, 2026 at 05:07PM
SOURCE: STAT NEWS MENTAL HEALTH

TITLE: Risk from toxic metals can persist months after wildfires, Maui study finds

URL: https://www.statnews.com/2026/09/28/hawaii-wildfire-air-quality-risk-study/?utm_campaign=rss

Metal mixtures found in the leftover smoke, ash and debris from the deadly 2023 Maui wildfires were harmful to the lung health of people living nearby long after the burning ended, a new study says.

The work shows that major wildfires, which are worsening with the planet’s warming, could have lasting effects beyond immediate exposure.

Read the rest…

URL: https://www.statnews.com/2026/09/28/hawaii-wildfire-air-quality-risk-study/?utm_campaign=rss

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DATE: September 28, 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: New study links internet addiction to exhausted physiological stress systems

URL: https://www.psypost.org/hair-hormones-reveal-a-link-between-internet-addiction-and-lowered-stress-respon/

People who struggle with severe internet addiction might experience long-term changes in how their bodies process stress. A recent study analyzing human hair samples found that higher levels of internet addiction symptoms are linked to lower long-term accumulations of the stress hormone cortisol. The research was published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.

Internet addiction is widely recognized as a behavioral disorder involving excessive and poorly controlled online activity. This can include anything from endless social media scrolling and online gaming to excessive internet shopping. The behavior becomes an addiction when it causes marked distress or impairs a person’s ability to function in their daily life, such as failing to fulfill obligations at school or work.

Psychologists have consistently linked internet addiction to high levels of psychological stress. Some theoretical models suggest that people who are highly vulnerable to stress may use the internet as a coping mechanism to escape negative emotions. However, studies looking at the physiological side of this stress response have yielded conflicting results.

The human body manages stress through a biological network known as the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis, which ultimately produces cortisol. Cortisol is often called the primary stress hormone. In healthy amounts, it helps the body respond to immediate challenges, but chronic stress can alter how the system functions.

Previous research trying to measure cortisol in people with internet addiction has mostly relied on saliva or blood samples. These testing methods are highly sensitive to momentary fluctuations. A person’s cortisol levels can change based on the time of day, recent exercise, alcohol consumption, or a brief moment of anxiety just before the test.

To bypass these momentary spikes, scientists Hideki Tsumura of Tokushima University and Shuhei Izawa of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health in Japan turned to a different testing method. They chose to measure hormones trapped within human hair. Hair grows at an average rate of roughly one centimeter per month.

By analyzing a three-centimeter snippet of hair cut close to the scalp, researchers can measure the total amount of hormones secreted over the preceding three months. This provides a stable biological diary of long-term hormone production.

The researchers also decided to measure a second hormone called testosterone. Produced by a different biological network, testosterone is often associated with reward processing and risk-taking behaviors. Some neurobiological studies suggest that individuals who are prone to risk-taking might have heightened reward sensitivities driven by testosterone.

Because internet addiction often involves choosing immediate online rewards despite long-term negative consequences, the researchers suspected testosterone might play a role. The two biological systems that produce cortisol and testosterone also interact with one another. High levels of cortisol can suppress testosterone production, while testosterone can inhibit the release of cortisol.

Tsumura and Izawa wanted to examine both hormones simultaneously to see how each related to internet addiction symptoms. They recruited 155 Japanese university students for the study. The group included 94 women and 61 men, with an average age of roughly 21 years.

The researchers applied strict criteria to ensure the biological samples would be viable. They excluded individuals who had endocrine disorders, acute psychiatric conditions, or who were taking medications known to affect hormone levels, including hormonal contraceptives.

Participants completed a standardized survey known as the Internet Addiction Test. The questionnaire asks individuals to rate how often their internet use disrupts their sleep, academic performance, or social interactions. The students also completed a separate assessment to measure current depressive symptoms.

Following the surveys, the research team collected the hair samples from the back of each participant’s head. In the laboratory, they washed the hair samples in chemical solvents to remove external contaminants. The hair was then flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen and ground into a fine powder so the trapped hormones could be extracted and quantified.

To analyze the data, the researchers used statistical models that controlled for various outside factors. They adjusted the numbers to account for age, sex, body mass index, and depression scores. They also factored in hair care habits, such as bleaching, perming, and how many times a week the participants washed their hair.

The results showed that hair cortisol concentrations were negatively associated with internet addiction scores. Students who reported more severe symptoms of internet addiction had lower amounts of cortisol trapped in their hair. When the researchers divided the participants into two groups based on a standard cutoff score for internet addiction, the highly addicted group exhibited lower average cortisol levels than the low-risk group.

The initial hypothesis regarding testosterone was not supported by the data. The researchers found no association between internet addiction symptoms and long-term hair testosterone concentrations. The results remained consistent across both male and female participants.

Finding low levels of a stress hormone in people experiencing high psychological distress might seem counterintuitive. The researchers point out that chronic stress exposure can initially trigger high cortisol production, eventually leading to a state of biological exhaustion. Over time, the stress system may become blunted, resulting in lower baseline cortisol secretion.

Reduced hair cortisol levels have also been observed in people experiencing post-traumatic stress, severe depression, and prolonged adversity. The findings suggest that individuals with severe internet addiction might share a similar underlying biological profile characterized by an exhausted physiological stress response.

The authors noted a few limitations to their work. Because the study relied on a specific demographic of young university students, the findings may not represent the general population or older adults in clinical settings. The research was also cross-sectional, meaning it captured a single snapshot in time.

Without longitudinal data, researchers cannot determine the sequence of events. The data cannot show whether an altered stress system makes someone more vulnerable to internet addiction, or if the behavioral addiction eventually causes the stress system to burn out. Additionally, unmeasured conditions like past trauma could have influenced the biological markers.

The study, “Association of internet addiction symptoms with hair cortisol and hair testosterone concentrations,” was authored by Hideki Tsumura and Shuhei Izawa.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/hair-hormones-reveal-a-link-between-internet-addiction-and-lowered-stress-respon/

-------------------------------------------------

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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 #InternetAddiction #HairCortisol #StressBiology #Psychoneuroendocrinology #LongTermStress #CortisolExhaustion # TestosteroneNotLinked #StressSystems #OnlineBehaviorResearch #YouthHealthMarkup

DATE: September 28, 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: New study links internet addiction to exhausted physiological stress systems

URL: https://www.psypost.org/hair-hormones-reveal-a-link-between-internet-addiction-and-lowered-stress-respon/

People who struggle with severe internet addiction might experience long-term changes in how their bodies process stress. A recent study analyzing human hair samples found that higher levels of internet addiction symptoms are linked to lower long-term accumulations of the stress hormone cortisol. The research was published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.

Internet addiction is widely recognized as a behavioral disorder involving excessive and poorly controlled online activity. This can include anything from endless social media scrolling and online gaming to excessive internet shopping. The behavior becomes an addiction when it causes marked distress or impairs a person’s ability to function in their daily life, such as failing to fulfill obligations at school or work.

Psychologists have consistently linked internet addiction to high levels of psychological stress. Some theoretical models suggest that people who are highly vulnerable to stress may use the internet as a coping mechanism to escape negative emotions. However, studies looking at the physiological side of this stress response have yielded conflicting results.

The human body manages stress through a biological network known as the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis, which ultimately produces cortisol. Cortisol is often called the primary stress hormone. In healthy amounts, it helps the body respond to immediate challenges, but chronic stress can alter how the system functions.

Previous research trying to measure cortisol in people with internet addiction has mostly relied on saliva or blood samples. These testing methods are highly sensitive to momentary fluctuations. A person’s cortisol levels can change based on the time of day, recent exercise, alcohol consumption, or a brief moment of anxiety just before the test.

To bypass these momentary spikes, scientists Hideki Tsumura of Tokushima University and Shuhei Izawa of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health in Japan turned to a different testing method. They chose to measure hormones trapped within human hair. Hair grows at an average rate of roughly one centimeter per month.

By analyzing a three-centimeter snippet of hair cut close to the scalp, researchers can measure the total amount of hormones secreted over the preceding three months. This provides a stable biological diary of long-term hormone production.

The researchers also decided to measure a second hormone called testosterone. Produced by a different biological network, testosterone is often associated with reward processing and risk-taking behaviors. Some neurobiological studies suggest that individuals who are prone to risk-taking might have heightened reward sensitivities driven by testosterone.

Because internet addiction often involves choosing immediate online rewards despite long-term negative consequences, the researchers suspected testosterone might play a role. The two biological systems that produce cortisol and testosterone also interact with one another. High levels of cortisol can suppress testosterone production, while testosterone can inhibit the release of cortisol.

Tsumura and Izawa wanted to examine both hormones simultaneously to see how each related to internet addiction symptoms. They recruited 155 Japanese university students for the study. The group included 94 women and 61 men, with an average age of roughly 21 years.

The researchers applied strict criteria to ensure the biological samples would be viable. They excluded individuals who had endocrine disorders, acute psychiatric conditions, or who were taking medications known to affect hormone levels, including hormonal contraceptives.

Participants completed a standardized survey known as the Internet Addiction Test. The questionnaire asks individuals to rate how often their internet use disrupts their sleep, academic performance, or social interactions. The students also completed a separate assessment to measure current depressive symptoms.

Following the surveys, the research team collected the hair samples from the back of each participant’s head. In the laboratory, they washed the hair samples in chemical solvents to remove external contaminants. The hair was then flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen and ground into a fine powder so the trapped hormones could be extracted and quantified.

To analyze the data, the researchers used statistical models that controlled for various outside factors. They adjusted the numbers to account for age, sex, body mass index, and depression scores. They also factored in hair care habits, such as bleaching, perming, and how many times a week the participants washed their hair.

The results showed that hair cortisol concentrations were negatively associated with internet addiction scores. Students who reported more severe symptoms of internet addiction had lower amounts of cortisol trapped in their hair. When the researchers divided the participants into two groups based on a standard cutoff score for internet addiction, the highly addicted group exhibited lower average cortisol levels than the low-risk group.

The initial hypothesis regarding testosterone was not supported by the data. The researchers found no association between internet addiction symptoms and long-term hair testosterone concentrations. The results remained consistent across both male and female participants.

Finding low levels of a stress hormone in people experiencing high psychological distress might seem counterintuitive. The researchers point out that chronic stress exposure can initially trigger high cortisol production, eventually leading to a state of biological exhaustion. Over time, the stress system may become blunted, resulting in lower baseline cortisol secretion.

Reduced hair cortisol levels have also been observed in people experiencing post-traumatic stress, severe depression, and prolonged adversity. The findings suggest that individuals with severe internet addiction might share a similar underlying biological profile characterized by an exhausted physiological stress response.

The authors noted a few limitations to their work. Because the study relied on a specific demographic of young university students, the findings may not represent the general population or older adults in clinical settings. The research was also cross-sectional, meaning it captured a single snapshot in time.

Without longitudinal data, researchers cannot determine the sequence of events. The data cannot show whether an altered stress system makes someone more vulnerable to internet addiction, or if the behavioral addiction eventually causes the stress system to burn out. Additionally, unmeasured conditions like past trauma could have influenced the biological markers.

The study, “Association of internet addiction symptoms with hair cortisol and hair testosterone concentrations,” was authored by Hideki Tsumura and Shuhei Izawa.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/hair-hormones-reveal-a-link-between-internet-addiction-and-lowered-stress-respon/

-------------------------------------------------

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

-------------------------------------------------

#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #InternetAddiction #HairCortisol #StressBiology #Psychoneuroendocrinology #LongTermStress #CortisolExhaustion # TestosteroneNotLinked #StressSystems #OnlineBehaviorResearch #YouthHealthMarkup

DATE: September 28, 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: New study links internet addiction to exhausted physiological stress systems

URL: https://www.psypost.org/hair-hormones-reveal-a-link-between-internet-addiction-and-lowered-stress-respon/

People who struggle with severe internet addiction might experience long-term changes in how their bodies process stress. A recent study analyzing human hair samples found that higher levels of internet addiction symptoms are linked to lower long-term accumulations of the stress hormone cortisol. The research was published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.

