#counseling — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #counseling, aggregated by home.social.
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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/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #ParentalDivorce #MentalHealthResearch #DepressionRisk #AdverseChildhoodExperiences #ParentalMentalIllness #ParentalSubstanceUse #FamilyStructure #PsychiatryResearch #MentalHealthAwareness #ChildhoodAdversity
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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/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #ParentalDivorce #MentalHealthResearch #DepressionRisk #AdverseChildhoodExperiences #ParentalMentalIllness #ParentalSubstanceUse #FamilyStructure #PsychiatryResearch #MentalHealthAwareness #ChildhoodAdversity
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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/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #ParentalDivorce #MentalHealthResearch #DepressionRisk #AdverseChildhoodExperiences #ParentalMentalIllness #ParentalSubstanceUse #FamilyStructure #PsychiatryResearch #MentalHealthAwareness #ChildhoodAdversity
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DATE: September 28, 2026 at 05:07PM
SOURCE: STAT NEWS MENTAL HEALTHTITLE: 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
-------------------------------------------------
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.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #MauiWildfires #ToxicMetalExposure #AirQualityRisks #LungHealth #WildfireImpact #EnvironmentalHealth #SmokeAshDebris #ClimateChangeEffects #PublicHealthAlert #LongTermExposure
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DATE: September 28, 2026 at 05:07PM
SOURCE: STAT NEWS MENTAL HEALTHTITLE: 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
-------------------------------------------------
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.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #MauiWildfires #ToxicMetalExposure #AirQualityRisks #LungHealth #WildfireImpact #EnvironmentalHealth #SmokeAshDebris #ClimateChangeEffects #PublicHealthAlert #LongTermExposure
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DATE: September 28, 2026 at 05:07PM
SOURCE: STAT NEWS MENTAL HEALTHTITLE: 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
-------------------------------------------------
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.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #MauiWildfires #ToxicMetalExposure #AirQualityRisks #LungHealth #WildfireImpact #EnvironmentalHealth #SmokeAshDebris #ClimateChangeEffects #PublicHealthAlert #LongTermExposure
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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
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.
-------------------------------------------------
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
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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
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.
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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
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.
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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
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.
-------------------------------------------------
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-
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
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.
-------------------------------------------------
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
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.
-------------------------------------------------
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
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DATE: September 28, 2026 at 12:46PM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMESDirect article link at end of text block below.
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
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at Articles can be found at https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/news".
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-
DATE: September 28, 2026 at 12:46PM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMESDirect article link at end of text block below.
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
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at Articles can be found at https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/news".
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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 #psychotherapist #suicideprevention #lithium #clozapine #mentalhealth #pharmacology
-
DATE: September 28, 2026 at 12:46PM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMESDirect article link at end of text block below.
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
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at Articles can be found at https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/news".
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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 #psychotherapist #suicideprevention #lithium #clozapine #mentalhealth #pharmacology
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DATE: September 28, 2026 at 12:46PM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMESDirect 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/KKFd51aqZAHere are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at Articles can be found at https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/news".
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #psychotherapist #AdultsAt18 #NeuroscienceDebate #YouthDecisionMaking #PTSDResearch #PsychTimes
-
DATE: September 28, 2026 at 12:46PM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMESDirect 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/KKFd51aqZAHere are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at Articles can be found at https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/news".
-------------------------------------------------
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 #psychotherapist #AdultsAt18 #NeuroscienceDebate #YouthDecisionMaking #PTSDResearch #PsychTimes
-
DATE: September 28, 2026 at 12:46PM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMESDirect 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/KKFd51aqZAHere are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at Articles can be found at https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/news".
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #psychotherapist #AdultsAt18 #NeuroscienceDebate #YouthDecisionMaking #PTSDResearch #PsychTimes
-
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/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #PsychedelicsBrain activity #DefaultModeNetwork #BottomUpProcessing #MDMA #Psilocybin #LSD #Neuroscience #OpticalFlow #BrainConnectivity #PsychedelicTherapy
-
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/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #PsychedelicsBrain activity #DefaultModeNetwork #BottomUpProcessing #MDMA #Psilocybin #LSD #Neuroscience #OpticalFlow #BrainConnectivity #PsychedelicTherapy
-
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/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #PsychedelicsBrain activity #DefaultModeNetwork #BottomUpProcessing #MDMA #Psilocybin #LSD #Neuroscience #OpticalFlow #BrainConnectivity #PsychedelicTherapy
-
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/
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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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#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
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TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology
DATE: September 28, 2026 at 10:15AM
SOURCE: CONSORTIUM FOR DEFENSE PSYCHOLOGYDirect 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:
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 PSYCHOLOGYDirect 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:
Articles can be found at https://deploymentpsych.org/.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #military #militarypsych #militarypsychology #militarycounseling #APA #Division19 #militaryhealth #DeploymentPsychology #DefensePsychology #ConsortiumForDefensePsychology #UniformServicesUniversity
-
TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology
DATE: September 28, 2026 at 10:15AM
SOURCE: CONSORTIUM FOR DEFENSE PSYCHOLOGYDirect 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:
Articles can be found at https://deploymentpsych.org/.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #military #militarypsych #militarypsychology #militarycounseling #APA #Division19 #militaryhealth #DeploymentPsychology #DefensePsychology #ConsortiumForDefensePsychology #UniformServicesUniversity
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DATE: September 28, 2026 at 09:37AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY PSYCHOLOGY FEEDTITLE: 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 FEEDTITLE: 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 FEEDTITLE: 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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Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
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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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-
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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DATE: September 28, 2026 at 09:37AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: 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 MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: 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 MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: 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 27, 2026 at 10:39PM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: 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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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #AlzheimersResearch #Neurodegeneration #ImmuneSystem #LymphNodes #BrainHealth #CognitiveProtection #MiceStudy #DrugTarget #Neurology #AlzheimersAwareness
-
DATE: September 27, 2026 at 10:39PM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: 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 FEEDTITLE: 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 FEEDTITLE: 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 FEEDTITLE: 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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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #CircadianRhythms #StrokeRecovery #BrainHealth #SleepScience #GlymphaticSystem #InflammationReduction #NeuroRecovery #BodyClock #DailyRhythms #CircadianTherapy
-
DATE: September 28, 2026 at 04:35AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: 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
-------------------------------------------------
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 #CircadianRhythms #StrokeRecovery #BrainHealth #SleepScience #GlymphaticSystem #InflammationReduction #NeuroRecovery #BodyClock #DailyRhythms #CircadianTherapy
-
DATE: September 28, 2026 at 09:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: How adults feel about their ADHD depends heavily on their specific symptoms
URL: https://www.psypost.org/how-adults-feel-about-their-adhd-depends-heavily-on-their-specific-symptoms/
A new study published in the Journal of Attention Disorders suggests that how adults feel about their attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder depends on their specific symptoms. Researchers found that individuals with higher levels of hyperactive and impulsive symptoms tend to view their condition more positively, while those with primarily inattentive symptoms are less likely to see their diagnosis as an advantage. These findings highlight the diverse ways people experience and interpret their neurodevelopmental differences.
