#psychiatry — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #psychiatry, aggregated by home.social.
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DATE: September 30, 2026 at 03:25AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: DNA From Thomas Jefferson's Hair Reveals Truth About Sally Hemings
Source: Yahoo News - Top Headlines
Scientists working with DNA fragments have revealed the strongest evidence to date that Thomas Jefferson, a founding father of the United States, also fathered children with Sally Hemings, who was one of his many slaves. The discovery is documented in the book "History by a Hair: Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings & Solving a 200-Year-Old Mystery," written by Richard Kurin, a distinguished scholar at the Smithsonian Institution, and published on...
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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 #depression #psychotherapist #ThomasJefferson #SallyHemings #DNAevidence #HistoricalDNA #JeffersonHemingsMystery #HistoryNews #SmithsonianResearch #HistoricalBiography #AmericanHistory #DNASequencing
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DATE: September 30, 2026 at 03:25AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: DNA From Thomas Jefferson's Hair Reveals Truth About Sally Hemings
Source: Yahoo News - Top Headlines
Scientists working with DNA fragments have revealed the strongest evidence to date that Thomas Jefferson, a founding father of the United States, also fathered children with Sally Hemings, who was one of his many slaves. The discovery is documented in the book "History by a Hair: Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings & Solving a 200-Year-Old Mystery," written by Richard Kurin, a distinguished scholar at the Smithsonian Institution, and published on...
-------------------------------------------------
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 #ThomasJefferson #SallyHemings #DNAevidence #HistoricalDNA #JeffersonHemingsMystery #HistoryNews #SmithsonianResearch #HistoricalBiography #AmericanHistory #DNASequencing
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DATE: September 30, 2026 at 03:25AM
SOURCE: SOCIALPSYCHOLOGY.ORGTITLE: DNA From Thomas Jefferson's Hair Reveals Truth About Sally Hemings
Source: Yahoo News - Top Headlines
Scientists working with DNA fragments have revealed the strongest evidence to date that Thomas Jefferson, a founding father of the United States, also fathered children with Sally Hemings, who was one of his many slaves. The discovery is documented in the book "History by a Hair: Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings & Solving a 200-Year-Old Mystery," written by Richard Kurin, a distinguished scholar at the Smithsonian Institution, and published on...
-------------------------------------------------
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 #ThomasJefferson #SallyHemings #DNAevidence #HistoricalDNA #JeffersonHemingsMystery #HistoryNews #SmithsonianResearch #HistoricalBiography #AmericanHistory #DNASequencing
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DATE: September 29, 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: High salt diets disrupt the gut microbiome and impair memory in mice
URL: https://www.psypost.org/extreme-salt-diets-disrupt-the-gut-microbiome-and-impair-memory-in-mice/
A new study demonstrates that both abnormally high and abnormally low dietary salt intake can induce cognitive impairment in mice, though through distinctly different biological pathways. The research reveals that while excessive salt triggers systemic inflammation, severe salt restriction starves the gut microbiome of metabolic byproducts needed for optimal brain function. The findings were published in the journal Food Research International.
The human digestive tract is home to trillions of microorganisms, collectively known as the gut microbiome. These microbes engage in constant communication with the central nervous system through a biochemical pathway called the gut-brain axis.
Health professionals routinely recommend reducing dietary sodium to protect cardiovascular health. Diets heavily loaded with salt are already known to disrupt the gut microbiome and impair memory. A high-salt environment can promote inflammation and harm the hippocampus, a brain region central to learning and memory formation.
The neurological effects of eating extremely small amounts of salt remain much less understood. Clinical observations occasionally link severe sodium deficiency with cognitive difficulties, but the direct biological mechanisms connecting extreme salt restriction to brain function have not been systematically mapped out.
Researchers from Zhejiang University in China, led by Anji Chen, designed a study to compare the neurological and metabolic effects of high-salt and low-salt diets. To make their animal model more relevant to human biology, they utilized a technique called microbiome humanization.
The researchers designed a small study using 32 male mice. They first treated the majority of the animals with antibiotics to deplete their natural gut bacteria. They then fed the mice a solution containing human fecal matter, allowing human-derived bacteria to colonize the animals’ digestive tracts.
Following this colonization period, the humanized mice were divided into three groups and fed distinct diets for 14 weeks. One group received a normal-salt diet, another received a heavily restricted low-salt diet, and the third group consumed a high-salt diet. A fourth control group of standard mice maintained their natural gut bacteria and ate a normal-salt diet.
After the 14-week feeding period, the researchers tested the animals’ memory and anxiety levels using a series of behavioral tests. They used a Y-shaped maze to evaluate short-term spatial working memory by tracking how well the mice remembered which arms of the maze they had already explored. They also used a novel object recognition test, which measures long-term memory by seeing if the mice spend more time investigating a new item compared to a familiar one.
Both the low-salt and high-salt groups exhibited substantial impairments in short-term spatial working memory and long-term recognition memory compared to the normal-salt group. The high-salt diet produced the most severe cognitive deficits. These mice also displayed elevated anxiety-like behavior in an open arena test and drank substantially more water. The low-salt group experienced memory deficits without the added symptoms of anxiety or excessive thirst.
To understand why these behavioral changes occurred, the researchers examined the animals’ brain tissue. They specifically focused on the hippocampus, a brain region highly sensitive to metabolic disruptions. The scientists measured the levels of specific proteins that help build synapses, which are the physical communication junctions between neurons.