Internet addiction is widely recognized as a behavioral disorder involving excessive and poorly controlled online activity. This can include anything from endless social media scrolling and online gaming to excessive internet shopping. The behavior becomes an addiction when it causes marked distress or impairs a person’s ability to function in their daily life, such as failing to fulfill obligations at school or work.

Psychologists have consistently linked internet addiction to high levels of psychological stress. Some theoretical models suggest that people who are highly vulnerable to stress may use the internet as a coping mechanism to escape negative emotions. However, studies looking at the physiological side of this stress response have yielded conflicting results.

The human body manages stress through a biological network known as the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis, which ultimately produces cortisol. Cortisol is often called the primary stress hormone. In healthy amounts, it helps the body respond to immediate challenges, but chronic stress can alter how the system functions.

Previous research trying to measure cortisol in people with internet addiction has mostly relied on saliva or blood samples. These testing methods are highly sensitive to momentary fluctuations. A person’s cortisol levels can change based on the time of day, recent exercise, alcohol consumption, or a brief moment of anxiety just before the test.

To bypass these momentary spikes, scientists Hideki Tsumura of Tokushima University and Shuhei Izawa of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health in Japan turned to a different testing method. They chose to measure hormones trapped within human hair. Hair grows at an average rate of roughly one centimeter per month.

By analyzing a three-centimeter snippet of hair cut close to the scalp, researchers can measure the total amount of hormones secreted over the preceding three months. This provides a stable biological diary of long-term hormone production.

The researchers also decided to measure a second hormone called testosterone. Produced by a different biological network, testosterone is often associated with reward processing and risk-taking behaviors. Some neurobiological studies suggest that individuals who are prone to risk-taking might have heightened reward sensitivities driven by testosterone.

Because internet addiction often involves choosing immediate online rewards despite long-term negative consequences, the researchers suspected testosterone might play a role. The two biological systems that produce cortisol and testosterone also interact with one another. High levels of cortisol can suppress testosterone production, while testosterone can inhibit the release of cortisol.

Tsumura and Izawa wanted to examine both hormones simultaneously to see how each related to internet addiction symptoms. They recruited 155 Japanese university students for the study. The group included 94 women and 61 men, with an average age of roughly 21 years.

The researchers applied strict criteria to ensure the biological samples would be viable. They excluded individuals who had endocrine disorders, acute psychiatric conditions, or who were taking medications known to affect hormone levels, including hormonal contraceptives.

Participants completed a standardized survey known as the Internet Addiction Test. The questionnaire asks individuals to rate how often their internet use disrupts their sleep, academic performance, or social interactions. The students also completed a separate assessment to measure current depressive symptoms.

Following the surveys, the research team collected the hair samples from the back of each participant’s head. In the laboratory, they washed the hair samples in chemical solvents to remove external contaminants. The hair was then flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen and ground into a fine powder so the trapped hormones could be extracted and quantified.

To analyze the data, the researchers used statistical models that controlled for various outside factors. They adjusted the numbers to account for age, sex, body mass index, and depression scores. They also factored in hair care habits, such as bleaching, perming, and how many times a week the participants washed their hair.

The results showed that hair cortisol concentrations were negatively associated with internet addiction scores. Students who reported more severe symptoms of internet addiction had lower amounts of cortisol trapped in their hair. When the researchers divided the participants into two groups based on a standard cutoff score for internet addiction, the highly addicted group exhibited lower average cortisol levels than the low-risk group.

The initial hypothesis regarding testosterone was not supported by the data. The researchers found no association between internet addiction symptoms and long-term hair testosterone concentrations. The results remained consistent across both male and female participants.

Finding low levels of a stress hormone in people experiencing high psychological distress might seem counterintuitive. The researchers point out that chronic stress exposure can initially trigger high cortisol production, eventually leading to a state of biological exhaustion. Over time, the stress system may become blunted, resulting in lower baseline cortisol secretion.

Reduced hair cortisol levels have also been observed in people experiencing post-traumatic stress, severe depression, and prolonged adversity. The findings suggest that individuals with severe internet addiction might share a similar underlying biological profile characterized by an exhausted physiological stress response.

The authors noted a few limitations to their work. Because the study relied on a specific demographic of young university students, the findings may not represent the general population or older adults in clinical settings. The research was also cross-sectional, meaning it captured a single snapshot in time.

Without longitudinal data, researchers cannot determine the sequence of events. The data cannot show whether an altered stress system makes someone more vulnerable to internet addiction, or if the behavioral addiction eventually causes the stress system to burn out. Additionally, unmeasured conditions like past trauma could have influenced the biological markers.

The study, “Association of internet addiction symptoms with hair cortisol and hair testosterone concentrations,” was authored by Hideki Tsumura and Shuhei Izawa.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/hair-hormones-reveal-a-link-between-internet-addiction-and-lowered-stress-respon/

-------------------------------------------------

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

-------------------------------------------------

#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #InternetAddiction #HairCortisol #StressBiology #Psychoneuroendocrinology #LongTermStress #CortisolExhaustion # TestosteroneNotLinked #StressSystems #OnlineBehaviorResearch #YouthHealthMarkup

DATE: September 28, 2026 at 02:00PM
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: East Germans who experienced repression during the GDR show higher distress and systemic inflammation, study finds

URL: https://www.psypost.org/east-germans-who-experienced-repression-during-the-gdr-show-higher-distress-and-systemic-inflammation-study-finds/

A study involving citizens of the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany or GDR) found that those who experienced state-organized soft repression scored higher on psychological distress indicators. They also tended to have higher interleukin-6 levels, indicating increased systemic inflammation. The paper was published in The British Journal of Psychiatry.

Political repression can affect health not only through overt violence, imprisonment, or torture, but also through quieter forms of control that interfere with everyday life. So-called soft repression can include surveillance, denunciation, restrictions on speech, harassment, and deliberate obstacles in a person’s professional or social life. These practices may create chronic feelings of insecurity, mistrust, uncertainty, and the need to constantly monitor one’s own behavior.

In the former German Democratic Republic, such methods were used against people and groups regarded as politically troublesome, including artists, church groups, youth subcultures, and people seeking to emigrate. Although these experiences do not necessarily meet conventional definitions of psychological trauma, they can still function as powerful and prolonged sources of psychosocial stress. Long-term stress of this kind has been linked to anxiety, depression, disruption of stress-regulation systems, and changes in immune functioning.

The German Democratic Republic was the socialist state that existed from 1949 until German reunification in 1990. It was closely aligned with the Soviet Union and governed by an authoritarian one-party system led by the Socialist Unity Party.

Study author Ruth Marheinecke and her colleagues examined the long-term psychobiological consequences of soft repression. They hypothesized that individuals who experienced soft repression in the GDR would show elevated levels of depression, anxiety, and trauma-related symptoms. They also expected that these individuals would have elevated levels of interleukin-6 and hs-CRP as well as shorter telomere length, indicating accelerated biological aging.

Interleukin-6 is a molecule involved in immune signaling and inflammation. Higher blood levels indicate increased inflammatory activity. High-sensitivity C-reactive protein or hs-CRP is a blood marker that detects low levels of systemic inflammation. It is commonly used to assess inflammatory and cardiovascular risk. Telomeres are repetitive DNA-protein structures located at the ends of chromosomes inside cells that help protect chromosome ends from damage and fusion. They are used as an indicator of biological aging, with shorter telomeres indicating greater cellular stress and higher biological age.

Participants of this study were 100 former GDR citizens between 50 and 78 years of age, mainly from Thuringia and Saxony in modern Germany. Study authors recruited them using flyers, local newspaper ads, and support from local organizations such as church communities.

They were organized into two groups. One group consisted of 49 participants who experienced at least two state-organized soft repression techniques in the GDR, including planned surveillance, summoning to interrogations, denunciation, or school and workplace harassment. The other group was composed of 51 individuals who lived in the GDR but reported no personal repression experiences. The two groups were matched for age, gender, and GDR origin.

Study participants completed assessments of depression (the Beck Depression Inventory-II), anxiety (the trait subscale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory), and psychological trauma symptoms (the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire). They also completed assessments of perceived social support and resilience. Aside from this, study participants gave blood samples, allowing study authors to assess their interleukin-6 levels, hs-CRP levels, and telomere length.

The results showed that participants who were exposed to soft repression during the GDR had higher levels of depression, anxiety, and trauma symptoms on average. They also reported lower resilience compared to the control group and tended to have higher levels of interleukin-6. There were no differences between the two groups in hs-CRP levels and telomere length. However, in the repression group, lower social support was associated with shorter telomeres.

“This study is the first to explore the psychobiological health consequences of soft political repression. Findings emphasize its long-term consequences on the psyche and immune system and highlight the potential role of social support in mitigating cellular aging. As authoritarian tactics are becoming more prevalent worldwide, understanding the impact of soft repression on health is essential for supporting affected individuals,” the study authors concluded.

The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the psychobiological consequences of state repression. However, it should be noted that the study did not have a pretest, and this was not an experimental study. Therefore, it remains unknown whether the observed differences are a consequence of the repression participants endured during the GDR or are caused by other factors. Furthermore, because individuals with acute psychopathology were excluded from participating, the sample may reflect particularly resilient individuals, meaning the actual impact of soft repression could be even more pronounced.

The paper, “Long-term consequences of soft political repression on psychological well-being, systemic inflammation and cellular ageing,” was authored by Ruth Marheinecke, Jost Blasberg, Jue Lin, Nils Opel, Carsten Spitzer, Bernhard Strauss, Elissa Epel, and Veronika Engert.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/east-germans-who-experienced-repression-during-the-gdr-show-higher-distress-and-systemic-inflammation-study-finds/

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-------------------------------------------------

#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #GDRrepression #psychobiology #systemicinflammation #IL6 #telomerelength #softrepression #EastGermany #mentalhealth #inflammaging #socialsupportmatters

DATE: September 28, 2026 at 02:00PM
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: East Germans who experienced repression during the GDR show higher distress and systemic inflammation, study finds

URL: https://www.psypost.org/east-germans-who-experienced-repression-during-the-gdr-show-higher-distress-and-systemic-inflammation-study-finds/

A study involving citizens of the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany or GDR) found that those who experienced state-organized soft repression scored higher on psychological distress indicators. They also tended to have higher interleukin-6 levels, indicating increased systemic inflammation. The paper was published in The British Journal of Psychiatry.

Political repression can affect health not only through overt violence, imprisonment, or torture, but also through quieter forms of control that interfere with everyday life. So-called soft repression can include surveillance, denunciation, restrictions on speech, harassment, and deliberate obstacles in a person’s professional or social life. These practices may create chronic feelings of insecurity, mistrust, uncertainty, and the need to constantly monitor one’s own behavior.

In the former German Democratic Republic, such methods were used against people and groups regarded as politically troublesome, including artists, church groups, youth subcultures, and people seeking to emigrate. Although these experiences do not necessarily meet conventional definitions of psychological trauma, they can still function as powerful and prolonged sources of psychosocial stress. Long-term stress of this kind has been linked to anxiety, depression, disruption of stress-regulation systems, and changes in immune functioning.

The German Democratic Republic was the socialist state that existed from 1949 until German reunification in 1990. It was closely aligned with the Soviet Union and governed by an authoritarian one-party system led by the Socialist Unity Party.

Study author Ruth Marheinecke and her colleagues examined the long-term psychobiological consequences of soft repression. They hypothesized that individuals who experienced soft repression in the GDR would show elevated levels of depression, anxiety, and trauma-related symptoms. They also expected that these individuals would have elevated levels of interleukin-6 and hs-CRP as well as shorter telomere length, indicating accelerated biological aging.

Interleukin-6 is a molecule involved in immune signaling and inflammation. Higher blood levels indicate increased inflammatory activity. High-sensitivity C-reactive protein or hs-CRP is a blood marker that detects low levels of systemic inflammation. It is commonly used to assess inflammatory and cardiovascular risk. Telomeres are repetitive DNA-protein structures located at the ends of chromosomes inside cells that help protect chromosome ends from damage and fusion. They are used as an indicator of biological aging, with shorter telomeres indicating greater cellular stress and higher biological age.