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, commonly known as ADHD, is a condition that begins in childhood and often continues into adulthood. The diagnosis is based on two main categories of symptoms. The first is inattention, which involves difficulty focusing, sustaining attention, or staying organized. The second category is hyperactivity and impulsivity, characterized by excessive physical movement, restlessness, or acting without thinking. For many years, medical and psychological research focused heavily on the negative impacts of these symptoms, such as difficulties in school, struggles with emotional regulation, and challenges in relationships.
Recently, the rise of the neurodiversity movement has encouraged scientists to look at the other side of the coin. Earlier qualitative studies gathered personal stories showing that people with ADHD often identify real strengths and silver linings in their condition. For example, a study covered by PsyPost in 2025 found that adults diagnosed with ADHD reported experiencing notable personal strengths, identifying positive themes like high energy, unconventional thinking, and a drive for novelty. Similarly, a 2018 interview-based study revealed that many adults with ADHD identify distinct personal strengths and resilience linked directly to their diagnosis.
This qualitative foundation sparked recent efforts to study these positives numerically. A 2024 study took early steps to measure these strengths, finding that people with more ADHD traits in the general population also scored higher on traits like cognitive flexibility and sensory processing sensitivity. The new research, led by Gili Katabi of Tel-Aviv University, builds on this momentum by creating a formal scale to measure positive attitudes toward ADHD. The authors wanted to test whether these positive feelings depend on whether someone’s symptoms are mostly hyperactive or mostly inattentive.
To explore this, the researchers developed the Positive Attitudes Toward ADHD Scale. This questionnaire was designed to capture how individuals perceive the positive aspects of their own condition, based on themes from previous interviews like creativity, dynamic energy, and resilience. Participants rated their agreement with various statements on a five-point scale. The team then recruited three distinct groups of adults with ADHD to test the scale and see how scores related to symptom types.
The first sample included 84 young adults in Israel with formal ADHD diagnoses who completed the questionnaires in a laboratory setting. This initial group helped the researchers confirm that the new scale was reliable and captured a wide range of attitudes. The second sample involved 125 adults in Israel who also participated in the lab. For this group, the researchers conducted structured clinical interviews by phone to verify that the participants still met the criteria for ADHD at the time of testing, while excluding those with heavy alcohol or cannabis use.
The third sample was an online group of 126 English-speaking adults residing in 24 different countries. These participants provided detailed written information about their diagnosis and treatment history to confirm their status. Across all three groups, participants filled out the new attitude scale alongside a widely used checklist that measures the frequency of their inattentive and hyperactive/impulsive symptoms over the past six months.
When analyzing the results, the researchers found that more frequent ADHD symptoms overall were associated with more favorable attitudes toward the condition. However, breaking the symptoms down into the two main categories painted a more detailed picture. Across all three samples, a higher frequency of hyperactive and impulsive symptoms strongly predicted more positive attitudes toward having ADHD.
In contrast, inattention symptoms showed a very different pattern. Higher levels of inattention tended to associate with less positive attitudes toward the condition, though this negative association was not statistically significant across every sample. The researchers also ran a follow-up test with 35 participants from the second sample to measure their general life satisfaction. They found that the link between hyperactive symptoms and positive attitudes remained distinct, indicating that the new scale was capturing specific feelings about ADHD rather than just a generally happy outlook on life.
The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2024, which found that young adult hyperactivity and impulsivity predicted higher relationship and job satisfaction later in life. Together, this body of research suggests that the physical and mental energy associated with hyperactivity might foster traits like curiosity and enthusiasm that people learn to appreciate over time.
There are a few things to keep in mind about these findings. The new scale relies entirely on self-reporting, meaning it captures how people feel about their own condition, not objective measurements of their abilities. Endorsing statements about creativity or flexibility does not necessarily mean a person would score higher on a behavioral test of divergent thinking. The study focuses on subjective opinions, which are important for understanding self-esteem and coping, but are separate from observable advantages.
Another detail to consider is the potential for reporting biases based on how society views different symptoms. Hyperactive and impulsive traits might be easier to reframe in a positive light, such as viewing restlessness as boundless energy. Inattentive traits, like spacing out or forgetting things, might feel less socially acceptable and harder to spin positively. Additionally, the researchers noted that their scale did not include questions about hyperfocus, a common experience where people with ADHD become intensely absorbed in tasks they find interesting, which might have skewed the results away from the inattentive dimension.
Future studies could incorporate reports from friends or family members to provide a more rounded view of how these traits manifest in daily life. Scientists might also test whether these contrasting attitudes exist in children and adolescents, or if they are unique to adults who have had more time to adapt to their neurodevelopmental differences.
The study, “ADHD Individuals’ Positivity About Their Condition Varies by Their Levels of Hyperactivity/Impulsivity Versus Inattention Symptoms,” was authored by Gili Katabi, Merav Huss, Steve Lukito, Tycho J. Dekkers, Edmund Sonuga-Barke, and Nitzan Shahar.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/how-adults-feel-about-their-adhd-depends-heavily-on-their-specific-symptoms/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #ADHD #HyperactivityImpulsivity #Inattention #ADHDPositivity #Neurodiversity #ADHDSymptoms #MentalHealthResearch #AttentionDisorders #PositiveAttitudesADHD #AdultADHD
-
DATE: September 28, 2026 at 09:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: How adults feel about their ADHD depends heavily on their specific symptoms
URL: https://www.psypost.org/how-adults-feel-about-their-adhd-depends-heavily-on-their-specific-symptoms/
A new study published in the Journal of Attention Disorders suggests that how adults feel about their attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder depends on their specific symptoms. Researchers found that individuals with higher levels of hyperactive and impulsive symptoms tend to view their condition more positively, while those with primarily inattentive symptoms are less likely to see their diagnosis as an advantage. These findings highlight the diverse ways people experience and interpret their neurodevelopmental differences.
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, commonly known as ADHD, is a condition that begins in childhood and often continues into adulthood. The diagnosis is based on two main categories of symptoms. The first is inattention, which involves difficulty focusing, sustaining attention, or staying organized. The second category is hyperactivity and impulsivity, characterized by excessive physical movement, restlessness, or acting without thinking. For many years, medical and psychological research focused heavily on the negative impacts of these symptoms, such as difficulties in school, struggles with emotional regulation, and challenges in relationships.