Both extreme diets reduced the abundance of key synaptic proteins and essential growth factors. One suppressed protein was brain-derived neurotrophic factor, a molecule that supports neuronal survival and helps the brain adapt to new information.
The high-salt diet caused a widespread reduction in proteins that structure both the sending and receiving ends of a synapse. The low-salt diet primarily affected the proteins involved in structural stability and synaptic adaptability, leaving the physical abundance of neuronal vesicles relatively intact.
The team then sequenced the genetic material of the bacteria living in the animals’ colons to see how the diets altered the microbiome. The high-salt diet prompted an expansion of bacteria associated with inflammation. The low-salt diet caused a different shift, slightly increasing certain specialized bacteria but reducing the overall population of beneficial microbes like those in the Lactobacillus genus.
Next, the researchers measured the metabolic byproducts produced by these gut bacteria. When microbes digest food, they produce compounds called short-chain fatty acids that help regulate immune responses and nourish the brain.
Both extreme diets reduced the levels of two helpful short-chain fatty acids called propionate and butyrate. The low-salt diet, however, also caused a sharp drop in two additional compounds, acetate and isobutyrate. Acetate is a primary metabolic signal that can travel from the gut to the brain, and its depletion suggests a broad suppression of microbial metabolism under severe salt restriction.
The researchers also analyzed lipids in the animals’ intestinal tracts. The high-salt group showed signs of severe oxidative stress, a condition where reactive oxygen molecules damage cells, and an increase in pro-inflammatory fats. The low-salt group experienced a drop in certain lipids that support neuronal membranes, but they did not exhibit the oxidative stress seen in the high-salt group.
Finally, blood tests were conducted to measure circulating cytokines, which are signaling proteins that trigger immune responses. The high-salt diet elevated multiple inflammatory cytokines, indicating a state of systemic inflammation. The low-salt diet did not produce any observable increase in these inflammatory markers.
The study suggests that severe salt restriction is not biologically neutral and might represent a distinct risk factor for cognitive decline. Extreme low-salt intake appears to impair memory by starving the gut microbiome of its ability to produce essential metabolic signals, rather than by triggering the aggressive inflammation seen with high-salt consumption.
Several caveats should be kept in mind when interpreting these results. This was a small study conducted entirely on male mice. While the humanized microbiome technique makes the findings more relevant to humans, the biological responses of a mouse may not perfectly mirror human physiology.
The study highlights statistical correlations between specific bacteria, metabolic byproducts, and memory scores, but it does not definitively prove that the missing short-chain fatty acids directly caused the memory loss. The experimental diets represented extreme ends of the sodium spectrum, which were necessary to isolate biological mechanisms but do not necessarily reflect typical human eating habits.
Future research will need to establish the exact lower limits for healthy human salt consumption. Scientists also need to determine whether supplementing specific missing metabolites could prevent the cognitive decline associated with imbalanced sodium intake.
This research provides a foundational step in understanding how dietary minerals influence neurological health. The study, “Long-term low-salt and high-salt diets differentially disrupt the gut – metabolite – brain axis and induce cognitive impairment,” was authored by Anji Chen, Shilong Hu, Fansen Zeng, Chengfeng Yu, Danying Chen, Xingqian Ye, Zengliang Jiang, and Shiguo Chen.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/extreme-salt-diets-disrupt-the-gut-microbiome-and-impair-memory-in-mice/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #GutBrainAxis #SaltDiet #CognitiveImpairment #HighSalt #LowSalt #MicrobiomeHealth #ShortChainFattyAcids #Hippocampus #Inflammation #MemoryLoss
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DATE: September 29, 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: High salt diets disrupt the gut microbiome and impair memory in mice
URL: https://www.psypost.org/extreme-salt-diets-disrupt-the-gut-microbiome-and-impair-memory-in-mice/
A new study demonstrates that both abnormally high and abnormally low dietary salt intake can induce cognitive impairment in mice, though through distinctly different biological pathways. The research reveals that while excessive salt triggers systemic inflammation, severe salt restriction starves the gut microbiome of metabolic byproducts needed for optimal brain function. The findings were published in the journal Food Research International.
The human digestive tract is home to trillions of microorganisms, collectively known as the gut microbiome. These microbes engage in constant communication with the central nervous system through a biochemical pathway called the gut-brain axis.
Health professionals routinely recommend reducing dietary sodium to protect cardiovascular health. Diets heavily loaded with salt are already known to disrupt the gut microbiome and impair memory. A high-salt environment can promote inflammation and harm the hippocampus, a brain region central to learning and memory formation.
The neurological effects of eating extremely small amounts of salt remain much less understood. Clinical observations occasionally link severe sodium deficiency with cognitive difficulties, but the direct biological mechanisms connecting extreme salt restriction to brain function have not been systematically mapped out.
Researchers from Zhejiang University in China, led by Anji Chen, designed a study to compare the neurological and metabolic effects of high-salt and low-salt diets. To make their animal model more relevant to human biology, they utilized a technique called microbiome humanization.
The researchers designed a small study using 32 male mice. They first treated the majority of the animals with antibiotics to deplete their natural gut bacteria. They then fed the mice a solution containing human fecal matter, allowing human-derived bacteria to colonize the animals’ digestive tracts.
Following this colonization period, the humanized mice were divided into three groups and fed distinct diets for 14 weeks. One group received a normal-salt diet, another received a heavily restricted low-salt diet, and the third group consumed a high-salt diet. A fourth control group of standard mice maintained their natural gut bacteria and ate a normal-salt diet.