Participants of this study were 100 former GDR citizens between 50 and 78 years of age, mainly from Thuringia and Saxony in modern Germany. Study authors recruited them using flyers, local newspaper ads, and support from local organizations such as church communities.

They were organized into two groups. One group consisted of 49 participants who experienced at least two state-organized soft repression techniques in the GDR, including planned surveillance, summoning to interrogations, denunciation, or school and workplace harassment. The other group was composed of 51 individuals who lived in the GDR but reported no personal repression experiences. The two groups were matched for age, gender, and GDR origin.

Study participants completed assessments of depression (the Beck Depression Inventory-II), anxiety (the trait subscale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory), and psychological trauma symptoms (the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire). They also completed assessments of perceived social support and resilience. Aside from this, study participants gave blood samples, allowing study authors to assess their interleukin-6 levels, hs-CRP levels, and telomere length.

The results showed that participants who were exposed to soft repression during the GDR had higher levels of depression, anxiety, and trauma symptoms on average. They also reported lower resilience compared to the control group and tended to have higher levels of interleukin-6. There were no differences between the two groups in hs-CRP levels and telomere length. However, in the repression group, lower social support was associated with shorter telomeres.

“This study is the first to explore the psychobiological health consequences of soft political repression. Findings emphasize its long-term consequences on the psyche and immune system and highlight the potential role of social support in mitigating cellular aging. As authoritarian tactics are becoming more prevalent worldwide, understanding the impact of soft repression on health is essential for supporting affected individuals,” the study authors concluded.

The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the psychobiological consequences of state repression. However, it should be noted that the study did not have a pretest, and this was not an experimental study. Therefore, it remains unknown whether the observed differences are a consequence of the repression participants endured during the GDR or are caused by other factors. Furthermore, because individuals with acute psychopathology were excluded from participating, the sample may reflect particularly resilient individuals, meaning the actual impact of soft repression could be even more pronounced.

The paper, “Long-term consequences of soft political repression on psychological well-being, systemic inflammation and cellular ageing,” was authored by Ruth Marheinecke, Jost Blasberg, Jue Lin, Nils Opel, Carsten Spitzer, Bernhard Strauss, Elissa Epel, and Veronika Engert.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/east-germans-who-experienced-repression-during-the-gdr-show-higher-distress-and-systemic-inflammation-study-finds/

-------------------------------------------------

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

-------------------------------------------------

#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #GDRrepression #psychobiology #systemicinflammation #IL6 #telomerelength #softrepression #EastGermany #mentalhealth #inflammaging #socialsupportmatters

DATE: September 28, 2026 at 02:00PM
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: East Germans who experienced repression during the GDR show higher distress and systemic inflammation, study finds

URL: https://www.psypost.org/east-germans-who-experienced-repression-during-the-gdr-show-higher-distress-and-systemic-inflammation-study-finds/

A study involving citizens of the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany or GDR) found that those who experienced state-organized soft repression scored higher on psychological distress indicators. They also tended to have higher interleukin-6 levels, indicating increased systemic inflammation. The paper was published in The British Journal of Psychiatry.

Political repression can affect health not only through overt violence, imprisonment, or torture, but also through quieter forms of control that interfere with everyday life. So-called soft repression can include surveillance, denunciation, restrictions on speech, harassment, and deliberate obstacles in a person’s professional or social life. These practices may create chronic feelings of insecurity, mistrust, uncertainty, and the need to constantly monitor one’s own behavior.

In the former German Democratic Republic, such methods were used against people and groups regarded as politically troublesome, including artists, church groups, youth subcultures, and people seeking to emigrate. Although these experiences do not necessarily meet conventional definitions of psychological trauma, they can still function as powerful and prolonged sources of psychosocial stress. Long-term stress of this kind has been linked to anxiety, depression, disruption of stress-regulation systems, and changes in immune functioning.

The German Democratic Republic was the socialist state that existed from 1949 until German reunification in 1990. It was closely aligned with the Soviet Union and governed by an authoritarian one-party system led by the Socialist Unity Party.

Study author Ruth Marheinecke and her colleagues examined the long-term psychobiological consequences of soft repression. They hypothesized that individuals who experienced soft repression in the GDR would show elevated levels of depression, anxiety, and trauma-related symptoms. They also expected that these individuals would have elevated levels of interleukin-6 and hs-CRP as well as shorter telomere length, indicating accelerated biological aging.

Interleukin-6 is a molecule involved in immune signaling and inflammation. Higher blood levels indicate increased inflammatory activity. High-sensitivity C-reactive protein or hs-CRP is a blood marker that detects low levels of systemic inflammation. It is commonly used to assess inflammatory and cardiovascular risk. Telomeres are repetitive DNA-protein structures located at the ends of chromosomes inside cells that help protect chromosome ends from damage and fusion. They are used as an indicator of biological aging, with shorter telomeres indicating greater cellular stress and higher biological age.

Participants of this study were 100 former GDR citizens between 50 and 78 years of age, mainly from Thuringia and Saxony in modern Germany. Study authors recruited them using flyers, local newspaper ads, and support from local organizations such as church communities.

They were organized into two groups. One group consisted of 49 participants who experienced at least two state-organized soft repression techniques in the GDR, including planned surveillance, summoning to interrogations, denunciation, or school and workplace harassment. The other group was composed of 51 individuals who lived in the GDR but reported no personal repression experiences. The two groups were matched for age, gender, and GDR origin.

Study participants completed assessments of depression (the Beck Depression Inventory-II), anxiety (the trait subscale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory), and psychological trauma symptoms (the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire). They also completed assessments of perceived social support and resilience. Aside from this, study participants gave blood samples, allowing study authors to assess their interleukin-6 levels, hs-CRP levels, and telomere length.

The results showed that participants who were exposed to soft repression during the GDR had higher levels of depression, anxiety, and trauma symptoms on average. They also reported lower resilience compared to the control group and tended to have higher levels of interleukin-6. There were no differences between the two groups in hs-CRP levels and telomere length. However, in the repression group, lower social support was associated with shorter telomeres.

“This study is the first to explore the psychobiological health consequences of soft political repression. Findings emphasize its long-term consequences on the psyche and immune system and highlight the potential role of social support in mitigating cellular aging. As authoritarian tactics are becoming more prevalent worldwide, understanding the impact of soft repression on health is essential for supporting affected individuals,” the study authors concluded.

The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the psychobiological consequences of state repression. However, it should be noted that the study did not have a pretest, and this was not an experimental study. Therefore, it remains unknown whether the observed differences are a consequence of the repression participants endured during the GDR or are caused by other factors. Furthermore, because individuals with acute psychopathology were excluded from participating, the sample may reflect particularly resilient individuals, meaning the actual impact of soft repression could be even more pronounced.

The paper, “Long-term consequences of soft political repression on psychological well-being, systemic inflammation and cellular ageing,” was authored by Ruth Marheinecke, Jost Blasberg, Jue Lin, Nils Opel, Carsten Spitzer, Bernhard Strauss, Elissa Epel, and Veronika Engert.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/east-germans-who-experienced-repression-during-the-gdr-show-higher-distress-and-systemic-inflammation-study-finds/

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DATE: September 28, 2026 at 12:46PM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMES

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DATE: September 28, 2026 at 12:46PM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMES

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DATE: September 28, 2026 at 12:46PM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMES

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Pharmacologic interventions are a critical component of comprehensive suicide prevention. Among currently available interventions, lithium and clozapine have the strongest evidence for reducing suicidal behavior over time: https://t.co/rLF3MUT4J0

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DATE: September 28, 2026 at 12:46PM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMES

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RT @BadreNicolas: Are we adults at 18?

Courts are repeatedly told by colleagues of mine that people under 25 are impulsive and cannot make decisions for themselves.

The claim is dressed up as neuroscience. What is usually missing is an examination of the actual person. A few years ago I wrote about the same problem with PTSD. This is the next one.

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DATE: September 28, 2026 at 12:46PM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMES

Direct article link at end of text block below.

RT @BadreNicolas: Are we adults at 18?

Courts are repeatedly told by colleagues of mine that people under 25 are impulsive and cannot make decisions for themselves.

The claim is dressed up as neuroscience. What is usually missing is an examination of the actual person. A few years ago I wrote about the same problem with PTSD. This is the next one.

My latest in @PsychTimes:
https://t.co/KKFd51aqZA

Here are any URLs found in the article text:

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DATE: September 28, 2026 at 12:46PM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMES

Direct article link at end of text block below.

RT @BadreNicolas: Are we adults at 18?

Courts are repeatedly told by colleagues of mine that people under 25 are impulsive and cannot make decisions for themselves.

The claim is dressed up as neuroscience. What is usually missing is an examination of the actual person. A few years ago I wrote about the same problem with PTSD. This is the next one.

My latest in @PsychTimes:
https://t.co/KKFd51aqZA

Here are any URLs found in the article text:

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DATE: September 28, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------

TITLE: Psychedelics reduce bottom-up brain activity in the default mode network

URL: https://www.psypost.org/psychedelics-alter-the-trajectory-of-moving-brain-waves/

Psychedelic drugs like LSD and psilocybin reduce the amount of bottom-up brain activity flowing into a network associated with self-reflection. These altered trajectories of brain signals occur consistently across humans and mice, offering a biological explanation for how these drugs reshape the mind. The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Psychedelics are gaining attention as potential psychiatric treatments for conditions like depression and trauma. To understand their therapeutic benefits and risks, researchers need to know exactly how these substances alter brain function. Prior research has identified that psychedelics affect the default mode network, a collection of brain regions responsible for introspection, daydreaming, and mental rigidity. Many psychiatric conditions involve abnormal activity in this specific network, making it a primary target for new treatments.

The default mode network sits at the top of a processing hierarchy in the brain. Brain activity constantly moves across the surface of the cortex, which is the brain’s outer layer. Information travels from lower-order sensory areas up into higher-order areas like the default mode network, a process known as bottom-up processing. The reverse movement, from higher cognitive regions down to sensory regions, is called top-down processing.

In a healthy brain, bottom-up processing updates our internal models with new information from the outside world. Top-down processing uses our past experiences and expectations to make sense of that incoming sensory data. An imbalance between these two directions of information flow can lead to psychological distress or perceptual errors.

Past imaging studies typically measured brain activity in static regions, treating the brain as a set of fixed locations. This approach ignores the continuous, wave-like movement of signals across the brain’s surface. Analyzing static brain regions is similar to measuring the total rainfall in a single county without tracking the movement of the storm system on a weather radar. By treating the brain as a collection of isolated points, traditional research methods might obscure the true dynamics of how different brain areas communicate over time.

Adam R. Pines, Leanne M. Williams, and their colleagues at Stanford University wanted to observe these moving signals directly. They adapted an analytical technique called optical flow, which tracks the frame-by-frame movement of pixels in a video. The team used this mathematical approach to track the direction and size of brain activity waves moving across the cortex.

The researchers first analyzed a small study of 14 human volunteers who received MDMA. They compared functional magnetic resonance imaging scans taken after the participants took MDMA to scans taken after a placebo pill or no drug at all. The optical flow analysis revealed a consistent pattern across the subjects.

The team found that MDMA reduced the overall magnitude of brain waves moving through the default mode network. The drug also reduced the proportion of signals traveling in a bottom-up direction into the network.

Next, the team examined a second small study involving six human participants who ingested psilocybin. The researchers compared brain scans from the psilocybin sessions to baseline scans and to an active placebo condition. For the active placebo, participants received a dose of the stimulant methylphenidate. This stimulant mimics the physical arousal of psilocybin without the psychedelic effects.

As with MDMA, psilocybin reduced the overall magnitude of propagating brain waves in the default mode network. The reduction in bottom-up directionality was also present but was not statistically significant. The researchers suspect this weaker result occurred because the effects of psilocybin lingered for days. This persistence may have artificially altered the baseline scans taken shortly after the drug sessions.

In a third small study, 18 human volunteers received an intravenous infusion of LSD. The researchers compared their brain activity to scans taken after a saline placebo infusion. Consistent with the other substances, LSD reduced both the magnitude of the moving brain waves and the proportion of bottom-up signals entering the default mode network.