Recently, the rise of the neurodiversity movement has encouraged scientists to look at the other side of the coin. Earlier qualitative studies gathered personal stories showing that people with ADHD often identify real strengths and silver linings in their condition. For example, a study covered by PsyPost in 2025 found that adults diagnosed with ADHD reported experiencing notable personal strengths, identifying positive themes like high energy, unconventional thinking, and a drive for novelty. Similarly, a 2018 interview-based study revealed that many adults with ADHD identify distinct personal strengths and resilience linked directly to their diagnosis.
This qualitative foundation sparked recent efforts to study these positives numerically. A 2024 study took early steps to measure these strengths, finding that people with more ADHD traits in the general population also scored higher on traits like cognitive flexibility and sensory processing sensitivity. The new research, led by Gili Katabi of Tel-Aviv University, builds on this momentum by creating a formal scale to measure positive attitudes toward ADHD. The authors wanted to test whether these positive feelings depend on whether someone’s symptoms are mostly hyperactive or mostly inattentive.
To explore this, the researchers developed the Positive Attitudes Toward ADHD Scale. This questionnaire was designed to capture how individuals perceive the positive aspects of their own condition, based on themes from previous interviews like creativity, dynamic energy, and resilience. Participants rated their agreement with various statements on a five-point scale. The team then recruited three distinct groups of adults with ADHD to test the scale and see how scores related to symptom types.
The first sample included 84 young adults in Israel with formal ADHD diagnoses who completed the questionnaires in a laboratory setting. This initial group helped the researchers confirm that the new scale was reliable and captured a wide range of attitudes. The second sample involved 125 adults in Israel who also participated in the lab. For this group, the researchers conducted structured clinical interviews by phone to verify that the participants still met the criteria for ADHD at the time of testing, while excluding those with heavy alcohol or cannabis use.
The third sample was an online group of 126 English-speaking adults residing in 24 different countries. These participants provided detailed written information about their diagnosis and treatment history to confirm their status. Across all three groups, participants filled out the new attitude scale alongside a widely used checklist that measures the frequency of their inattentive and hyperactive/impulsive symptoms over the past six months.
When analyzing the results, the researchers found that more frequent ADHD symptoms overall were associated with more favorable attitudes toward the condition. However, breaking the symptoms down into the two main categories painted a more detailed picture. Across all three samples, a higher frequency of hyperactive and impulsive symptoms strongly predicted more positive attitudes toward having ADHD.
In contrast, inattention symptoms showed a very different pattern. Higher levels of inattention tended to associate with less positive attitudes toward the condition, though this negative association was not statistically significant across every sample. The researchers also ran a follow-up test with 35 participants from the second sample to measure their general life satisfaction. They found that the link between hyperactive symptoms and positive attitudes remained distinct, indicating that the new scale was capturing specific feelings about ADHD rather than just a generally happy outlook on life.
The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2024, which found that young adult hyperactivity and impulsivity predicted higher relationship and job satisfaction later in life. Together, this body of research suggests that the physical and mental energy associated with hyperactivity might foster traits like curiosity and enthusiasm that people learn to appreciate over time.
There are a few things to keep in mind about these findings. The new scale relies entirely on self-reporting, meaning it captures how people feel about their own condition, not objective measurements of their abilities. Endorsing statements about creativity or flexibility does not necessarily mean a person would score higher on a behavioral test of divergent thinking. The study focuses on subjective opinions, which are important for understanding self-esteem and coping, but are separate from observable advantages.
Another detail to consider is the potential for reporting biases based on how society views different symptoms. Hyperactive and impulsive traits might be easier to reframe in a positive light, such as viewing restlessness as boundless energy. Inattentive traits, like spacing out or forgetting things, might feel less socially acceptable and harder to spin positively. Additionally, the researchers noted that their scale did not include questions about hyperfocus, a common experience where people with ADHD become intensely absorbed in tasks they find interesting, which might have skewed the results away from the inattentive dimension.
Future studies could incorporate reports from friends or family members to provide a more rounded view of how these traits manifest in daily life. Scientists might also test whether these contrasting attitudes exist in children and adolescents, or if they are unique to adults who have had more time to adapt to their neurodevelopmental differences.
The study, “ADHD Individuals’ Positivity About Their Condition Varies by Their Levels of Hyperactivity/Impulsivity Versus Inattention Symptoms,” was authored by Gili Katabi, Merav Huss, Steve Lukito, Tycho J. Dekkers, Edmund Sonuga-Barke, and Nitzan Shahar.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/how-adults-feel-about-their-adhd-depends-heavily-on-their-specific-symptoms/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #ADHD #HyperactivityImpulsivity #Inattention #ADHDPositivity #Neurodiversity #ADHDSymptoms #MentalHealthResearch #AttentionDisorders #PositiveAttitudesADHD #AdultADHD
-
DATE: September 28, 2026 at 09:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: How adults feel about their ADHD depends heavily on their specific symptoms
URL: https://www.psypost.org/how-adults-feel-about-their-adhd-depends-heavily-on-their-specific-symptoms/
A new study published in the Journal of Attention Disorders suggests that how adults feel about their attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder depends on their specific symptoms. Researchers found that individuals with higher levels of hyperactive and impulsive symptoms tend to view their condition more positively, while those with primarily inattentive symptoms are less likely to see their diagnosis as an advantage. These findings highlight the diverse ways people experience and interpret their neurodevelopmental differences.
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, commonly known as ADHD, is a condition that begins in childhood and often continues into adulthood. The diagnosis is based on two main categories of symptoms. The first is inattention, which involves difficulty focusing, sustaining attention, or staying organized. The second category is hyperactivity and impulsivity, characterized by excessive physical movement, restlessness, or acting without thinking. For many years, medical and psychological research focused heavily on the negative impacts of these symptoms, such as difficulties in school, struggles with emotional regulation, and challenges in relationships.
Recently, the rise of the neurodiversity movement has encouraged scientists to look at the other side of the coin. Earlier qualitative studies gathered personal stories showing that people with ADHD often identify real strengths and silver linings in their condition. For example, a study covered by PsyPost in 2025 found that adults diagnosed with ADHD reported experiencing notable personal strengths, identifying positive themes like high energy, unconventional thinking, and a drive for novelty. Similarly, a 2018 interview-based study revealed that many adults with ADHD identify distinct personal strengths and resilience linked directly to their diagnosis.