After the 14-week feeding period, the researchers tested the animals’ memory and anxiety levels using a series of behavioral tests. They used a Y-shaped maze to evaluate short-term spatial working memory by tracking how well the mice remembered which arms of the maze they had already explored. They also used a novel object recognition test, which measures long-term memory by seeing if the mice spend more time investigating a new item compared to a familiar one.
Both the low-salt and high-salt groups exhibited substantial impairments in short-term spatial working memory and long-term recognition memory compared to the normal-salt group. The high-salt diet produced the most severe cognitive deficits. These mice also displayed elevated anxiety-like behavior in an open arena test and drank substantially more water. The low-salt group experienced memory deficits without the added symptoms of anxiety or excessive thirst.
To understand why these behavioral changes occurred, the researchers examined the animals’ brain tissue. They specifically focused on the hippocampus, a brain region highly sensitive to metabolic disruptions. The scientists measured the levels of specific proteins that help build synapses, which are the physical communication junctions between neurons.
Both extreme diets reduced the abundance of key synaptic proteins and essential growth factors. One suppressed protein was brain-derived neurotrophic factor, a molecule that supports neuronal survival and helps the brain adapt to new information.
The high-salt diet caused a widespread reduction in proteins that structure both the sending and receiving ends of a synapse. The low-salt diet primarily affected the proteins involved in structural stability and synaptic adaptability, leaving the physical abundance of neuronal vesicles relatively intact.
The team then sequenced the genetic material of the bacteria living in the animals’ colons to see how the diets altered the microbiome. The high-salt diet prompted an expansion of bacteria associated with inflammation. The low-salt diet caused a different shift, slightly increasing certain specialized bacteria but reducing the overall population of beneficial microbes like those in the Lactobacillus genus.
Next, the researchers measured the metabolic byproducts produced by these gut bacteria. When microbes digest food, they produce compounds called short-chain fatty acids that help regulate immune responses and nourish the brain.
Both extreme diets reduced the levels of two helpful short-chain fatty acids called propionate and butyrate. The low-salt diet, however, also caused a sharp drop in two additional compounds, acetate and isobutyrate. Acetate is a primary metabolic signal that can travel from the gut to the brain, and its depletion suggests a broad suppression of microbial metabolism under severe salt restriction.
The researchers also analyzed lipids in the animals’ intestinal tracts. The high-salt group showed signs of severe oxidative stress, a condition where reactive oxygen molecules damage cells, and an increase in pro-inflammatory fats. The low-salt group experienced a drop in certain lipids that support neuronal membranes, but they did not exhibit the oxidative stress seen in the high-salt group.
Finally, blood tests were conducted to measure circulating cytokines, which are signaling proteins that trigger immune responses. The high-salt diet elevated multiple inflammatory cytokines, indicating a state of systemic inflammation. The low-salt diet did not produce any observable increase in these inflammatory markers.
The study suggests that severe salt restriction is not biologically neutral and might represent a distinct risk factor for cognitive decline. Extreme low-salt intake appears to impair memory by starving the gut microbiome of its ability to produce essential metabolic signals, rather than by triggering the aggressive inflammation seen with high-salt consumption.
Several caveats should be kept in mind when interpreting these results. This was a small study conducted entirely on male mice. While the humanized microbiome technique makes the findings more relevant to humans, the biological responses of a mouse may not perfectly mirror human physiology.
The study highlights statistical correlations between specific bacteria, metabolic byproducts, and memory scores, but it does not definitively prove that the missing short-chain fatty acids directly caused the memory loss. The experimental diets represented extreme ends of the sodium spectrum, which were necessary to isolate biological mechanisms but do not necessarily reflect typical human eating habits.
Future research will need to establish the exact lower limits for healthy human salt consumption. Scientists also need to determine whether supplementing specific missing metabolites could prevent the cognitive decline associated with imbalanced sodium intake.
This research provides a foundational step in understanding how dietary minerals influence neurological health. The study, “Long-term low-salt and high-salt diets differentially disrupt the gut – metabolite – brain axis and induce cognitive impairment,” was authored by Anji Chen, Shilong Hu, Fansen Zeng, Chengfeng Yu, Danying Chen, Xingqian Ye, Zengliang Jiang, and Shiguo Chen.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/extreme-salt-diets-disrupt-the-gut-microbiome-and-impair-memory-in-mice/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #GutBrainAxis #SaltDiet #CognitiveImpairment #HighSalt #LowSalt #MicrobiomeHealth #ShortChainFattyAcids #Hippocampus #Inflammation #MemoryLoss
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DATE: September 29, 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: High salt diets disrupt the gut microbiome and impair memory in mice
URL: https://www.psypost.org/extreme-salt-diets-disrupt-the-gut-microbiome-and-impair-memory-in-mice/
A new study demonstrates that both abnormally high and abnormally low dietary salt intake can induce cognitive impairment in mice, though through distinctly different biological pathways. The research reveals that while excessive salt triggers systemic inflammation, severe salt restriction starves the gut microbiome of metabolic byproducts needed for optimal brain function. The findings were published in the journal Food Research International.
The human digestive tract is home to trillions of microorganisms, collectively known as the gut microbiome. These microbes engage in constant communication with the central nervous system through a biochemical pathway called the gut-brain axis.
Health professionals routinely recommend reducing dietary sodium to protect cardiovascular health. Diets heavily loaded with salt are already known to disrupt the gut microbiome and impair memory. A high-salt environment can promote inflammation and harm the hippocampus, a brain region central to learning and memory formation.