To ensure these effects were not unique to humans or specific to magnetic resonance imaging, the team looked at a small study of 14 mice. They used widefield calcium imaging, a technique that directly records the physical activity of brain cells with high resolution. The mice received LSD, a sedative called diazepam, or a different sedative called dexmedetomidine.

Like the human participants, mice given LSD showed reduced magnitude and bottom-up flow of brain activity in the default mode network. Diazepam, an anti-anxiety medication, also reduced bottom-up signals, though to a lesser extent than LSD. Dexmedetomidine produced the exact opposite effect, increasing the proportion of bottom-up signals entering the network. These animal results confirmed that the optical flow technique measures actual changes in nerve cell activity rather than artifacts of blood flow.

The researchers also investigated whether these changes in moving brain activity related to the subjective experiences reported by the human volunteers. In the MDMA study, participants who experienced the greatest reduction in bottom-up processing also reported the most intense feelings of impaired control. They also reported a greater dread of ego dissolution, which is a fearful reaction to losing one’s sense of self.

This psychological correlation suggests that suppressing bottom-up information flow too much could trigger the negative experiences sometimes associated with psychedelics. Bottom-up processing normally grounds individuals in their immediate sensory environment. A severe drop in this grounding input might leave individuals feeling detached or at the mercy of their unanchored internal thoughts.

Some psychiatric conditions, such as ruminative depression, are characterized by excessive automatic thoughts and abnormal bottom-up signaling. Reducing bottom-up flow might explain why psychedelics offer relief for some patients with depression. The drugs could temporarily quiet the intrusive signals feeding into the default mode network.

Individuals at risk for psychosis already suffer from impaired bottom-up processing. Giving psychedelics to these vulnerable patients could exacerbate their symptoms. The drugs might overpower their ability to update internal beliefs with external reality.

The sample sizes across all four datasets are small, which limits the ability to account for individual differences in how people react to these drugs. Larger datasets will be necessary to map out how different psychedelics affect people with varied biological backgrounds. Expanding the number of participants could reveal more subtle alterations to brain activity flow that this initial analysis missed.

The optical flow analysis focused exclusively on the outer surface of the brain. Psychedelics also heavily influence deep brain structures, but tracking moving signals between these buried regions and the surface remains computationally out of reach for this specific technique. The imaging technologies used in human participants also have limits in their spatial and temporal resolution. These equipment limitations mean researchers might miss faster changes in brain signaling.

Finally, the studies relied entirely on healthy volunteers and laboratory mice. Future research will need to test these observations in clinical populations to determine how these changes in brain activity relate to therapeutic outcomes. Understanding the exact mechanisms of psychedelic action could help doctors identify which patients are most likely to benefit from these treatments and which patients might be harmed by them.

The study, “Psychedelics disrupt hierarchical cortical propagations in the default mode network of humans and mice,” was authored by Adam R. Pines, Xue Zhang, John Kochalka, Sam S. Vesuna, Isaac V. Kauvar, Divya Rajasekharan, T. Rick Reneau, Teddy J. Akiki, Laura M. Hack, Joshua S. Siegel, and Leanne M. Williams.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/psychedelics-alter-the-trajectory-of-moving-brain-waves/

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DATE: September 28, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------

TITLE: Psychedelics reduce bottom-up brain activity in the default mode network

URL: https://www.psypost.org/psychedelics-alter-the-trajectory-of-moving-brain-waves/

Psychedelic drugs like LSD and psilocybin reduce the amount of bottom-up brain activity flowing into a network associated with self-reflection. These altered trajectories of brain signals occur consistently across humans and mice, offering a biological explanation for how these drugs reshape the mind. The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Psychedelics are gaining attention as potential psychiatric treatments for conditions like depression and trauma. To understand their therapeutic benefits and risks, researchers need to know exactly how these substances alter brain function. Prior research has identified that psychedelics affect the default mode network, a collection of brain regions responsible for introspection, daydreaming, and mental rigidity. Many psychiatric conditions involve abnormal activity in this specific network, making it a primary target for new treatments.

The default mode network sits at the top of a processing hierarchy in the brain. Brain activity constantly moves across the surface of the cortex, which is the brain’s outer layer. Information travels from lower-order sensory areas up into higher-order areas like the default mode network, a process known as bottom-up processing. The reverse movement, from higher cognitive regions down to sensory regions, is called top-down processing.

In a healthy brain, bottom-up processing updates our internal models with new information from the outside world. Top-down processing uses our past experiences and expectations to make sense of that incoming sensory data. An imbalance between these two directions of information flow can lead to psychological distress or perceptual errors.

Past imaging studies typically measured brain activity in static regions, treating the brain as a set of fixed locations. This approach ignores the continuous, wave-like movement of signals across the brain’s surface. Analyzing static brain regions is similar to measuring the total rainfall in a single county without tracking the movement of the storm system on a weather radar. By treating the brain as a collection of isolated points, traditional research methods might obscure the true dynamics of how different brain areas communicate over time.

Adam R. Pines, Leanne M. Williams, and their colleagues at Stanford University wanted to observe these moving signals directly. They adapted an analytical technique called optical flow, which tracks the frame-by-frame movement of pixels in a video. The team used this mathematical approach to track the direction and size of brain activity waves moving across the cortex.

The researchers first analyzed a small study of 14 human volunteers who received MDMA. They compared functional magnetic resonance imaging scans taken after the participants took MDMA to scans taken after a placebo pill or no drug at all. The optical flow analysis revealed a consistent pattern across the subjects.

The team found that MDMA reduced the overall magnitude of brain waves moving through the default mode network. The drug also reduced the proportion of signals traveling in a bottom-up direction into the network.

Next, the team examined a second small study involving six human participants who ingested psilocybin. The researchers compared brain scans from the psilocybin sessions to baseline scans and to an active placebo condition. For the active placebo, participants received a dose of the stimulant methylphenidate. This stimulant mimics the physical arousal of psilocybin without the psychedelic effects.

As with MDMA, psilocybin reduced the overall magnitude of propagating brain waves in the default mode network. The reduction in bottom-up directionality was also present but was not statistically significant. The researchers suspect this weaker result occurred because the effects of psilocybin lingered for days. This persistence may have artificially altered the baseline scans taken shortly after the drug sessions.

In a third small study, 18 human volunteers received an intravenous infusion of LSD. The researchers compared their brain activity to scans taken after a saline placebo infusion. Consistent with the other substances, LSD reduced both the magnitude of the moving brain waves and the proportion of bottom-up signals entering the default mode network.

To ensure these effects were not unique to humans or specific to magnetic resonance imaging, the team looked at a small study of 14 mice. They used widefield calcium imaging, a technique that directly records the physical activity of brain cells with high resolution. The mice received LSD, a sedative called diazepam, or a different sedative called dexmedetomidine.

Like the human participants, mice given LSD showed reduced magnitude and bottom-up flow of brain activity in the default mode network. Diazepam, an anti-anxiety medication, also reduced bottom-up signals, though to a lesser extent than LSD. Dexmedetomidine produced the exact opposite effect, increasing the proportion of bottom-up signals entering the network. These animal results confirmed that the optical flow technique measures actual changes in nerve cell activity rather than artifacts of blood flow.

The researchers also investigated whether these changes in moving brain activity related to the subjective experiences reported by the human volunteers. In the MDMA study, participants who experienced the greatest reduction in bottom-up processing also reported the most intense feelings of impaired control. They also reported a greater dread of ego dissolution, which is a fearful reaction to losing one’s sense of self.

This psychological correlation suggests that suppressing bottom-up information flow too much could trigger the negative experiences sometimes associated with psychedelics. Bottom-up processing normally grounds individuals in their immediate sensory environment. A severe drop in this grounding input might leave individuals feeling detached or at the mercy of their unanchored internal thoughts.

Some psychiatric conditions, such as ruminative depression, are characterized by excessive automatic thoughts and abnormal bottom-up signaling. Reducing bottom-up flow might explain why psychedelics offer relief for some patients with depression. The drugs could temporarily quiet the intrusive signals feeding into the default mode network.

Individuals at risk for psychosis already suffer from impaired bottom-up processing. Giving psychedelics to these vulnerable patients could exacerbate their symptoms. The drugs might overpower their ability to update internal beliefs with external reality.

The sample sizes across all four datasets are small, which limits the ability to account for individual differences in how people react to these drugs. Larger datasets will be necessary to map out how different psychedelics affect people with varied biological backgrounds. Expanding the number of participants could reveal more subtle alterations to brain activity flow that this initial analysis missed.

The optical flow analysis focused exclusively on the outer surface of the brain. Psychedelics also heavily influence deep brain structures, but tracking moving signals between these buried regions and the surface remains computationally out of reach for this specific technique. The imaging technologies used in human participants also have limits in their spatial and temporal resolution. These equipment limitations mean researchers might miss faster changes in brain signaling.

Finally, the studies relied entirely on healthy volunteers and laboratory mice. Future research will need to test these observations in clinical populations to determine how these changes in brain activity relate to therapeutic outcomes. Understanding the exact mechanisms of psychedelic action could help doctors identify which patients are most likely to benefit from these treatments and which patients might be harmed by them.

The study, “Psychedelics disrupt hierarchical cortical propagations in the default mode network of humans and mice,” was authored by Adam R. Pines, Xue Zhang, John Kochalka, Sam S. Vesuna, Isaac V. Kauvar, Divya Rajasekharan, T. Rick Reneau, Teddy J. Akiki, Laura M. Hack, Joshua S. Siegel, and Leanne M. Williams.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/psychedelics-alter-the-trajectory-of-moving-brain-waves/

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DATE: September 28, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------

TITLE: Psychedelics reduce bottom-up brain activity in the default mode network

URL: https://www.psypost.org/psychedelics-alter-the-trajectory-of-moving-brain-waves/

Psychedelic drugs like LSD and psilocybin reduce the amount of bottom-up brain activity flowing into a network associated with self-reflection. These altered trajectories of brain signals occur consistently across humans and mice, offering a biological explanation for how these drugs reshape the mind. The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Psychedelics are gaining attention as potential psychiatric treatments for conditions like depression and trauma. To understand their therapeutic benefits and risks, researchers need to know exactly how these substances alter brain function. Prior research has identified that psychedelics affect the default mode network, a collection of brain regions responsible for introspection, daydreaming, and mental rigidity. Many psychiatric conditions involve abnormal activity in this specific network, making it a primary target for new treatments.

The default mode network sits at the top of a processing hierarchy in the brain. Brain activity constantly moves across the surface of the cortex, which is the brain’s outer layer. Information travels from lower-order sensory areas up into higher-order areas like the default mode network, a process known as bottom-up processing. The reverse movement, from higher cognitive regions down to sensory regions, is called top-down processing.

In a healthy brain, bottom-up processing updates our internal models with new information from the outside world. Top-down processing uses our past experiences and expectations to make sense of that incoming sensory data. An imbalance between these two directions of information flow can lead to psychological distress or perceptual errors.

Past imaging studies typically measured brain activity in static regions, treating the brain as a set of fixed locations. This approach ignores the continuous, wave-like movement of signals across the brain’s surface. Analyzing static brain regions is similar to measuring the total rainfall in a single county without tracking the movement of the storm system on a weather radar. By treating the brain as a collection of isolated points, traditional research methods might obscure the true dynamics of how different brain areas communicate over time.

Adam R. Pines, Leanne M. Williams, and their colleagues at Stanford University wanted to observe these moving signals directly. They adapted an analytical technique called optical flow, which tracks the frame-by-frame movement of pixels in a video. The team used this mathematical approach to track the direction and size of brain activity waves moving across the cortex.

The researchers first analyzed a small study of 14 human volunteers who received MDMA. They compared functional magnetic resonance imaging scans taken after the participants took MDMA to scans taken after a placebo pill or no drug at all. The optical flow analysis revealed a consistent pattern across the subjects.

The team found that MDMA reduced the overall magnitude of brain waves moving through the default mode network. The drug also reduced the proportion of signals traveling in a bottom-up direction into the network.

Next, the team examined a second small study involving six human participants who ingested psilocybin. The researchers compared brain scans from the psilocybin sessions to baseline scans and to an active placebo condition. For the active placebo, participants received a dose of the stimulant methylphenidate. This stimulant mimics the physical arousal of psilocybin without the psychedelic effects.