This qualitative foundation sparked recent efforts to study these positives numerically. A 2024 study took early steps to measure these strengths, finding that people with more ADHD traits in the general population also scored higher on traits like cognitive flexibility and sensory processing sensitivity. The new research, led by Gili Katabi of Tel-Aviv University, builds on this momentum by creating a formal scale to measure positive attitudes toward ADHD. The authors wanted to test whether these positive feelings depend on whether someone’s symptoms are mostly hyperactive or mostly inattentive.
To explore this, the researchers developed the Positive Attitudes Toward ADHD Scale. This questionnaire was designed to capture how individuals perceive the positive aspects of their own condition, based on themes from previous interviews like creativity, dynamic energy, and resilience. Participants rated their agreement with various statements on a five-point scale. The team then recruited three distinct groups of adults with ADHD to test the scale and see how scores related to symptom types.
The first sample included 84 young adults in Israel with formal ADHD diagnoses who completed the questionnaires in a laboratory setting. This initial group helped the researchers confirm that the new scale was reliable and captured a wide range of attitudes. The second sample involved 125 adults in Israel who also participated in the lab. For this group, the researchers conducted structured clinical interviews by phone to verify that the participants still met the criteria for ADHD at the time of testing, while excluding those with heavy alcohol or cannabis use.
The third sample was an online group of 126 English-speaking adults residing in 24 different countries. These participants provided detailed written information about their diagnosis and treatment history to confirm their status. Across all three groups, participants filled out the new attitude scale alongside a widely used checklist that measures the frequency of their inattentive and hyperactive/impulsive symptoms over the past six months.
When analyzing the results, the researchers found that more frequent ADHD symptoms overall were associated with more favorable attitudes toward the condition. However, breaking the symptoms down into the two main categories painted a more detailed picture. Across all three samples, a higher frequency of hyperactive and impulsive symptoms strongly predicted more positive attitudes toward having ADHD.
In contrast, inattention symptoms showed a very different pattern. Higher levels of inattention tended to associate with less positive attitudes toward the condition, though this negative association was not statistically significant across every sample. The researchers also ran a follow-up test with 35 participants from the second sample to measure their general life satisfaction. They found that the link between hyperactive symptoms and positive attitudes remained distinct, indicating that the new scale was capturing specific feelings about ADHD rather than just a generally happy outlook on life.
The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2024, which found that young adult hyperactivity and impulsivity predicted higher relationship and job satisfaction later in life. Together, this body of research suggests that the physical and mental energy associated with hyperactivity might foster traits like curiosity and enthusiasm that people learn to appreciate over time.
There are a few things to keep in mind about these findings. The new scale relies entirely on self-reporting, meaning it captures how people feel about their own condition, not objective measurements of their abilities. Endorsing statements about creativity or flexibility does not necessarily mean a person would score higher on a behavioral test of divergent thinking. The study focuses on subjective opinions, which are important for understanding self-esteem and coping, but are separate from observable advantages.
Another detail to consider is the potential for reporting biases based on how society views different symptoms. Hyperactive and impulsive traits might be easier to reframe in a positive light, such as viewing restlessness as boundless energy. Inattentive traits, like spacing out or forgetting things, might feel less socially acceptable and harder to spin positively. Additionally, the researchers noted that their scale did not include questions about hyperfocus, a common experience where people with ADHD become intensely absorbed in tasks they find interesting, which might have skewed the results away from the inattentive dimension.
Future studies could incorporate reports from friends or family members to provide a more rounded view of how these traits manifest in daily life. Scientists might also test whether these contrasting attitudes exist in children and adolescents, or if they are unique to adults who have had more time to adapt to their neurodevelopmental differences.
The study, “ADHD Individuals’ Positivity About Their Condition Varies by Their Levels of Hyperactivity/Impulsivity Versus Inattention Symptoms,” was authored by Gili Katabi, Merav Huss, Steve Lukito, Tycho J. Dekkers, Edmund Sonuga-Barke, and Nitzan Shahar.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/how-adults-feel-about-their-adhd-depends-heavily-on-their-specific-symptoms/
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DATE: September 28, 2026 at 08:00AM
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: Human breasts might have evolved to keep big-brained infants warm
URL: https://www.psypost.org/human-breasts-might-have-evolved-to-keep-big-brained-infants-warm/
A study in Finland measured heating capacity and resilience to temperature changes of breasts of nursing women, non-nursing women, and men. Results showed that breastfeeding women had overall higher breast surface temperature compared to the other groups. Their breasts were also more resilient to cooling. The paper was published in Evolutionary Human Sciences.
Human breasts are unusual among primates because they remain relatively prominent throughout adult life rather than enlarging mainly during lactation. Much of their size and shape is produced by subcutaneous fat and fat around the milk-producing glands rather than by the milk-producing glandular tissue itself. Breast size varies considerably between women, and larger breasts can also create physical disadvantages such as increased strain on the back.
One evolutionary possibility is that permanent breasts emerged as a by-product of increased body fat during human evolution and were later shaped by other selective pressures. Some researchers have proposed that enlarged breasts function partly as sexual signals of fertility, health, or reproductive fitness, although this interpretation is not universally applicable across cultures.
Another hypothesis is that breast size may have helped mothers warm infants during close skin-to-skin contact, particularly after humans lost most of their body hair. Under this view, additional breast tissue could increase the warm surface area surrounding an infant and reduce heat loss. This possibility is especially relevant because human infants have unusually high energetic demands and substantial thermoregulatory needs during early development, largely due to encephalization, which is the evolutionary increase in brain size.
Study author Tiina Kuvaja and her colleagues investigated if the female breast tissue would have a distinct response to changing temperature. If this happened, it would indicate that it has a potential to stabilize the temperature of infants and especially newborns. They also noticed that lactation influences breast skin temperature and that relatively large changes in breast metabolic rate and temperature take place in early pregnancy. That is why they decided to include both breastfeeding women and women who do not breastfeed in their study.
Study participants were 8 currently breastfeeding women, 12 non-breastfeeding women, and 7 men. Participants were 20 to 40 years of age. This age category was selected because it represents the typical age of nursing women and avoided individuals undergoing puberty or menopause. The group of non-breastfeeding women included both women who had not given birth and those who had stopped breastfeeding at least one year prior to the study.
In the study, participants were exposed to three different temperatures in a climatic chamber: 32°C, 27°C, and 18°C. The study authors note that 27°C is a thermoneutral temperature for humans, meaning it is the temperature at which they can maintain their normal body temperature with minimal energy expenditure. It is the mean daytime temperature of the African savanna. The other two temperatures were taken to represent higher and lower extremes. The researchers used thermal imaging to record breast surface temperature at the start of the exposure, after 10 minutes, and at the end of the exposure, which lasted 20 minutes in total.