The neurological effects of eating extremely small amounts of salt remain much less understood. Clinical observations occasionally link severe sodium deficiency with cognitive difficulties, but the direct biological mechanisms connecting extreme salt restriction to brain function have not been systematically mapped out.
Researchers from Zhejiang University in China, led by Anji Chen, designed a study to compare the neurological and metabolic effects of high-salt and low-salt diets. To make their animal model more relevant to human biology, they utilized a technique called microbiome humanization.
The researchers designed a small study using 32 male mice. They first treated the majority of the animals with antibiotics to deplete their natural gut bacteria. They then fed the mice a solution containing human fecal matter, allowing human-derived bacteria to colonize the animals’ digestive tracts.
Following this colonization period, the humanized mice were divided into three groups and fed distinct diets for 14 weeks. One group received a normal-salt diet, another received a heavily restricted low-salt diet, and the third group consumed a high-salt diet. A fourth control group of standard mice maintained their natural gut bacteria and ate a normal-salt diet.
After the 14-week feeding period, the researchers tested the animals’ memory and anxiety levels using a series of behavioral tests. They used a Y-shaped maze to evaluate short-term spatial working memory by tracking how well the mice remembered which arms of the maze they had already explored. They also used a novel object recognition test, which measures long-term memory by seeing if the mice spend more time investigating a new item compared to a familiar one.
Both the low-salt and high-salt groups exhibited substantial impairments in short-term spatial working memory and long-term recognition memory compared to the normal-salt group. The high-salt diet produced the most severe cognitive deficits. These mice also displayed elevated anxiety-like behavior in an open arena test and drank substantially more water. The low-salt group experienced memory deficits without the added symptoms of anxiety or excessive thirst.
To understand why these behavioral changes occurred, the researchers examined the animals’ brain tissue. They specifically focused on the hippocampus, a brain region highly sensitive to metabolic disruptions. The scientists measured the levels of specific proteins that help build synapses, which are the physical communication junctions between neurons.
Both extreme diets reduced the abundance of key synaptic proteins and essential growth factors. One suppressed protein was brain-derived neurotrophic factor, a molecule that supports neuronal survival and helps the brain adapt to new information.
The high-salt diet caused a widespread reduction in proteins that structure both the sending and receiving ends of a synapse. The low-salt diet primarily affected the proteins involved in structural stability and synaptic adaptability, leaving the physical abundance of neuronal vesicles relatively intact.
The team then sequenced the genetic material of the bacteria living in the animals’ colons to see how the diets altered the microbiome. The high-salt diet prompted an expansion of bacteria associated with inflammation. The low-salt diet caused a different shift, slightly increasing certain specialized bacteria but reducing the overall population of beneficial microbes like those in the Lactobacillus genus.
Next, the researchers measured the metabolic byproducts produced by these gut bacteria. When microbes digest food, they produce compounds called short-chain fatty acids that help regulate immune responses and nourish the brain.
Both extreme diets reduced the levels of two helpful short-chain fatty acids called propionate and butyrate. The low-salt diet, however, also caused a sharp drop in two additional compounds, acetate and isobutyrate. Acetate is a primary metabolic signal that can travel from the gut to the brain, and its depletion suggests a broad suppression of microbial metabolism under severe salt restriction.
The researchers also analyzed lipids in the animals’ intestinal tracts. The high-salt group showed signs of severe oxidative stress, a condition where reactive oxygen molecules damage cells, and an increase in pro-inflammatory fats. The low-salt group experienced a drop in certain lipids that support neuronal membranes, but they did not exhibit the oxidative stress seen in the high-salt group.
Finally, blood tests were conducted to measure circulating cytokines, which are signaling proteins that trigger immune responses. The high-salt diet elevated multiple inflammatory cytokines, indicating a state of systemic inflammation. The low-salt diet did not produce any observable increase in these inflammatory markers.
The study suggests that severe salt restriction is not biologically neutral and might represent a distinct risk factor for cognitive decline. Extreme low-salt intake appears to impair memory by starving the gut microbiome of its ability to produce essential metabolic signals, rather than by triggering the aggressive inflammation seen with high-salt consumption.
Several caveats should be kept in mind when interpreting these results. This was a small study conducted entirely on male mice. While the humanized microbiome technique makes the findings more relevant to humans, the biological responses of a mouse may not perfectly mirror human physiology.
The study highlights statistical correlations between specific bacteria, metabolic byproducts, and memory scores, but it does not definitively prove that the missing short-chain fatty acids directly caused the memory loss. The experimental diets represented extreme ends of the sodium spectrum, which were necessary to isolate biological mechanisms but do not necessarily reflect typical human eating habits.
Future research will need to establish the exact lower limits for healthy human salt consumption. Scientists also need to determine whether supplementing specific missing metabolites could prevent the cognitive decline associated with imbalanced sodium intake.
This research provides a foundational step in understanding how dietary minerals influence neurological health. The study, “Long-term low-salt and high-salt diets differentially disrupt the gut – metabolite – brain axis and induce cognitive impairment,” was authored by Anji Chen, Shilong Hu, Fansen Zeng, Chengfeng Yu, Danying Chen, Xingqian Ye, Zengliang Jiang, and Shiguo Chen.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/extreme-salt-diets-disrupt-the-gut-microbiome-and-impair-memory-in-mice/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #GutBrainAxis #SaltDiet #CognitiveImpairment #HighSalt #LowSalt #MicrobiomeHealth #ShortChainFattyAcids #Hippocampus #Inflammation #MemoryLoss
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DATE: September 29, 2026 at 05:24PM
SOURCE: HEALTHCARE INFO SECURITYDirect article link at end of text block below.