As with MDMA, psilocybin reduced the overall magnitude of propagating brain waves in the default mode network. The reduction in bottom-up directionality was also present but was not statistically significant. The researchers suspect this weaker result occurred because the effects of psilocybin lingered for days. This persistence may have artificially altered the baseline scans taken shortly after the drug sessions.

In a third small study, 18 human volunteers received an intravenous infusion of LSD. The researchers compared their brain activity to scans taken after a saline placebo infusion. Consistent with the other substances, LSD reduced both the magnitude of the moving brain waves and the proportion of bottom-up signals entering the default mode network.

To ensure these effects were not unique to humans or specific to magnetic resonance imaging, the team looked at a small study of 14 mice. They used widefield calcium imaging, a technique that directly records the physical activity of brain cells with high resolution. The mice received LSD, a sedative called diazepam, or a different sedative called dexmedetomidine.

Like the human participants, mice given LSD showed reduced magnitude and bottom-up flow of brain activity in the default mode network. Diazepam, an anti-anxiety medication, also reduced bottom-up signals, though to a lesser extent than LSD. Dexmedetomidine produced the exact opposite effect, increasing the proportion of bottom-up signals entering the network. These animal results confirmed that the optical flow technique measures actual changes in nerve cell activity rather than artifacts of blood flow.

The researchers also investigated whether these changes in moving brain activity related to the subjective experiences reported by the human volunteers. In the MDMA study, participants who experienced the greatest reduction in bottom-up processing also reported the most intense feelings of impaired control. They also reported a greater dread of ego dissolution, which is a fearful reaction to losing one’s sense of self.

This psychological correlation suggests that suppressing bottom-up information flow too much could trigger the negative experiences sometimes associated with psychedelics. Bottom-up processing normally grounds individuals in their immediate sensory environment. A severe drop in this grounding input might leave individuals feeling detached or at the mercy of their unanchored internal thoughts.

Some psychiatric conditions, such as ruminative depression, are characterized by excessive automatic thoughts and abnormal bottom-up signaling. Reducing bottom-up flow might explain why psychedelics offer relief for some patients with depression. The drugs could temporarily quiet the intrusive signals feeding into the default mode network.

Individuals at risk for psychosis already suffer from impaired bottom-up processing. Giving psychedelics to these vulnerable patients could exacerbate their symptoms. The drugs might overpower their ability to update internal beliefs with external reality.

The sample sizes across all four datasets are small, which limits the ability to account for individual differences in how people react to these drugs. Larger datasets will be necessary to map out how different psychedelics affect people with varied biological backgrounds. Expanding the number of participants could reveal more subtle alterations to brain activity flow that this initial analysis missed.

The optical flow analysis focused exclusively on the outer surface of the brain. Psychedelics also heavily influence deep brain structures, but tracking moving signals between these buried regions and the surface remains computationally out of reach for this specific technique. The imaging technologies used in human participants also have limits in their spatial and temporal resolution. These equipment limitations mean researchers might miss faster changes in brain signaling.

Finally, the studies relied entirely on healthy volunteers and laboratory mice. Future research will need to test these observations in clinical populations to determine how these changes in brain activity relate to therapeutic outcomes. Understanding the exact mechanisms of psychedelic action could help doctors identify which patients are most likely to benefit from these treatments and which patients might be harmed by them.

The study, “Psychedelics disrupt hierarchical cortical propagations in the default mode network of humans and mice,” was authored by Adam R. Pines, Xue Zhang, John Kochalka, Sam S. Vesuna, Isaac V. Kauvar, Divya Rajasekharan, T. Rick Reneau, Teddy J. Akiki, Laura M. Hack, Joshua S. Siegel, and Leanne M. Williams.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/psychedelics-alter-the-trajectory-of-moving-brain-waves/

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DATE: September 28, 2026 at 11:00AM
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: Love on the Spectrum: What are people saying about the reality TV show?

URL: https://www.psypost.org/love-on-the-spectrum-what-are-people-saying-about-the-reality-tv-show/

Love on the Spectrum is an American reality television series currently streaming on Netflix. Based on an Australian program of the same name, the series follows an ensemble cast of autistic adults as they navigate the complexities of the dating world. Produced by Northern Pictures, the show was created by Karina Holden and Cian O’Clery, with O’Clery also serving as the director. The American version first aired in May 2022 and has since released four full seasons, with a fifth season currently in production.

Over the past four years, the program has attracted significant attention from critics, medical professionals, and the autism community. To understand the impact of the series, we can look at six different reviews from a wide variety of authors and publications. These writers include autistic adults, journalists, and clinical professionals. Across the six reviews, several shared themes emerge again and again, along with one major point of disagreement.

An Antidote to Conventional Reality TV

In the modern landscape of reality television, conflict is usually the main attraction. For decades, the genre has drifted toward manufactured drama and intense arguments. Louis Staples, writing for The Guardian, points out this history by noting the trajectory of shows like Big Brother and Wife Swap, and he references a recent scandal on the dating show The Bachelorette. Against this backdrop, reviewers agree that the Netflix series feels like a welcome departure from the norm.

Kerry Magro, an autistic author reviewing the show on his Autism Speaks blog, contrasts the series favorably against drama-driven dating franchises like The Bachelor. Sara Luterman, an autistic writer for The Transmitter, observes that the production crew does not try to manufacture arguments, and no cast members are ever voted off the island. Maya Salam, a reporter for The New York Times, agrees, writing that the series actually delivers on the original promise of reality television. The shared view among these critics is that the program is honest, unscripted, and entirely free of pretense.

Kindness and Warmth

This lack of pretense results in a show that radiates kindness and warmth. Even the harshest critics grant this point. Luterman notes that the show is kind and well-intentioned, even as she lists her specific objections to its format. Lisa Sheinhouse, a clinician writing for Psychology Today, treats the series as a sincere attempt at inclusion. Salam adds an important note: while the show feels very good to watch, reducing it to mere “feel-good TV” undersells the actual depth of the program.

Countering the Myth of Lovelessness

A central theme across the reviews is how the series dismantles the myth that autistic people have no desire for romantic relationships or cannot find love. Nils Skudra, an autistic artist and writer for The Art of Autism, frames this myth-busting as the central achievement of the program. Salam places the show in direct contrast to recent claims by politicians, specifically noting Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s statement that autistic children will “never go out on a date.” The series proves this assumption wrong time and again.

Staples highlights how the cast members experience the exact same pre-date anxieties as anyone else, from wondering what to wear to hoping their date likes them. Magro presents cast member Michael as a role model for countless people because he knows what he wants in a relationship and refuses to settle for less.

The Power of Acceptance

The reviewers also point out that the most successful relationships on the show happen when partners fully embrace each other’s autistic traits. Autism is a developmental condition that affects how people communicate, interact, and behave. People with autism often rely on specific routines or have highly focused interests. Several reviewers notice this dynamic independently.

Luterman observes this acceptance in action when cast member Sharnae goes with her boyfriend Jimmy to the store. Jimmy becomes highly agitated because he needs navy blue socks instead of black ones. Instead of getting annoyed, Sharnae accepts his distress and helps him find the right socks. Skudra highlights the difficult search for a partner who understands autism, using cast member Kaelynn as an example. Kaelynn shares a painful story about a time she had to disclose her autism because of her service dog, which resulted in immediate rejection.

Staples praises cast member Emma for her refreshing directness on dates, and he commends her mother for deciding to stop focusing on the things Emma is not. Salam points to a moment where Abbey sings a song about her boyfriend David. In the song, she mentions that David sees colors as numbers, a neurological condition known as synesthesia, and she sings about how he took the time to learn how her mind works.

LGBTQ Representation

Representation on the show extends beyond heterosexual relationships, which multiple reviewers single out as a strength. Magro points out the inclusion of bisexual cast members Teo and Mark. Luterman praises a highly popular date between Chloe and Lotus. Salam highlights Pari and Tina, who share a same-sex romance in the third season. However, Luterman goes a step further and argues that the show still under-represents the queer autistic community, pointing to evidence that autistic people are significantly more likely to identify as LGBTQ than the general population.

Family Dynamics

The reviews also focus on the families. Salam and Staples both see the show as a story about family support networks just as much as it is a story about the daters themselves. Luterman flips this observation into a critique. She notes that the show features more interviews with parents than interviews with the autistic adults themselves. She calls this approach “infantilizing,” a term used when capable adults are treated as if they were helpless children.

TV vs. Reality

This leads into a broader concern shared by the reviewers: the gap between reality television and actual reality. The critical reviews share a deep concern about how representative the show truly is. Luterman challenges a claim made by one cast member that only five percent of autistic people find love, noting that there is very little scientific data to support such a specific number. She also criticizes the overwhelmingly white cast, pointing out that people of color face major disparities in getting an autism diagnosis in the real world. Sheinhouse warns parents watching at home that what happens on screen is not a realistic guide for real-life dating. Even Salam concedes that a single television program cannot possibly capture the entire breadth of the autism spectrum.

The Main Split: Coaching and Support

The most significant disagreement among the six reviewers revolves around the dating coaching and support provided to the cast. This is where the reviews actively disagree, and the division directly tracks with who is writing.

Sheinhouse is a clinician who runs programs for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Often abbreviated as I/DD, this term refers to conditions that affect physical, learning, or behavioral development. From her professional perspective, she believes the cast members received far too little support. She argues for a much more structured approach, suggesting that dates should be chaperoned.

She also wants to see direct interventions during the dates when things get uncomfortable, along with formal education on setting boundaries, understanding physical consent, and learning how to safely interact with strangers, especially online.

The autistic reviewers take a very different stance. Luterman finds the show’s dating coaching to be entirely the wrong approach. She argues that the coaches teach scripted “neurotypical” behaviors. A neurotypical person is someone whose brain develops and functions in ways that are considered standard by society. Luterman points out that the coaches teach the cast to make eye contact, pull out chairs, and suppress talking about their special interests. She feels these exercises do not foster real emotional connection and only serve to make the autistic adults mimic standard social rules.

Skudra and Staples view the coaching in a much more positive light. They specifically praise Jennifer Cook, an autistic autism expert who runs role-playing sessions with the cast. Role-playing is an exercise where people act out a scenario in advance to practice how to handle it. Skudra and Staples feel this helps the cast build confidence before they go out.

This split over the coaching is the most fascinating fault line in how the show is received. One camp wants more guardrails and protection, while the other camp wants more autonomy and freedom. The autistic reviewers, including Magro, Luterman, and Skudra, base their opinions heavily on personal dignity and accurate representation. The clinical reviewer bases her opinions on safety, preparation, and protection from harm. Reviewing all six perspectives provides a deep, well-rounded understanding of how a simple dating show can spark massive conversations about human connection, disability, and independence.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/love-on-the-spectrum-what-are-people-saying-about-the-reality-tv-show/

-------------------------------------------------

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-------------------------------------------------

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DATE: September 28, 2026 at 11:00AM
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: Love on the Spectrum: What are people saying about the reality TV show?

URL: https://www.psypost.org/love-on-the-spectrum-what-are-people-saying-about-the-reality-tv-show/

Love on the Spectrum is an American reality television series currently streaming on Netflix. Based on an Australian program of the same name, the series follows an ensemble cast of autistic adults as they navigate the complexities of the dating world. Produced by Northern Pictures, the show was created by Karina Holden and Cian O’Clery, with O’Clery also serving as the director. The American version first aired in May 2022 and has since released four full seasons, with a fifth season currently in production.

Over the past four years, the program has attracted significant attention from critics, medical professionals, and the autism community. To understand the impact of the series, we can look at six different reviews from a wide variety of authors and publications. These writers include autistic adults, journalists, and clinical professionals. Across the six reviews, several shared themes emerge again and again, along with one major point of disagreement.

An Antidote to Conventional Reality TV

In the modern landscape of reality television, conflict is usually the main attraction. For decades, the genre has drifted toward manufactured drama and intense arguments. Louis Staples, writing for The Guardian, points out this history by noting the trajectory of shows like Big Brother and Wife Swap, and he references a recent scandal on the dating show The Bachelorette. Against this backdrop, reviewers agree that the Netflix series feels like a welcome departure from the norm.