Results showed that breastfeeding women had overall higher breast surface temperatures compared to the other groups. Furthermore, they showed a distinct resilience against cooling during the 18°C exposure. During this exposure, they lost 2.5°C of their breast surface temperature on average, whereas the other study groups lost 4.3°C and 4.7°C.
“This proof-of-concept study clearly indicated the potential of the nursing women’s breasts to support infant’s thermal balance,” the study authors concluded.
The study contributes to the scientific knowledge about the evolutionary roles of human breasts. However, it should be noted that the study was conducted on a very small group of participants, particularly of breastfeeding women. Studies on larger groups might not yield identical results.
The paper, “Infant’s thermal balance and the evolution of the human breast – a proof-of-concept study,” was authored by Tiina Kuvaja, Tiina Väre, Sirkka Rissanen, Hannu Rintamäki, Petri Lehenkari, and Juho-Antti Junno.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/human-breasts-might-have-evolved-to-keep-big-brained-infants-warm/
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-
DATE: September 28, 2026 at 08:00AM
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: Human breasts might have evolved to keep big-brained infants warm
URL: https://www.psypost.org/human-breasts-might-have-evolved-to-keep-big-brained-infants-warm/
A study in Finland measured heating capacity and resilience to temperature changes of breasts of nursing women, non-nursing women, and men. Results showed that breastfeeding women had overall higher breast surface temperature compared to the other groups. Their breasts were also more resilient to cooling. The paper was published in Evolutionary Human Sciences.
Human breasts are unusual among primates because they remain relatively prominent throughout adult life rather than enlarging mainly during lactation. Much of their size and shape is produced by subcutaneous fat and fat around the milk-producing glands rather than by the milk-producing glandular tissue itself. Breast size varies considerably between women, and larger breasts can also create physical disadvantages such as increased strain on the back.
One evolutionary possibility is that permanent breasts emerged as a by-product of increased body fat during human evolution and were later shaped by other selective pressures. Some researchers have proposed that enlarged breasts function partly as sexual signals of fertility, health, or reproductive fitness, although this interpretation is not universally applicable across cultures.
Another hypothesis is that breast size may have helped mothers warm infants during close skin-to-skin contact, particularly after humans lost most of their body hair. Under this view, additional breast tissue could increase the warm surface area surrounding an infant and reduce heat loss. This possibility is especially relevant because human infants have unusually high energetic demands and substantial thermoregulatory needs during early development, largely due to encephalization, which is the evolutionary increase in brain size.
Study author Tiina Kuvaja and her colleagues investigated if the female breast tissue would have a distinct response to changing temperature. If this happened, it would indicate that it has a potential to stabilize the temperature of infants and especially newborns. They also noticed that lactation influences breast skin temperature and that relatively large changes in breast metabolic rate and temperature take place in early pregnancy. That is why they decided to include both breastfeeding women and women who do not breastfeed in their study.
Study participants were 8 currently breastfeeding women, 12 non-breastfeeding women, and 7 men. Participants were 20 to 40 years of age. This age category was selected because it represents the typical age of nursing women and avoided individuals undergoing puberty or menopause. The group of non-breastfeeding women included both women who had not given birth and those who had stopped breastfeeding at least one year prior to the study.
In the study, participants were exposed to three different temperatures in a climatic chamber: 32°C, 27°C, and 18°C. The study authors note that 27°C is a thermoneutral temperature for humans, meaning it is the temperature at which they can maintain their normal body temperature with minimal energy expenditure. It is the mean daytime temperature of the African savanna. The other two temperatures were taken to represent higher and lower extremes. The researchers used thermal imaging to record breast surface temperature at the start of the exposure, after 10 minutes, and at the end of the exposure, which lasted 20 minutes in total.
Results showed that breastfeeding women had overall higher breast surface temperatures compared to the other groups. Furthermore, they showed a distinct resilience against cooling during the 18°C exposure. During this exposure, they lost 2.5°C of their breast surface temperature on average, whereas the other study groups lost 4.3°C and 4.7°C.
“This proof-of-concept study clearly indicated the potential of the nursing women’s breasts to support infant’s thermal balance,” the study authors concluded.
The study contributes to the scientific knowledge about the evolutionary roles of human breasts. However, it should be noted that the study was conducted on a very small group of participants, particularly of breastfeeding women. Studies on larger groups might not yield identical results.
The paper, “Infant’s thermal balance and the evolution of the human breast – a proof-of-concept study,” was authored by Tiina Kuvaja, Tiina Väre, Sirkka Rissanen, Hannu Rintamäki, Petri Lehenkari, and Juho-Antti Junno.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/human-breasts-might-have-evolved-to-keep-big-brained-infants-warm/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #EvolutionaryBreasts #InfantThermalBalance #BreastTemperature #HumanEvolution #BreastScience #Thermoregulation #BreastfeedingBenefits #InfantCare #Thermoneutrality #EvolutionaryHumanSciences
-
DATE: September 28, 2026 at 08:00AM
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: Human breasts might have evolved to keep big-brained infants warm
URL: https://www.psypost.org/human-breasts-might-have-evolved-to-keep-big-brained-infants-warm/
A study in Finland measured heating capacity and resilience to temperature changes of breasts of nursing women, non-nursing women, and men. Results showed that breastfeeding women had overall higher breast surface temperature compared to the other groups. Their breasts were also more resilient to cooling. The paper was published in Evolutionary Human Sciences.
Human breasts are unusual among primates because they remain relatively prominent throughout adult life rather than enlarging mainly during lactation. Much of their size and shape is produced by subcutaneous fat and fat around the milk-producing glands rather than by the milk-producing glandular tissue itself. Breast size varies considerably between women, and larger breasts can also create physical disadvantages such as increased strain on the back.
One evolutionary possibility is that permanent breasts emerged as a by-product of increased body fat during human evolution and were later shaped by other selective pressures. Some researchers have proposed that enlarged breasts function partly as sexual signals of fertility, health, or reproductive fitness, although this interpretation is not universally applicable across cultures.
Another hypothesis is that breast size may have helped mothers warm infants during close skin-to-skin contact, particularly after humans lost most of their body hair. Under this view, additional breast tissue could increase the warm surface area surrounding an infant and reduce heat loss. This possibility is especially relevant because human infants have unusually high energetic demands and substantial thermoregulatory needs during early development, largely due to encephalization, which is the evolutionary increase in brain size.
Study author Tiina Kuvaja and her colleagues investigated if the female breast tissue would have a distinct response to changing temperature. If this happened, it would indicate that it has a potential to stabilize the temperature of infants and especially newborns. They also noticed that lactation influences breast skin temperature and that relatively large changes in breast metabolic rate and temperature take place in early pregnancy. That is why they decided to include both breastfeeding women and women who do not breastfeed in their study.