@OpenAI Apologizes for Hacks on #Australian Government Sites: #AI Firm Admits Delayed Disclosure, Details Incidents, Promises New #AIAgent Safeguards https://t.co/HAbgCmGGKA
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at https://www.healthcareinfosecurity.com/ under the title "Latest"
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Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Healthcare security & privacy posts not related to IT or infosec are at @HIPAABot . Even so, they mix in some infosec with the legal & regulatory information.
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#security #healthcare #doctors #itsecurity #hacking #doxxing #psychotherapy #securitynews #psychotherapist #mentalhealth #psychiatry #hospital #socialwork #datasecurity #webbeacons #cookies #HIPAA #privacy #datanalytics #healthcaresecurity #healthitsecurity #patientrecords @infosec #telehealth #netneutrality #socialengineering
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DATE: September 29, 2026 at 05:24PM
SOURCE: HEALTHCARE INFO SECURITYDirect article link at end of text block below.
@OpenAI Apologizes for Hacks on #Australian Government Sites: #AI Firm Admits Delayed Disclosure, Details Incidents, Promises New #AIAgent Safeguards https://t.co/HAbgCmGGKA
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at https://www.healthcareinfosecurity.com/ under the title "Latest"
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Healthcare security & privacy posts not related to IT or infosec are at @HIPAABot . Even so, they mix in some infosec with the legal & regulatory information.
-------------------------------------------------
#security #healthcare #doctors #itsecurity #hacking #doxxing #psychotherapy #securitynews #psychotherapist #mentalhealth #psychiatry #hospital #socialwork #datasecurity #webbeacons #cookies #HIPAA #privacy #datanalytics #healthcaresecurity #healthitsecurity #patientrecords @infosec #telehealth #netneutrality #socialengineering
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DATE: September 29, 2026 at 05:24PM
SOURCE: HEALTHCARE INFO SECURITYDirect article link at end of text block below.
@OpenAI Apologizes for Hacks on #Australian Government Sites: #AI Firm Admits Delayed Disclosure, Details Incidents, Promises New #AIAgent Safeguards https://t.co/HAbgCmGGKA
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at https://www.healthcareinfosecurity.com/ under the title "Latest"
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Healthcare security & privacy posts not related to IT or infosec are at @HIPAABot . Even so, they mix in some infosec with the legal & regulatory information.
-------------------------------------------------
#security #healthcare #doctors #itsecurity #hacking #doxxing #psychotherapy #securitynews #psychotherapist #mentalhealth #psychiatry #hospital #socialwork #datasecurity #webbeacons #cookies #HIPAA #privacy #datanalytics #healthcaresecurity #healthitsecurity #patientrecords @infosec #telehealth #netneutrality #socialengineering
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DATE: September 29, 2026 at 05:24PM
SOURCE: HEALTHCARE INFO SECURITYDirect article link at end of text block below.
@OpenAI Apologizes for Hacks on #Australian Government Sites: #AI Firm Admits Delayed Disclosure, Details Incidents, Promises New #AIAgent Safeguards https://t.co/HAbgCmGGKA
Here are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at https://www.healthcareinfosecurity.com/ under the title "Latest"
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Healthcare security & privacy posts not related to IT or infosec are at @HIPAABot . Even so, they mix in some infosec with the legal & regulatory information.
-------------------------------------------------
#security #healthcare #doctors #itsecurity #hacking #doxxing #psychotherapy #securitynews #psychotherapist #mentalhealth #psychiatry #hospital #socialwork #datasecurity #webbeacons #cookies #HIPAA #privacy #datanalytics #healthcaresecurity #healthitsecurity #patientrecords @infosec #telehealth #netneutrality #socialengineering
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DATE: September 29, 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: Maternal psychopathic traits predict teens’ callous-unemotional traits a year later
Teenagers with serious conduct problems tended to show more callousness and less empathy a year later when their mothers reported the emotional features of psychopathy in themselves, such as not feeling bad about hurting others. This link held even after accounting for how callous the teens were at the start, and it was tied to this emotional dimension rather than to mothers’ manipulative, impulsive, or rule-breaking tendencies. The findings, published in Frontiers in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, point to caregiver personality as a possible marker of family risk, though the study cannot say whether genes, parenting, or both are responsible.
Conduct disorder is a mental health diagnosis given to children and teenagers who show a repeated pattern of breaking rules and violating the rights of others through behaviors such as fighting, stealing, lying, or destroying property. Within this group is a smaller set of young people who also display what psychologists call callous-unemotional traits. These include a lack of empathy, little guilt after doing something wrong, and shallow or muted emotional expression.
These traits tend to mark the most persistent cases. Young people with high levels of callous-unemotional traits are more likely to use aggression deliberately to get what they want, respond less to punishment, and face a higher risk of developing psychopathy as adults. Major diagnostic manuals now let clinicians add a label called “with limited prosocial emotions” to a conduct disorder diagnosis to flag these youth, and recent research suggests roughly one in five young people with conduct disorder qualify for it.
Where these traits come from does not fit neatly into nature versus nurture. Callous-unemotional traits are moderately to highly heritable, meaning a sizable share of the differences between young people can be traced to genetic differences. In a 2016 adoption study of 561 families, biological mothers’ history of severe antisocial behavior predicted callous-unemotional behaviors in their toddlers, even though the children were raised by adoptive parents and had little or no contact with their birth mothers. Adoptive mothers who often praised and rewarded their children, however, appeared to offer some protection against these behaviors.