Kerry Magro, an autistic author reviewing the show on his Autism Speaks blog, contrasts the series favorably against drama-driven dating franchises like The Bachelor. Sara Luterman, an autistic writer for The Transmitter, observes that the production crew does not try to manufacture arguments, and no cast members are ever voted off the island. Maya Salam, a reporter for The New York Times, agrees, writing that the series actually delivers on the original promise of reality television. The shared view among these critics is that the program is honest, unscripted, and entirely free of pretense.

Kindness and Warmth

This lack of pretense results in a show that radiates kindness and warmth. Even the harshest critics grant this point. Luterman notes that the show is kind and well-intentioned, even as she lists her specific objections to its format. Lisa Sheinhouse, a clinician writing for Psychology Today, treats the series as a sincere attempt at inclusion. Salam adds an important note: while the show feels very good to watch, reducing it to mere “feel-good TV” undersells the actual depth of the program.

Countering the Myth of Lovelessness

A central theme across the reviews is how the series dismantles the myth that autistic people have no desire for romantic relationships or cannot find love. Nils Skudra, an autistic artist and writer for The Art of Autism, frames this myth-busting as the central achievement of the program. Salam places the show in direct contrast to recent claims by politicians, specifically noting Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s statement that autistic children will “never go out on a date.” The series proves this assumption wrong time and again.

Staples highlights how the cast members experience the exact same pre-date anxieties as anyone else, from wondering what to wear to hoping their date likes them. Magro presents cast member Michael as a role model for countless people because he knows what he wants in a relationship and refuses to settle for less.

The Power of Acceptance

The reviewers also point out that the most successful relationships on the show happen when partners fully embrace each other’s autistic traits. Autism is a developmental condition that affects how people communicate, interact, and behave. People with autism often rely on specific routines or have highly focused interests. Several reviewers notice this dynamic independently.

Luterman observes this acceptance in action when cast member Sharnae goes with her boyfriend Jimmy to the store. Jimmy becomes highly agitated because he needs navy blue socks instead of black ones. Instead of getting annoyed, Sharnae accepts his distress and helps him find the right socks. Skudra highlights the difficult search for a partner who understands autism, using cast member Kaelynn as an example. Kaelynn shares a painful story about a time she had to disclose her autism because of her service dog, which resulted in immediate rejection.

Staples praises cast member Emma for her refreshing directness on dates, and he commends her mother for deciding to stop focusing on the things Emma is not. Salam points to a moment where Abbey sings a song about her boyfriend David. In the song, she mentions that David sees colors as numbers, a neurological condition known as synesthesia, and she sings about how he took the time to learn how her mind works.

LGBTQ Representation

Representation on the show extends beyond heterosexual relationships, which multiple reviewers single out as a strength. Magro points out the inclusion of bisexual cast members Teo and Mark. Luterman praises a highly popular date between Chloe and Lotus. Salam highlights Pari and Tina, who share a same-sex romance in the third season. However, Luterman goes a step further and argues that the show still under-represents the queer autistic community, pointing to evidence that autistic people are significantly more likely to identify as LGBTQ than the general population.

Family Dynamics

The reviews also focus on the families. Salam and Staples both see the show as a story about family support networks just as much as it is a story about the daters themselves. Luterman flips this observation into a critique. She notes that the show features more interviews with parents than interviews with the autistic adults themselves. She calls this approach “infantilizing,” a term used when capable adults are treated as if they were helpless children.

TV vs. Reality

This leads into a broader concern shared by the reviewers: the gap between reality television and actual reality. The critical reviews share a deep concern about how representative the show truly is. Luterman challenges a claim made by one cast member that only five percent of autistic people find love, noting that there is very little scientific data to support such a specific number. She also criticizes the overwhelmingly white cast, pointing out that people of color face major disparities in getting an autism diagnosis in the real world. Sheinhouse warns parents watching at home that what happens on screen is not a realistic guide for real-life dating. Even Salam concedes that a single television program cannot possibly capture the entire breadth of the autism spectrum.

The Main Split: Coaching and Support

The most significant disagreement among the six reviewers revolves around the dating coaching and support provided to the cast. This is where the reviews actively disagree, and the division directly tracks with who is writing.

Sheinhouse is a clinician who runs programs for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Often abbreviated as I/DD, this term refers to conditions that affect physical, learning, or behavioral development. From her professional perspective, she believes the cast members received far too little support. She argues for a much more structured approach, suggesting that dates should be chaperoned.

She also wants to see direct interventions during the dates when things get uncomfortable, along with formal education on setting boundaries, understanding physical consent, and learning how to safely interact with strangers, especially online.

The autistic reviewers take a very different stance. Luterman finds the show’s dating coaching to be entirely the wrong approach. She argues that the coaches teach scripted “neurotypical” behaviors. A neurotypical person is someone whose brain develops and functions in ways that are considered standard by society. Luterman points out that the coaches teach the cast to make eye contact, pull out chairs, and suppress talking about their special interests. She feels these exercises do not foster real emotional connection and only serve to make the autistic adults mimic standard social rules.

Skudra and Staples view the coaching in a much more positive light. They specifically praise Jennifer Cook, an autistic autism expert who runs role-playing sessions with the cast. Role-playing is an exercise where people act out a scenario in advance to practice how to handle it. Skudra and Staples feel this helps the cast build confidence before they go out.

This split over the coaching is the most fascinating fault line in how the show is received. One camp wants more guardrails and protection, while the other camp wants more autonomy and freedom. The autistic reviewers, including Magro, Luterman, and Skudra, base their opinions heavily on personal dignity and accurate representation. The clinical reviewer bases her opinions on safety, preparation, and protection from harm. Reviewing all six perspectives provides a deep, well-rounded understanding of how a simple dating show can spark massive conversations about human connection, disability, and independence.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/love-on-the-spectrum-what-are-people-saying-about-the-reality-tv-show/

-------------------------------------------------

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

-------------------------------------------------

#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #LoveOnTheSpectrum #AutismRomance #NetflixReality #AutismRepresentation #DatingWithAutism #RealityTVWithoutDrama #LGBTQAutism #NeurodiversityInMedia #CoachingVsAutonomy #LoveIsLoveSpectrum

DATE: September 28, 2026 at 11:00AM
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: Love on the Spectrum: What are people saying about the reality TV show?

URL: https://www.psypost.org/love-on-the-spectrum-what-are-people-saying-about-the-reality-tv-show/

Love on the Spectrum is an American reality television series currently streaming on Netflix. Based on an Australian program of the same name, the series follows an ensemble cast of autistic adults as they navigate the complexities of the dating world. Produced by Northern Pictures, the show was created by Karina Holden and Cian O’Clery, with O’Clery also serving as the director. The American version first aired in May 2022 and has since released four full seasons, with a fifth season currently in production.

Over the past four years, the program has attracted significant attention from critics, medical professionals, and the autism community. To understand the impact of the series, we can look at six different reviews from a wide variety of authors and publications. These writers include autistic adults, journalists, and clinical professionals. Across the six reviews, several shared themes emerge again and again, along with one major point of disagreement.

An Antidote to Conventional Reality TV

In the modern landscape of reality television, conflict is usually the main attraction. For decades, the genre has drifted toward manufactured drama and intense arguments. Louis Staples, writing for The Guardian, points out this history by noting the trajectory of shows like Big Brother and Wife Swap, and he references a recent scandal on the dating show The Bachelorette. Against this backdrop, reviewers agree that the Netflix series feels like a welcome departure from the norm.

Kerry Magro, an autistic author reviewing the show on his Autism Speaks blog, contrasts the series favorably against drama-driven dating franchises like The Bachelor. Sara Luterman, an autistic writer for The Transmitter, observes that the production crew does not try to manufacture arguments, and no cast members are ever voted off the island. Maya Salam, a reporter for The New York Times, agrees, writing that the series actually delivers on the original promise of reality television. The shared view among these critics is that the program is honest, unscripted, and entirely free of pretense.

Kindness and Warmth

This lack of pretense results in a show that radiates kindness and warmth. Even the harshest critics grant this point. Luterman notes that the show is kind and well-intentioned, even as she lists her specific objections to its format. Lisa Sheinhouse, a clinician writing for Psychology Today, treats the series as a sincere attempt at inclusion. Salam adds an important note: while the show feels very good to watch, reducing it to mere “feel-good TV” undersells the actual depth of the program.

Countering the Myth of Lovelessness

A central theme across the reviews is how the series dismantles the myth that autistic people have no desire for romantic relationships or cannot find love. Nils Skudra, an autistic artist and writer for The Art of Autism, frames this myth-busting as the central achievement of the program. Salam places the show in direct contrast to recent claims by politicians, specifically noting Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s statement that autistic children will “never go out on a date.” The series proves this assumption wrong time and again.

Staples highlights how the cast members experience the exact same pre-date anxieties as anyone else, from wondering what to wear to hoping their date likes them. Magro presents cast member Michael as a role model for countless people because he knows what he wants in a relationship and refuses to settle for less.

The Power of Acceptance

The reviewers also point out that the most successful relationships on the show happen when partners fully embrace each other’s autistic traits. Autism is a developmental condition that affects how people communicate, interact, and behave. People with autism often rely on specific routines or have highly focused interests. Several reviewers notice this dynamic independently.

Luterman observes this acceptance in action when cast member Sharnae goes with her boyfriend Jimmy to the store. Jimmy becomes highly agitated because he needs navy blue socks instead of black ones. Instead of getting annoyed, Sharnae accepts his distress and helps him find the right socks. Skudra highlights the difficult search for a partner who understands autism, using cast member Kaelynn as an example. Kaelynn shares a painful story about a time she had to disclose her autism because of her service dog, which resulted in immediate rejection.

Staples praises cast member Emma for her refreshing directness on dates, and he commends her mother for deciding to stop focusing on the things Emma is not. Salam points to a moment where Abbey sings a song about her boyfriend David. In the song, she mentions that David sees colors as numbers, a neurological condition known as synesthesia, and she sings about how he took the time to learn how her mind works.

LGBTQ Representation

Representation on the show extends beyond heterosexual relationships, which multiple reviewers single out as a strength. Magro points out the inclusion of bisexual cast members Teo and Mark. Luterman praises a highly popular date between Chloe and Lotus. Salam highlights Pari and Tina, who share a same-sex romance in the third season. However, Luterman goes a step further and argues that the show still under-represents the queer autistic community, pointing to evidence that autistic people are significantly more likely to identify as LGBTQ than the general population.

Family Dynamics

The reviews also focus on the families. Salam and Staples both see the show as a story about family support networks just as much as it is a story about the daters themselves. Luterman flips this observation into a critique. She notes that the show features more interviews with parents than interviews with the autistic adults themselves. She calls this approach “infantilizing,” a term used when capable adults are treated as if they were helpless children.

TV vs. Reality

This leads into a broader concern shared by the reviewers: the gap between reality television and actual reality. The critical reviews share a deep concern about how representative the show truly is. Luterman challenges a claim made by one cast member that only five percent of autistic people find love, noting that there is very little scientific data to support such a specific number. She also criticizes the overwhelmingly white cast, pointing out that people of color face major disparities in getting an autism diagnosis in the real world. Sheinhouse warns parents watching at home that what happens on screen is not a realistic guide for real-life dating. Even Salam concedes that a single television program cannot possibly capture the entire breadth of the autism spectrum.

The Main Split: Coaching and Support

The most significant disagreement among the six reviewers revolves around the dating coaching and support provided to the cast. This is where the reviews actively disagree, and the division directly tracks with who is writing.

Sheinhouse is a clinician who runs programs for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Often abbreviated as I/DD, this term refers to conditions that affect physical, learning, or behavioral development. From her professional perspective, she believes the cast members received far too little support. She argues for a much more structured approach, suggesting that dates should be chaperoned.

She also wants to see direct interventions during the dates when things get uncomfortable, along with formal education on setting boundaries, understanding physical consent, and learning how to safely interact with strangers, especially online.