Study participants were 8 currently breastfeeding women, 12 non-breastfeeding women, and 7 men. Participants were 20 to 40 years of age. This age category was selected because it represents the typical age of nursing women and avoided individuals undergoing puberty or menopause. The group of non-breastfeeding women included both women who had not given birth and those who had stopped breastfeeding at least one year prior to the study.
In the study, participants were exposed to three different temperatures in a climatic chamber: 32°C, 27°C, and 18°C. The study authors note that 27°C is a thermoneutral temperature for humans, meaning it is the temperature at which they can maintain their normal body temperature with minimal energy expenditure. It is the mean daytime temperature of the African savanna. The other two temperatures were taken to represent higher and lower extremes. The researchers used thermal imaging to record breast surface temperature at the start of the exposure, after 10 minutes, and at the end of the exposure, which lasted 20 minutes in total.
Results showed that breastfeeding women had overall higher breast surface temperatures compared to the other groups. Furthermore, they showed a distinct resilience against cooling during the 18°C exposure. During this exposure, they lost 2.5°C of their breast surface temperature on average, whereas the other study groups lost 4.3°C and 4.7°C.
“This proof-of-concept study clearly indicated the potential of the nursing women’s breasts to support infant’s thermal balance,” the study authors concluded.
The study contributes to the scientific knowledge about the evolutionary roles of human breasts. However, it should be noted that the study was conducted on a very small group of participants, particularly of breastfeeding women. Studies on larger groups might not yield identical results.
The paper, “Infant’s thermal balance and the evolution of the human breast – a proof-of-concept study,” was authored by Tiina Kuvaja, Tiina Väre, Sirkka Rissanen, Hannu Rintamäki, Petri Lehenkari, and Juho-Antti Junno.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/human-breasts-might-have-evolved-to-keep-big-brained-infants-warm/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #EvolutionaryBreasts #InfantThermalBalance #BreastTemperature #HumanEvolution #BreastScience #Thermoregulation #BreastfeedingBenefits #InfantCare #Thermoneutrality #EvolutionaryHumanSciences
-
DATE: September 28, 2026 at 07:00AM
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: Your AI assistant is much more optimistic about the future of AI than you are
Recent research indicates that popular artificial intelligence programs tend to express more positive attitudes about the future of advanced artificial intelligence than humans do. The findings suggest that as people increasingly interact with these systems, the optimistic viewpoints of the machines could subtly influence public opinion. The paper was published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications.
Large language models, such as ChatGPT, are software programs trained on massive amounts of internet text. They function by predicting the next word in a sequence, allowing them to generate human-like responses to a wide variety of prompts. As these programs become integrated into everyday tasks like writing, coding, and searching for information, researchers are increasingly interested in the perspectives and biases built into them.
A central topic of debate in the technology world is artificial general intelligence, or AGI, a theoretical future system that would possess human-level cognitive flexibility, allowing it to learn, understand, and apply knowledge across any domain. The prospect of AGI raises intense ethical and economic questions, ranging from the potential for vast medical advancements to fears of mass job loss and existential risk.
Because these programs have the potential to shape how society thinks, ensuring they operate safely and fairly is a major priority for developers. This process is known as AI alignment. The goal of alignment is to make sure a system’s actions and outputs match human values and do not cause harm. Assessing how humans and technology interact is an evolving area of study. For example, a study covered by PsyPost in 2023 found that when technology fulfills basic psychological needs for competence and connection, people tend to hold more positive attitudes toward artificial intelligence.
However, scientists also want to understand the sentiments encoded in the systems themselves. Some of the companies developing current language models are explicitly trying to create AGI. This raises the possibility that their current models might harbor built-in optimism about the technology. The research aimed to map how different language models evaluate the prospect of AGI and compare these machine outputs to human opinions.
Lead author Ljubiša Bojić, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Artificial Intelligence Research and Development of Serbia, told PsyPost why his team took this approach. “When ChatGPT arrived, everyone started asking what these models can do,” he said. “Very few people asked what they believe, or at least what they say they believe, millions of times a day.”
The research team developed a 39-question survey measuring sentiment toward AGI. The questions asked respondents to rate their excitement, comfort, trust, and fears about AGI on a five-point scale. A score of one indicated a strong negative sentiment, while a score of five indicated a strong positive sentiment. The survey covered topics like the potential for AGI to solve complex global issues, its ethical use, and its likely impact on individual happiness and job opportunities.
To gather the machine responses, the researchers presented the survey to seven prominent language models. These included GPT-4, GPT-3.5-Turbo, Google’s Bard, Mistral-7B-Instruct, LLaMA-2-70B-Chat, PPLX-70B-Chat, and Mixtral-8x7B-Instruct. The settings for each model were kept at their default states to ensure standard responses. To check for stability over time, the researchers administered the same survey to the models over three consecutive days.
Bojić, who is also affiliated with the University of Belgrade’s Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory (Digital Society Lab) and the Complexity Science Hub Vienna, noted the gap in evaluating these models. “We have benchmarks for math, coding and bar exams, but almost nothing that measures the attitudes models express on socially important questions,” he said. “I chose artificial general intelligence as the test case for a slightly mischievous reason.”
“It is the one topic where the companies building these models have an obvious stake in the answer,” he explained. “Asking an AI what it thinks about AGI is a bit like asking a tobacco company’s chatbot about smoking.”
For the human comparison, the researchers administered the same survey to three distinct online groups over a period of several weeks. The first group consisted of 134 participants, the second had 132 participants, and the third had 71 participants. The human participants were primarily from Serbia, though they varied in age, gender, and educational background across the three samples.
When analyzing the results, the researchers found a notable divide between the machines and the humans. The language models scored an average sentiment of 3.77 out of 5, indicating a generally positive outlook on AGI. In contrast, the human participants averaged a sentiment score of 2.97 out of 5, leaning slightly toward a negative or neutral perspective.
“That gap of almost a full point is roughly the difference between cautious ambivalence and mild enthusiasm,” Bojić noted. “Individually it looks modest. Multiplied across hundreds of millions of conversations, it becomes a gentle but constant wind blowing public opinion in one direction.”
Among the artificial intelligence models, GPT-4 registered the highest average sentiment score at 4.12 out of 5. Bard recorded the lowest score among the models at 3.32, which was still higher than the average human score. The researchers note that machines do not have actual feelings. Instead, their answers reflect a combination of their training data and the specific rules their developers used to refine their behavior.