Parenting itself also seems to play a part. A 2018 study of identical twins found that the twin who received harsher parenting tended to show more callous-unemotional traits and more aggression than the other twin. Because identical twins share the same genes, those differences within each pair point to an environmental influence. Taken together, this work suggests that a parent’s traits could relate to a child’s callousness through inherited tendencies, through the home environment, or through both at once.
The new study focuses on one parental characteristic in particular: psychopathic traits. Psychopathy is a personality pattern that researchers often divide into four facets. The interpersonal facet involves manipulation and deceit; the affective facet involves shallow emotions and a lack of empathy and guilt; the lifestyle facet involves impulsivity and thrill-seeking; and the antisocial facet involves rule-breaking behavior. The affective facet closely resembles the defining features of callous-unemotional traits in young people.
Earlier studies have linked parents’ psychopathic traits to callous-unemotional traits in their children, but most focused on younger children, relied on a single overall psychopathy score, and seldom accounted for how callous the child already was. Nicholas D. Thomson and Jessica J. James of Virginia Commonwealth University wanted to know whether mothers’ psychopathic traits predicted teens’ callous-unemotional traits a year later, beyond the teens’ starting levels, and whether any single facet stood out. They expected the affective facet to show the strongest link.
The researchers recruited 99 teenagers and their mothers through a large healthcare system in Virginia, for a total of 198 participants. All of the teens, who were between 13 and 17 years old with an average age of about 15 and a half, had already been diagnosed with conduct disorder by a licensed mental health professional. About 68 percent were boys. Sixty percent identified as Black or African American, 36 percent as white, and 4 percent as American Indian or Alaska Native.
The mothers, most of whom were the teens’ biological mothers, ranged in age from 29 to 68. Three fathers had also taken part, but the researchers excluded them because there were too few to analyze as a separate group. The data came from a larger project, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, examining how fear responses relate to the development of callous-unemotional traits.
At the start of the study and again 12 months later, the teens completed a 24-item questionnaire measuring callous-unemotional traits. Mothers completed a 28-item questionnaire measuring their own psychopathic traits, with seven items for each facet. Sample items included having pretended to be someone else to get something (interpersonal), not feeling bad about hurting people (affective), doing something dangerous just for the thrill of it (lifestyle), and tricking someone into giving them money (antisocial).
The researchers used statistical models that accounted for the teens’ starting callous-unemotional scores, as well as the teens’ age, sex, and race and their mothers’ age. This approach asks whether mothers’ traits help predict where a teen ends up a year later beyond what could be predicted from where the teen started.
Callous-unemotional traits showed moderate stability over the year. Teens who scored higher at the start tended to score higher at follow-up, though the relationship was far from perfect, leaving room for change. Boys also tended to score somewhat higher than girls at follow-up.
The teens’ starting scores and demographic factors together explained about 21 percent of the variation in callous-unemotional traits a year later. Adding mothers’ overall psychopathy scores raised this to about 26 percent, with higher maternal scores linked to higher teen scores at follow-up.
When the researchers split psychopathy into its four facets, the model explained about 31 percent of the variation. Only the affective facet was linked to teens’ later callous-unemotional traits. The interpersonal, lifestyle, and antisocial facets were not statistically significant predictors once all four were considered together.
To give a sense of scale, with the other factors held constant, a mother scoring about four points higher on the affective items, which was roughly the typical spread among mothers in the sample, was associated with her teen scoring nearly four points higher at follow-up. The average teen score at follow-up was about 30.
The researchers also checked whether the pattern differed for boys and girls. Adding this set of comparisons as a group did not significantly improve the model’s predictions, which calls for caution. One specific comparison did stand out, however: the link between mothers’ affective traits and teens’ later callous-unemotional traits appeared among girls but not among boys. Girls made up only about a third of the sample, so this result will need confirmation in larger studies.
The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2022, which found that parents with more psychopathic traits tended to have adolescents with more callous-unemotional traits, partly through harsher and less warm parenting. That earlier study drew on a community sample of twins, whereas the new study followed teens already diagnosed with conduct disorder over the course of a year.
Thomson and James suggest that the emotional side of a mother’s personality, rather than manipulation, impulsivity, or rule-breaking, may be most relevant to whether callous traits persist or grow during adolescence. People high in affective psychopathic traits tend to show less empathy, take others’ perspectives less often, and have trouble identifying and describing emotions. Developmental theories propose that these are the same skills parents draw on to help children build empathy and a conscience, although the study did not measure parenting directly.
The authors also note that the sex difference might reflect something specific to mother-daughter relationships rather than girls being more sensitive to family influences in general. Because treatments that involve caregivers tend to work better for disruptive behavior problems than those focused on the child alone, the researchers suggest that assessing caregivers’ emotional traits could help clinicians understand a family’s risk, though they stop short of recommending specific interventions.
As with all research, there are some caveats to consider. The study shows an association over time, not a cause. Because most participating mothers were biological mothers, the link could reflect shared genes, the way mothers with these traits interact with their children, or a mix of both, and the design cannot tell these apart.
The mothers in the study were not diagnosed with psychopathy. The questionnaire measures traits along a continuum, and the analysis compared mothers who scored somewhat higher or lower on it. Both mothers and teens also reported on themselves, so their answers may have been shaped by how willing or able they were to describe their own emotions honestly.