The autistic reviewers take a very different stance. Luterman finds the show’s dating coaching to be entirely the wrong approach. She argues that the coaches teach scripted “neurotypical” behaviors. A neurotypical person is someone whose brain develops and functions in ways that are considered standard by society. Luterman points out that the coaches teach the cast to make eye contact, pull out chairs, and suppress talking about their special interests. She feels these exercises do not foster real emotional connection and only serve to make the autistic adults mimic standard social rules.

Skudra and Staples view the coaching in a much more positive light. They specifically praise Jennifer Cook, an autistic autism expert who runs role-playing sessions with the cast. Role-playing is an exercise where people act out a scenario in advance to practice how to handle it. Skudra and Staples feel this helps the cast build confidence before they go out.

This split over the coaching is the most fascinating fault line in how the show is received. One camp wants more guardrails and protection, while the other camp wants more autonomy and freedom. The autistic reviewers, including Magro, Luterman, and Skudra, base their opinions heavily on personal dignity and accurate representation. The clinical reviewer bases her opinions on safety, preparation, and protection from harm. Reviewing all six perspectives provides a deep, well-rounded understanding of how a simple dating show can spark massive conversations about human connection, disability, and independence.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/love-on-the-spectrum-what-are-people-saying-about-the-reality-tv-show/

-------------------------------------------------

Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org

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-------------------------------------------------

#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #LoveOnTheSpectrum #AutismRomance #NetflixReality #AutismRepresentation #DatingWithAutism #RealityTVWithoutDrama #LGBTQAutism #NeurodiversityInMedia #CoachingVsAutonomy #LoveIsLoveSpectrum

TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology

DATE: September 28, 2026 at 10:15AM
SOURCE: CONSORTIUM FOR DEFENSE PSYCHOLOGY

Direct article link at end of text block below.

The Medical and Clinical Psychology (MPS) department gathered in the courtyard at USU recently to take a department photo. https://t.co/pICGthXkDz

Here are any URLs found in the article text:

https://t.co/pICGthXkDz

Articles can be found at https://deploymentpsych.org/.

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TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology

DATE: September 28, 2026 at 10:15AM
SOURCE: CONSORTIUM FOR DEFENSE PSYCHOLOGY

Direct article link at end of text block below.

The Medical and Clinical Psychology (MPS) department gathered in the courtyard at USU recently to take a department photo. https://t.co/pICGthXkDz

Here are any URLs found in the article text:

https://t.co/pICGthXkDz

Articles can be found at https://deploymentpsych.org/.

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TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology

DATE: September 28, 2026 at 10:15AM
SOURCE: CONSORTIUM FOR DEFENSE PSYCHOLOGY

Direct article link at end of text block below.

The Medical and Clinical Psychology (MPS) department gathered in the courtyard at USU recently to take a department photo. https://t.co/pICGthXkDz

Here are any URLs found in the article text:

https://t.co/pICGthXkDz

Articles can be found at https://deploymentpsych.org/.

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DATE: September 28, 2026 at 09:37AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHOLOGY FEED

TITLE: Scientists just discovered what coffee really does to your gut and brain

URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260927034331.htm

A new study suggests coffee may influence mood and brain function by changing the activity of microbes in the gut. Both caffeinated and decaf coffee were linked to lower stress, depression, and impulsivity, while also producing measurable changes in gut bacteria and metabolites. Decaf was associated with better learning and memory, while caffeinated coffee appeared to reduce anxiety and improve attention.

URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260927034331.htm

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DATE: September 28, 2026 at 09:37AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHOLOGY FEED

TITLE: Scientists just discovered what coffee really does to your gut and brain

URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260927034331.htm

A new study suggests coffee may influence mood and brain function by changing the activity of microbes in the gut. Both caffeinated and decaf coffee were linked to lower stress, depression, and impulsivity, while also producing measurable changes in gut bacteria and metabolites. Decaf was associated with better learning and memory, while caffeinated coffee appeared to reduce anxiety and improve attention.

URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260927034331.htm

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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #CoffeeAndGutHealth #CoffeeBrainConnection #GutMicrobiome #MentalHealth #CaffeineVsDecaf #MoodAndCognition #GutBacteria #Metabolites #LearningMemory #AttentionAndAnxiety

DATE: September 28, 2026 at 09:37AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHOLOGY FEED

TITLE: Scientists just discovered what coffee really does to your gut and brain

URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260927034331.htm

A new study suggests coffee may influence mood and brain function by changing the activity of microbes in the gut. Both caffeinated and decaf coffee were linked to lower stress, depression, and impulsivity, while also producing measurable changes in gut bacteria and metabolites. Decaf was associated with better learning and memory, while caffeinated coffee appeared to reduce anxiety and improve attention.

URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260927034331.htm

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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #CoffeeAndGutHealth #CoffeeBrainConnection #GutMicrobiome #MentalHealth #CaffeineVsDecaf #MoodAndCognition #GutBacteria #Metabolites #LearningMemory #AttentionAndAnxiety

DATE: September 28, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------

TITLE: Neuroscientists shed light on how the brain juggles talking and listening during real conversation

URL: https://www.psypost.org/how-the-brain-juggles-talking-and-listening-in-real-time/

When humans engage in a conversation, the brain must seamlessly process both the words they want to say and the sentences they are hearing. A new study reveals that the brain uses shared neural codes for speaking and listening during short verbal exchanges, but relies on distinct timing networks to process longer, overarching ideas. These findings, published in Nature Human Behaviour, help map how the brain navigates the back-and-forth demands of natural social interaction.

Conversation is a highly dynamic activity that requires people to understand context, anticipate responses, and build a cohesive narrative together. To do this, the human brain must integrate language across multiple timescales. This ranges from the immediate processing of individual words to the broader comprehension of entire paragraphs and concepts.

For decades, researchers have studied how the brain processes language by having participants listen to isolated sentences or read long narratives. These past experiments established that the brain organizes language hierarchically. However, it was not entirely known how the brain handles the two-way street of spontaneous, real-time conversation.

Neuroscientists sought to determine whether the brain uses the exact same linguistic representations for generating speech and comprehending speech, or if it keeps those processes separated. A research team led by Masahiro Yamashita and Shinji Nishimoto at Osaka University and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology in Japan set out to answer this question. They designed a study to map out how brain activity shifts depending on whether a person is talking or listening, and how much previous context they are factoring in.

The researchers recruited eight native Japanese speakers for a small study involving brain imaging. Each participant lay inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner, a machine that tracks blood flow in the brain to measure neural activity. While inside the scanner, the participants engaged in unscripted, natural conversations with an experimenter through a microphone and earphones. They discussed casual topics, such as their favorite classes and personal introductions, for roughly three hours each.

To translate the messy, spontaneous nature of human speech into a format the researchers could analyze, they turned to a large language model. This artificial intelligence tool, based on the GPT architecture, was trained to predict language patterns by processing massive amounts of text. The researchers fed the transcripts of the participants’ conversations into the artificial intelligence to extract mathematical representations of the text’s meaning, known as contextual embeddings. They did this for different lengths of time, analyzing context windows that lasted anywhere from one second to thirty-two seconds.

The team then built computer models to predict the brain activity of the participants based on the artificial intelligence’s mathematical breakdown of the conversations. They first tested a model that treated speaking and listening as one shared pool of meaning. The results showed that when looking at short timescales of one to four seconds, the brain shares its linguistic representations regardless of whether a person is talking or listening. The neural codes used for formulating a quick thought and hearing a brief sentence overlapped in the prefrontal, temporal, and parietal cortices.

However, the researchers found a different pattern when examining longer stretches of conversation. When looking at context windows of sixteen to thirty-two seconds, the shared representations scattered across the brain. The patterns varied widely from person to person, occasionally reaching regions associated with guessing the thoughts of others and recalling memories. This suggests that while the brain uses a universal system to process immediate words, individuals use personalized strategies to integrate overarching social context and long-term conversation history.

Next, the researchers isolated the brain activity uniquely tied to just speaking or just listening. They discovered an opposing timescale preference for each action. The brain areas dedicated to producing speech were most active when processing short-term context. Conversely, the brain areas dedicated to understanding the experimenter’s speech were most active when processing long-term context spanning multiple sentences.

This division aligns with the specific demands of each task. Producing speech requires a person to react quickly to what the other person just said, planning words and sentence structures on the fly. Listening requires a person to hold onto information over time to build a complete mental model of what their conversational partner means.

The researchers also looked for brain regions that responded robustly to both speaking and listening, but in completely independent ways. They identified specific bimodal zones that peaked in activity only when factoring in longer context lengths of eight seconds or more. These areas encoded meaning for both tasks but did not share the exact same neural patterns, pointing to specialized regions that help individuals separate their own perspectives from those of their conversation partners. To navigate a dialogue, the brain must keep track of who knows what, and these bimodal zones likely support that cognitive juggling.

Finally, the team used a statistical technique to break down the specific types of words that drove the strongest brain responses at short timescales. They found that conversational fillers and short confirmations, such as “yeah” or “uh,” evoked distinct neural patterns. These tiny words require very little cognitive effort to say, but they act as social glue to maintain the flow of dialogue. The brain appears to have dedicated neural tuning for these interactive words, separating them from highly logical or factual statements.

Because this was a small study involving only eight people, the findings represent a narrow slice of the population. The researchers noted that they did not use functional localizer tasks, which are preliminary tests used to outline established brain networks, such as the regions responsible for mentalizing what other people are thinking. Without these preliminary tests, the team could not definitively map their results onto precisely defined cognitive networks. Future research with larger groups and additional mapping techniques will be needed to confirm exactly which distinct brain networks manage these conversational timelines.

The study, “Conversational content is organized across multiple timescales in the brain,” was authored by Masahiro Yamashita, Rieko Kubo, and Shinji Nishimoto.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/how-the-brain-juggles-talking-and-listening-in-real-time/

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DATE: September 28, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------

TITLE: Neuroscientists shed light on how the brain juggles talking and listening during real conversation

URL: https://www.psypost.org/how-the-brain-juggles-talking-and-listening-in-real-time/

When humans engage in a conversation, the brain must seamlessly process both the words they want to say and the sentences they are hearing. A new study reveals that the brain uses shared neural codes for speaking and listening during short verbal exchanges, but relies on distinct timing networks to process longer, overarching ideas. These findings, published in Nature Human Behaviour, help map how the brain navigates the back-and-forth demands of natural social interaction.

Conversation is a highly dynamic activity that requires people to understand context, anticipate responses, and build a cohesive narrative together. To do this, the human brain must integrate language across multiple timescales. This ranges from the immediate processing of individual words to the broader comprehension of entire paragraphs and concepts.

For decades, researchers have studied how the brain processes language by having participants listen to isolated sentences or read long narratives. These past experiments established that the brain organizes language hierarchically. However, it was not entirely known how the brain handles the two-way street of spontaneous, real-time conversation.

Neuroscientists sought to determine whether the brain uses the exact same linguistic representations for generating speech and comprehending speech, or if it keeps those processes separated. A research team led by Masahiro Yamashita and Shinji Nishimoto at Osaka University and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology in Japan set out to answer this question. They designed a study to map out how brain activity shifts depending on whether a person is talking or listening, and how much previous context they are factoring in.

The researchers recruited eight native Japanese speakers for a small study involving brain imaging. Each participant lay inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner, a machine that tracks blood flow in the brain to measure neural activity. While inside the scanner, the participants engaged in unscripted, natural conversations with an experimenter through a microphone and earphones. They discussed casual topics, such as their favorite classes and personal introductions, for roughly three hours each.

To translate the messy, spontaneous nature of human speech into a format the researchers could analyze, they turned to a large language model. This artificial intelligence tool, based on the GPT architecture, was trained to predict language patterns by processing massive amounts of text. The researchers fed the transcripts of the participants’ conversations into the artificial intelligence to extract mathematical representations of the text’s meaning, known as contextual embeddings. They did this for different lengths of time, analyzing context windows that lasted anywhere from one second to thirty-two seconds.

The team then built computer models to predict the brain activity of the participants based on the artificial intelligence’s mathematical breakdown of the conversations. They first tested a model that treated speaking and listening as one shared pool of meaning. The results showed that when looking at short timescales of one to four seconds, the brain shares its linguistic representations regardless of whether a person is talking or listening. The neural codes used for formulating a quick thought and hearing a brief sentence overlapped in the prefrontal, temporal, and parietal cortices.