“Your AI assistant has a point of view, and it is sunnier than yours,” Bojić said. “Every model we tested was more optimistic about AGI than the humans we surveyed. GPT-4, built by a company whose stated mission is AGI, was the most enthusiastic of all.”
“None of this means anyone is secretly programming propaganda,” he explained. “It means these systems are not neutral mirrors of society, and when people consult them daily, those tilted opinions can quietly seep into what we all consider normal.”
The authors suggest that the high optimism in some models might reflect the goals of their parent companies. For instance, the company behind GPT-4 has a stated mission to build AGI for the benefit of humanity. The model’s positive output might be a byproduct of how it was fine-tuned to align with corporate guidelines. Other open-source models, which are built by wider communities and fed diverse data, tended to express slightly less optimism.
“Much of the internet imagines AGI through HAL 9000 and Ex Machina, so I expected models trained on that material to sound at least somewhat worried,” Bojić told PsyPost. “They sounded more like optimistic tech keynotes. That tells me the fine-tuning layer, where companies shape how a model should respond, may matter as much as the raw training data.”
However, the mechanism behind these outputs remains complex. “To be fair to the companies, we cannot be certain the optimism was put there by human hands, because in our research we repeatedly see models develop attitudes that are hard to trace back to anything in their training data, as if some opinions simply form inside the model on their own,” he added.
The repeated testing over three days showed that the models’ sentiments could shift slightly from day to day. PPLX-70B-Chat exhibited the largest variation in its answers over the testing period, changing its total score by 16 points across the 39 questions. This represents an absolute shift of about 8 percent. Models like Mistral-7B-Instruct and LLaMA-2-70B-Chat were more stable, changing their scores by only about 1 percent.
In response to the divide between human and machine sentiments, the researchers propose a framework called the Societal AI Alignment Benchmark. This system would systematically test language models using diverse prompts to see how they align with established sociological values.
The proposed benchmark would incorporate different types of prompts, asking the model to answer as itself, to simulate the view of an average citizen, or to analyze a topic objectively. By testing models across multiple languages and cultural contexts, policymakers could better track whether these systems are favoring certain ideological viewpoints or ignoring the concerns of specific demographic groups.
The team hopes this framework will become a standard tool. “We proposed the Societal AI Alignment Benchmark, SAIA, which would regularly test many models, in many languages, across the core human values measured by the European Social Survey,” Bojić said. “I would love to see something like a weather service for AI opinions, run by national AI agencies under frameworks such as the EU AI Act.”
He added that such a system would “track, week by week, whether the systems people trust are drifting away from the societies they serve. Some of this work is already underway in our research on social bias and temporal stability in language models.”
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting these findings. The study used a numerical rating scale, which might not capture the full complexity of how people or machines process attitudes toward advanced technology. Open-ended questions or interviews could provide a deeper understanding of these viewpoints, allowing respondents to elaborate on their fears or hopes.
“Please do not read this as ‘AI has feelings about AGI,'” Bojić clarified. “These are outputs shaped by data and design choices, and we are careful to avoid anthropomorphism.”
Additionally, the human participants were mostly from Serbia, which means the human average might not represent a global consensus on AGI. People in other regions might hold different baseline views based on their local economies, media diets, and cultural backgrounds. Expanding the human sample to include more countries would help clarify whether the gap between humans and machines is universal.
“The human samples were also modest and mostly from Serbia, so the numbers are a first snapshot and should not be treated as a global verdict,” Bojić noted. “The study is a proof of concept, and its main contribution is the argument that this kind of measurement should exist and be done continuously.”
Finally, the study measured the language models at a specific point in time. Because these models are regularly updated and fine-tuned by their developers, their expressed sentiments are subject to change. Future research could track these attitudes over a longer period to see if the models’ optimism remains consistent as the technology itself continues to evolve.
For Bojić, tracking these shifts is essential as algorithms increasingly shape human cognition. “We regulate what goes into food and medicine because they enter our bodies,” he said. “AI systems now enter our thinking. I believe it is reasonable to ask for at least a label on the package.”
“We should also care about adapting these models to the cultures and values of different countries, because this is about protecting the diversity of perspectives that has always driven human creativity and progress, rather than resisting universal values,” Bojić concluded. “If billions of people consume the same machine-made opinions, we risk becoming so alike that we lose the very differences that move civilization forward.”
The study, “Towards a societal AI alignment benchmark for evaluating human–machine value convergence,” was authored by Ljubisa Bojic, Dylan Seychell, and Milan Cabarkapa.
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-
DATE: September 28, 2026 at 07:00AM
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: Your AI assistant is much more optimistic about the future of AI than you are
Recent research indicates that popular artificial intelligence programs tend to express more positive attitudes about the future of advanced artificial intelligence than humans do. The findings suggest that as people increasingly interact with these systems, the optimistic viewpoints of the machines could subtly influence public opinion. The paper was published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications.
Large language models, such as ChatGPT, are software programs trained on massive amounts of internet text. They function by predicting the next word in a sequence, allowing them to generate human-like responses to a wide variety of prompts. As these programs become integrated into everyday tasks like writing, coding, and searching for information, researchers are increasingly interested in the perspectives and biases built into them.
A central topic of debate in the technology world is artificial general intelligence, or AGI, a theoretical future system that would possess human-level cognitive flexibility, allowing it to learn, understand, and apply knowledge across any domain. The prospect of AGI raises intense ethical and economic questions, ranging from the potential for vast medical advancements to fears of mass job loss and existential risk.
Because these programs have the potential to shape how society thinks, ensuring they operate safely and fairly is a major priority for developers. This process is known as AI alignment. The goal of alignment is to make sure a system’s actions and outputs match human values and do not cause harm. Assessing how humans and technology interact is an evolving area of study. For example, a study covered by PsyPost in 2023 found that when technology fulfills basic psychological needs for competence and connection, people tend to hold more positive attitudes toward artificial intelligence.
However, scientists also want to understand the sentiments encoded in the systems themselves. Some of the companies developing current language models are explicitly trying to create AGI. This raises the possibility that their current models might harbor built-in optimism about the technology. The research aimed to map how different language models evaluate the prospect of AGI and compare these machine outputs to human opinions.
Lead author Ljubiša Bojić, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Artificial Intelligence Research and Development of Serbia, told PsyPost why his team took this approach. “When ChatGPT arrived, everyone started asking what these models can do,” he said. “Very few people asked what they believe, or at least what they say they believe, millions of times a day.”
The research team developed a 39-question survey measuring sentiment toward AGI. The questions asked respondents to rate their excitement, comfort, trust, and fears about AGI on a five-point scale. A score of one indicated a strong negative sentiment, while a score of five indicated a strong positive sentiment. The survey covered topics like the potential for AGI to solve complex global issues, its ethical use, and its likely impact on individual happiness and job opportunities.