The sample was relatively small, came from a single healthcare system, and included only teens already diagnosed with conduct disorder, so the results may not apply to teens in the general population. The study also did not measure whether the teens had experienced childhood maltreatment, which may contribute to callous-unemotional traits. The authors call for future studies that combine genetic information with direct observations of how parents and teens interact, and that include fathers, to clarify how caregiver personality and caregiving together shape these traits over time.
The study, “Maternal psychopathic traits prospectively predict youth callous-unemotional traits,” was authored by Nicholas D. Thomson and Jessica J. James.
-------------------------------------------------
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #MaternalAffectiveTraits #CallousUnemotional #AdolescentPsychopathy #ConductDisorderResearch #AffectiveFacet #ParentInfluence #TeenBehaviorPrediction #GirlsVsBoys #PsychopathyInParents #MentalHealthResearch
-
DATE: September 29, 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: Maternal psychopathic traits predict teens’ callous-unemotional traits a year later
Teenagers with serious conduct problems tended to show more callousness and less empathy a year later when their mothers reported the emotional features of psychopathy in themselves, such as not feeling bad about hurting others. This link held even after accounting for how callous the teens were at the start, and it was tied to this emotional dimension rather than to mothers’ manipulative, impulsive, or rule-breaking tendencies. The findings, published in Frontiers in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, point to caregiver personality as a possible marker of family risk, though the study cannot say whether genes, parenting, or both are responsible.
Conduct disorder is a mental health diagnosis given to children and teenagers who show a repeated pattern of breaking rules and violating the rights of others through behaviors such as fighting, stealing, lying, or destroying property. Within this group is a smaller set of young people who also display what psychologists call callous-unemotional traits. These include a lack of empathy, little guilt after doing something wrong, and shallow or muted emotional expression.
These traits tend to mark the most persistent cases. Young people with high levels of callous-unemotional traits are more likely to use aggression deliberately to get what they want, respond less to punishment, and face a higher risk of developing psychopathy as adults. Major diagnostic manuals now let clinicians add a label called “with limited prosocial emotions” to a conduct disorder diagnosis to flag these youth, and recent research suggests roughly one in five young people with conduct disorder qualify for it.
Where these traits come from does not fit neatly into nature versus nurture. Callous-unemotional traits are moderately to highly heritable, meaning a sizable share of the differences between young people can be traced to genetic differences. In a 2016 adoption study of 561 families, biological mothers’ history of severe antisocial behavior predicted callous-unemotional behaviors in their toddlers, even though the children were raised by adoptive parents and had little or no contact with their birth mothers. Adoptive mothers who often praised and rewarded their children, however, appeared to offer some protection against these behaviors.
Parenting itself also seems to play a part. A 2018 study of identical twins found that the twin who received harsher parenting tended to show more callous-unemotional traits and more aggression than the other twin. Because identical twins share the same genes, those differences within each pair point to an environmental influence. Taken together, this work suggests that a parent’s traits could relate to a child’s callousness through inherited tendencies, through the home environment, or through both at once.
The new study focuses on one parental characteristic in particular: psychopathic traits. Psychopathy is a personality pattern that researchers often divide into four facets. The interpersonal facet involves manipulation and deceit; the affective facet involves shallow emotions and a lack of empathy and guilt; the lifestyle facet involves impulsivity and thrill-seeking; and the antisocial facet involves rule-breaking behavior. The affective facet closely resembles the defining features of callous-unemotional traits in young people.
Earlier studies have linked parents’ psychopathic traits to callous-unemotional traits in their children, but most focused on younger children, relied on a single overall psychopathy score, and seldom accounted for how callous the child already was. Nicholas D. Thomson and Jessica J. James of Virginia Commonwealth University wanted to know whether mothers’ psychopathic traits predicted teens’ callous-unemotional traits a year later, beyond the teens’ starting levels, and whether any single facet stood out. They expected the affective facet to show the strongest link.
The researchers recruited 99 teenagers and their mothers through a large healthcare system in Virginia, for a total of 198 participants. All of the teens, who were between 13 and 17 years old with an average age of about 15 and a half, had already been diagnosed with conduct disorder by a licensed mental health professional. About 68 percent were boys. Sixty percent identified as Black or African American, 36 percent as white, and 4 percent as American Indian or Alaska Native.
The mothers, most of whom were the teens’ biological mothers, ranged in age from 29 to 68. Three fathers had also taken part, but the researchers excluded them because there were too few to analyze as a separate group. The data came from a larger project, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, examining how fear responses relate to the development of callous-unemotional traits.
At the start of the study and again 12 months later, the teens completed a 24-item questionnaire measuring callous-unemotional traits. Mothers completed a 28-item questionnaire measuring their own psychopathic traits, with seven items for each facet. Sample items included having pretended to be someone else to get something (interpersonal), not feeling bad about hurting people (affective), doing something dangerous just for the thrill of it (lifestyle), and tricking someone into giving them money (antisocial).
The researchers used statistical models that accounted for the teens’ starting callous-unemotional scores, as well as the teens’ age, sex, and race and their mothers’ age. This approach asks whether mothers’ traits help predict where a teen ends up a year later beyond what could be predicted from where the teen started.
Callous-unemotional traits showed moderate stability over the year. Teens who scored higher at the start tended to score higher at follow-up, though the relationship was far from perfect, leaving room for change. Boys also tended to score somewhat higher than girls at follow-up.