However, the researchers found a different pattern when examining longer stretches of conversation. When looking at context windows of sixteen to thirty-two seconds, the shared representations scattered across the brain. The patterns varied widely from person to person, occasionally reaching regions associated with guessing the thoughts of others and recalling memories. This suggests that while the brain uses a universal system to process immediate words, individuals use personalized strategies to integrate overarching social context and long-term conversation history.

Next, the researchers isolated the brain activity uniquely tied to just speaking or just listening. They discovered an opposing timescale preference for each action. The brain areas dedicated to producing speech were most active when processing short-term context. Conversely, the brain areas dedicated to understanding the experimenter’s speech were most active when processing long-term context spanning multiple sentences.

This division aligns with the specific demands of each task. Producing speech requires a person to react quickly to what the other person just said, planning words and sentence structures on the fly. Listening requires a person to hold onto information over time to build a complete mental model of what their conversational partner means.

The researchers also looked for brain regions that responded robustly to both speaking and listening, but in completely independent ways. They identified specific bimodal zones that peaked in activity only when factoring in longer context lengths of eight seconds or more. These areas encoded meaning for both tasks but did not share the exact same neural patterns, pointing to specialized regions that help individuals separate their own perspectives from those of their conversation partners. To navigate a dialogue, the brain must keep track of who knows what, and these bimodal zones likely support that cognitive juggling.

Finally, the team used a statistical technique to break down the specific types of words that drove the strongest brain responses at short timescales. They found that conversational fillers and short confirmations, such as “yeah” or “uh,” evoked distinct neural patterns. These tiny words require very little cognitive effort to say, but they act as social glue to maintain the flow of dialogue. The brain appears to have dedicated neural tuning for these interactive words, separating them from highly logical or factual statements.

Because this was a small study involving only eight people, the findings represent a narrow slice of the population. The researchers noted that they did not use functional localizer tasks, which are preliminary tests used to outline established brain networks, such as the regions responsible for mentalizing what other people are thinking. Without these preliminary tests, the team could not definitively map their results onto precisely defined cognitive networks. Future research with larger groups and additional mapping techniques will be needed to confirm exactly which distinct brain networks manage these conversational timelines.

The study, “Conversational content is organized across multiple timescales in the brain,” was authored by Masahiro Yamashita, Rieko Kubo, and Shinji Nishimoto.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/how-the-brain-juggles-talking-and-listening-in-real-time/

-------------------------------------------------

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-------------------------------------------------

#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #BrainSpeechTiming #ConversationNeuroscience #LanguageProcessing #SpeakingVsListening #NeuralCodes #ContextWindow #BimodalRegions #SocialCommunication #GPTEmbeddings #NeuroscienceResearch

DATE: September 28, 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. **
-------------------------------------------------

TITLE: Neuroscientists shed light on how the brain juggles talking and listening during real conversation

URL: https://www.psypost.org/how-the-brain-juggles-talking-and-listening-in-real-time/

When humans engage in a conversation, the brain must seamlessly process both the words they want to say and the sentences they are hearing. A new study reveals that the brain uses shared neural codes for speaking and listening during short verbal exchanges, but relies on distinct timing networks to process longer, overarching ideas. These findings, published in Nature Human Behaviour, help map how the brain navigates the back-and-forth demands of natural social interaction.

Conversation is a highly dynamic activity that requires people to understand context, anticipate responses, and build a cohesive narrative together. To do this, the human brain must integrate language across multiple timescales. This ranges from the immediate processing of individual words to the broader comprehension of entire paragraphs and concepts.

For decades, researchers have studied how the brain processes language by having participants listen to isolated sentences or read long narratives. These past experiments established that the brain organizes language hierarchically. However, it was not entirely known how the brain handles the two-way street of spontaneous, real-time conversation.

Neuroscientists sought to determine whether the brain uses the exact same linguistic representations for generating speech and comprehending speech, or if it keeps those processes separated. A research team led by Masahiro Yamashita and Shinji Nishimoto at Osaka University and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology in Japan set out to answer this question. They designed a study to map out how brain activity shifts depending on whether a person is talking or listening, and how much previous context they are factoring in.

The researchers recruited eight native Japanese speakers for a small study involving brain imaging. Each participant lay inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner, a machine that tracks blood flow in the brain to measure neural activity. While inside the scanner, the participants engaged in unscripted, natural conversations with an experimenter through a microphone and earphones. They discussed casual topics, such as their favorite classes and personal introductions, for roughly three hours each.

To translate the messy, spontaneous nature of human speech into a format the researchers could analyze, they turned to a large language model. This artificial intelligence tool, based on the GPT architecture, was trained to predict language patterns by processing massive amounts of text. The researchers fed the transcripts of the participants’ conversations into the artificial intelligence to extract mathematical representations of the text’s meaning, known as contextual embeddings. They did this for different lengths of time, analyzing context windows that lasted anywhere from one second to thirty-two seconds.

The team then built computer models to predict the brain activity of the participants based on the artificial intelligence’s mathematical breakdown of the conversations. They first tested a model that treated speaking and listening as one shared pool of meaning. The results showed that when looking at short timescales of one to four seconds, the brain shares its linguistic representations regardless of whether a person is talking or listening. The neural codes used for formulating a quick thought and hearing a brief sentence overlapped in the prefrontal, temporal, and parietal cortices.

However, the researchers found a different pattern when examining longer stretches of conversation. When looking at context windows of sixteen to thirty-two seconds, the shared representations scattered across the brain. The patterns varied widely from person to person, occasionally reaching regions associated with guessing the thoughts of others and recalling memories. This suggests that while the brain uses a universal system to process immediate words, individuals use personalized strategies to integrate overarching social context and long-term conversation history.

Next, the researchers isolated the brain activity uniquely tied to just speaking or just listening. They discovered an opposing timescale preference for each action. The brain areas dedicated to producing speech were most active when processing short-term context. Conversely, the brain areas dedicated to understanding the experimenter’s speech were most active when processing long-term context spanning multiple sentences.

This division aligns with the specific demands of each task. Producing speech requires a person to react quickly to what the other person just said, planning words and sentence structures on the fly. Listening requires a person to hold onto information over time to build a complete mental model of what their conversational partner means.

The researchers also looked for brain regions that responded robustly to both speaking and listening, but in completely independent ways. They identified specific bimodal zones that peaked in activity only when factoring in longer context lengths of eight seconds or more. These areas encoded meaning for both tasks but did not share the exact same neural patterns, pointing to specialized regions that help individuals separate their own perspectives from those of their conversation partners. To navigate a dialogue, the brain must keep track of who knows what, and these bimodal zones likely support that cognitive juggling.

Finally, the team used a statistical technique to break down the specific types of words that drove the strongest brain responses at short timescales. They found that conversational fillers and short confirmations, such as “yeah” or “uh,” evoked distinct neural patterns. These tiny words require very little cognitive effort to say, but they act as social glue to maintain the flow of dialogue. The brain appears to have dedicated neural tuning for these interactive words, separating them from highly logical or factual statements.

Because this was a small study involving only eight people, the findings represent a narrow slice of the population. The researchers noted that they did not use functional localizer tasks, which are preliminary tests used to outline established brain networks, such as the regions responsible for mentalizing what other people are thinking. Without these preliminary tests, the team could not definitively map their results onto precisely defined cognitive networks. Future research with larger groups and additional mapping techniques will be needed to confirm exactly which distinct brain networks manage these conversational timelines.

The study, “Conversational content is organized across multiple timescales in the brain,” was authored by Masahiro Yamashita, Rieko Kubo, and Shinji Nishimoto.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/how-the-brain-juggles-talking-and-listening-in-real-time/

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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #BrainSpeechTiming #ConversationNeuroscience #LanguageProcessing #SpeakingVsListening #NeuralCodes #ContextWindow #BimodalRegions #SocialCommunication #GPTEmbeddings #NeuroscienceResearch

DATE: September 28, 2026 at 09:37AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEED

TITLE: Scientists just discovered what coffee really does to your gut and brain

URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260927034331.htm

A new study suggests coffee may influence mood and brain function by changing the activity of microbes in the gut. Both caffeinated and decaf coffee were linked to lower stress, depression, and impulsivity, while also producing measurable changes in gut bacteria and metabolites. Decaf was associated with better learning and memory, while caffeinated coffee appeared to reduce anxiety and improve attention.

URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260927034331.htm

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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #CoffeeGutBrain #GutBrainAxis #CoffeeAndMood #CaffeineEffects #DecafBenefits #BrainHealth #GutMicrobiome #MentalPerformance #StressReduction #LearningAndMemory

DATE: September 28, 2026 at 09:37AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEED

TITLE: Scientists just discovered what coffee really does to your gut and brain

URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260927034331.htm

A new study suggests coffee may influence mood and brain function by changing the activity of microbes in the gut. Both caffeinated and decaf coffee were linked to lower stress, depression, and impulsivity, while also producing measurable changes in gut bacteria and metabolites. Decaf was associated with better learning and memory, while caffeinated coffee appeared to reduce anxiety and improve attention.

URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260927034331.htm

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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #CoffeeGutBrain #GutBrainAxis #CoffeeAndMood #CaffeineEffects #DecafBenefits #BrainHealth #GutMicrobiome #MentalPerformance #StressReduction #LearningAndMemory

DATE: September 28, 2026 at 09:37AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEED

TITLE: Scientists just discovered what coffee really does to your gut and brain

URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260927034331.htm

A new study suggests coffee may influence mood and brain function by changing the activity of microbes in the gut. Both caffeinated and decaf coffee were linked to lower stress, depression, and impulsivity, while also producing measurable changes in gut bacteria and metabolites. Decaf was associated with better learning and memory, while caffeinated coffee appeared to reduce anxiety and improve attention.

URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260927034331.htm

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DATE: September 27, 2026 at 10:39PM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEED

TITLE: Scientists found a surprising driver of Alzheimer’s outside the brain

URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260925093150.htm

Scientists found that immune cells contributing to Alzheimer’s-related brain damage may be activated in lymph nodes outside the brain before traveling into the nervous system. Blocking this pathway in mice dramatically reduced neurodegeneration and preserved cognitive abilities, pointing to a potentially more accessible treatment target.

URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260925093150.htm

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DATE: September 27, 2026 at 10:39PM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEED

TITLE: Scientists found a surprising driver of Alzheimer’s outside the brain

URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260925093150.htm

Scientists found that immune cells contributing to Alzheimer’s-related brain damage may be activated in lymph nodes outside the brain before traveling into the nervous system. Blocking this pathway in mice dramatically reduced neurodegeneration and preserved cognitive abilities, pointing to a potentially more accessible treatment target.

URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260925093150.htm

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DATE: September 27, 2026 at 10:39PM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEED

TITLE: Scientists found a surprising driver of Alzheimer’s outside the brain

URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260925093150.htm

Scientists found that immune cells contributing to Alzheimer’s-related brain damage may be activated in lymph nodes outside the brain before traveling into the nervous system. Blocking this pathway in mice dramatically reduced neurodegeneration and preserved cognitive abilities, pointing to a potentially more accessible treatment target.

URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260925093150.htm

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DATE: September 28, 2026 at 04:35AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEED

TITLE: Resetting the body clock could help the brain recover after stroke

URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260924020407.htm

Strengthening the body’s natural daily rhythms helped mice recover after stroke by improving the brain’s waste-clearing system and reducing lingering inflammation. The approach worked even when treatment began three days after the stroke, suggesting circadian-based therapies could eventually offer a new way to support long-term recovery.

URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260924020407.htm

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DATE: September 28, 2026 at 04:35AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEED

TITLE: Resetting the body clock could help the brain recover after stroke

URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260924020407.htm

Strengthening the body’s natural daily rhythms helped mice recover after stroke by improving the brain’s waste-clearing system and reducing lingering inflammation. The approach worked even when treatment began three days after the stroke, suggesting circadian-based therapies could eventually offer a new way to support long-term recovery.

URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260924020407.htm

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