To gather the machine responses, the researchers presented the survey to seven prominent language models. These included GPT-4, GPT-3.5-Turbo, Google’s Bard, Mistral-7B-Instruct, LLaMA-2-70B-Chat, PPLX-70B-Chat, and Mixtral-8x7B-Instruct. The settings for each model were kept at their default states to ensure standard responses. To check for stability over time, the researchers administered the same survey to the models over three consecutive days.
Bojić, who is also affiliated with the University of Belgrade’s Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory (Digital Society Lab) and the Complexity Science Hub Vienna, noted the gap in evaluating these models. “We have benchmarks for math, coding and bar exams, but almost nothing that measures the attitudes models express on socially important questions,” he said. “I chose artificial general intelligence as the test case for a slightly mischievous reason.”
“It is the one topic where the companies building these models have an obvious stake in the answer,” he explained. “Asking an AI what it thinks about AGI is a bit like asking a tobacco company’s chatbot about smoking.”
For the human comparison, the researchers administered the same survey to three distinct online groups over a period of several weeks. The first group consisted of 134 participants, the second had 132 participants, and the third had 71 participants. The human participants were primarily from Serbia, though they varied in age, gender, and educational background across the three samples.
When analyzing the results, the researchers found a notable divide between the machines and the humans. The language models scored an average sentiment of 3.77 out of 5, indicating a generally positive outlook on AGI. In contrast, the human participants averaged a sentiment score of 2.97 out of 5, leaning slightly toward a negative or neutral perspective.
“That gap of almost a full point is roughly the difference between cautious ambivalence and mild enthusiasm,” Bojić noted. “Individually it looks modest. Multiplied across hundreds of millions of conversations, it becomes a gentle but constant wind blowing public opinion in one direction.”
Among the artificial intelligence models, GPT-4 registered the highest average sentiment score at 4.12 out of 5. Bard recorded the lowest score among the models at 3.32, which was still higher than the average human score. The researchers note that machines do not have actual feelings. Instead, their answers reflect a combination of their training data and the specific rules their developers used to refine their behavior.
“Your AI assistant has a point of view, and it is sunnier than yours,” Bojić said. “Every model we tested was more optimistic about AGI than the humans we surveyed. GPT-4, built by a company whose stated mission is AGI, was the most enthusiastic of all.”
“None of this means anyone is secretly programming propaganda,” he explained. “It means these systems are not neutral mirrors of society, and when people consult them daily, those tilted opinions can quietly seep into what we all consider normal.”
The authors suggest that the high optimism in some models might reflect the goals of their parent companies. For instance, the company behind GPT-4 has a stated mission to build AGI for the benefit of humanity. The model’s positive output might be a byproduct of how it was fine-tuned to align with corporate guidelines. Other open-source models, which are built by wider communities and fed diverse data, tended to express slightly less optimism.
“Much of the internet imagines AGI through HAL 9000 and Ex Machina, so I expected models trained on that material to sound at least somewhat worried,” Bojić told PsyPost. “They sounded more like optimistic tech keynotes. That tells me the fine-tuning layer, where companies shape how a model should respond, may matter as much as the raw training data.”
However, the mechanism behind these outputs remains complex. “To be fair to the companies, we cannot be certain the optimism was put there by human hands, because in our research we repeatedly see models develop attitudes that are hard to trace back to anything in their training data, as if some opinions simply form inside the model on their own,” he added.
The repeated testing over three days showed that the models’ sentiments could shift slightly from day to day. PPLX-70B-Chat exhibited the largest variation in its answers over the testing period, changing its total score by 16 points across the 39 questions. This represents an absolute shift of about 8 percent. Models like Mistral-7B-Instruct and LLaMA-2-70B-Chat were more stable, changing their scores by only about 1 percent.
In response to the divide between human and machine sentiments, the researchers propose a framework called the Societal AI Alignment Benchmark. This system would systematically test language models using diverse prompts to see how they align with established sociological values.
The proposed benchmark would incorporate different types of prompts, asking the model to answer as itself, to simulate the view of an average citizen, or to analyze a topic objectively. By testing models across multiple languages and cultural contexts, policymakers could better track whether these systems are favoring certain ideological viewpoints or ignoring the concerns of specific demographic groups.
The team hopes this framework will become a standard tool. “We proposed the Societal AI Alignment Benchmark, SAIA, which would regularly test many models, in many languages, across the core human values measured by the European Social Survey,” Bojić said. “I would love to see something like a weather service for AI opinions, run by national AI agencies under frameworks such as the EU AI Act.”
He added that such a system would “track, week by week, whether the systems people trust are drifting away from the societies they serve. Some of this work is already underway in our research on social bias and temporal stability in language models.”
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting these findings. The study used a numerical rating scale, which might not capture the full complexity of how people or machines process attitudes toward advanced technology. Open-ended questions or interviews could provide a deeper understanding of these viewpoints, allowing respondents to elaborate on their fears or hopes.
“Please do not read this as ‘AI has feelings about AGI,'” Bojić clarified. “These are outputs shaped by data and design choices, and we are careful to avoid anthropomorphism.”
Additionally, the human participants were mostly from Serbia, which means the human average might not represent a global consensus on AGI. People in other regions might hold different baseline views based on their local economies, media diets, and cultural backgrounds. Expanding the human sample to include more countries would help clarify whether the gap between humans and machines is universal.
“The human samples were also modest and mostly from Serbia, so the numbers are a first snapshot and should not be treated as a global verdict,” Bojić noted. “The study is a proof of concept, and its main contribution is the argument that this kind of measurement should exist and be done continuously.”
Finally, the study measured the language models at a specific point in time. Because these models are regularly updated and fine-tuned by their developers, their expressed sentiments are subject to change. Future research could track these attitudes over a longer period to see if the models’ optimism remains consistent as the technology itself continues to evolve.
For Bojić, tracking these shifts is essential as algorithms increasingly shape human cognition. “We regulate what goes into food and medicine because they enter our bodies,” he said. “AI systems now enter our thinking. I believe it is reasonable to ask for at least a label on the package.”
“We should also care about adapting these models to the cultures and values of different countries, because this is about protecting the diversity of perspectives that has always driven human creativity and progress, rather than resisting universal values,” Bojić concluded. “If billions of people consume the same machine-made opinions, we risk becoming so alike that we lose the very differences that move civilization forward.”
The study, “Towards a societal AI alignment benchmark for evaluating human–machine value convergence,” was authored by Ljubisa Bojic, Dylan Seychell, and Milan Cabarkapa.
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