The teens’ starting scores and demographic factors together explained about 21 percent of the variation in callous-unemotional traits a year later. Adding mothers’ overall psychopathy scores raised this to about 26 percent, with higher maternal scores linked to higher teen scores at follow-up.
When the researchers split psychopathy into its four facets, the model explained about 31 percent of the variation. Only the affective facet was linked to teens’ later callous-unemotional traits. The interpersonal, lifestyle, and antisocial facets were not statistically significant predictors once all four were considered together.
To give a sense of scale, with the other factors held constant, a mother scoring about four points higher on the affective items, which was roughly the typical spread among mothers in the sample, was associated with her teen scoring nearly four points higher at follow-up. The average teen score at follow-up was about 30.
The researchers also checked whether the pattern differed for boys and girls. Adding this set of comparisons as a group did not significantly improve the model’s predictions, which calls for caution. One specific comparison did stand out, however: the link between mothers’ affective traits and teens’ later callous-unemotional traits appeared among girls but not among boys. Girls made up only about a third of the sample, so this result will need confirmation in larger studies.
The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2022, which found that parents with more psychopathic traits tended to have adolescents with more callous-unemotional traits, partly through harsher and less warm parenting. That earlier study drew on a community sample of twins, whereas the new study followed teens already diagnosed with conduct disorder over the course of a year.
Thomson and James suggest that the emotional side of a mother’s personality, rather than manipulation, impulsivity, or rule-breaking, may be most relevant to whether callous traits persist or grow during adolescence. People high in affective psychopathic traits tend to show less empathy, take others’ perspectives less often, and have trouble identifying and describing emotions. Developmental theories propose that these are the same skills parents draw on to help children build empathy and a conscience, although the study did not measure parenting directly.
The authors also note that the sex difference might reflect something specific to mother-daughter relationships rather than girls being more sensitive to family influences in general. Because treatments that involve caregivers tend to work better for disruptive behavior problems than those focused on the child alone, the researchers suggest that assessing caregivers’ emotional traits could help clinicians understand a family’s risk, though they stop short of recommending specific interventions.
As with all research, there are some caveats to consider. The study shows an association over time, not a cause. Because most participating mothers were biological mothers, the link could reflect shared genes, the way mothers with these traits interact with their children, or a mix of both, and the design cannot tell these apart.
The mothers in the study were not diagnosed with psychopathy. The questionnaire measures traits along a continuum, and the analysis compared mothers who scored somewhat higher or lower on it. Both mothers and teens also reported on themselves, so their answers may have been shaped by how willing or able they were to describe their own emotions honestly.
The sample was relatively small, came from a single healthcare system, and included only teens already diagnosed with conduct disorder, so the results may not apply to teens in the general population. The study also did not measure whether the teens had experienced childhood maltreatment, which may contribute to callous-unemotional traits. The authors call for future studies that combine genetic information with direct observations of how parents and teens interact, and that include fathers, to clarify how caregiver personality and caregiving together shape these traits over time.
The study, “Maternal psychopathic traits prospectively predict youth callous-unemotional traits,” was authored by Nicholas D. Thomson and Jessica J. James.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #MaternalAffectiveTraits #CallousUnemotional #AdolescentPsychopathy #ConductDisorderResearch #AffectiveFacet #ParentInfluence #TeenBehaviorPrediction #GirlsVsBoys #PsychopathyInParents #MentalHealthResearch
-
DATE: September 29, 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: Maternal psychopathic traits predict teens’ callous-unemotional traits a year later
Teenagers with serious conduct problems tended to show more callousness and less empathy a year later when their mothers reported the emotional features of psychopathy in themselves, such as not feeling bad about hurting others. This link held even after accounting for how callous the teens were at the start, and it was tied to this emotional dimension rather than to mothers’ manipulative, impulsive, or rule-breaking tendencies. The findings, published in Frontiers in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, point to caregiver personality as a possible marker of family risk, though the study cannot say whether genes, parenting, or both are responsible.
Conduct disorder is a mental health diagnosis given to children and teenagers who show a repeated pattern of breaking rules and violating the rights of others through behaviors such as fighting, stealing, lying, or destroying property. Within this group is a smaller set of young people who also display what psychologists call callous-unemotional traits. These include a lack of empathy, little guilt after doing something wrong, and shallow or muted emotional expression.
These traits tend to mark the most persistent cases. Young people with high levels of callous-unemotional traits are more likely to use aggression deliberately to get what they want, respond less to punishment, and face a higher risk of developing psychopathy as adults. Major diagnostic manuals now let clinicians add a label called “with limited prosocial emotions” to a conduct disorder diagnosis to flag these youth, and recent research suggests roughly one in five young people with conduct disorder qualify for it.
Where these traits come from does not fit neatly into nature versus nurture. Callous-unemotional traits are moderately to highly heritable, meaning a sizable share of the differences between young people can be traced to genetic differences. In a 2016 adoption study of 561 families, biological mothers’ history of severe antisocial behavior predicted callous-unemotional behaviors in their toddlers, even though the children were raised by adoptive parents and had little or no contact with their birth mothers. Adoptive mothers who often praised and rewarded their children, however, appeared to offer some protection against these behaviors.
Parenting itself also seems to play a part. A 2018 study of identical twins found that the twin who received harsher parenting tended to show more callous-unemotional traits and more aggression than the other twin. Because identical twins share the same genes, those differences within each pair point to an environmental influence. Taken together, this work suggests that a parent’s traits could relate to a child’s callousness through inherited tendencies, through the home environment, or through both at once.
The new study focuses on one parental characteristic in particular: psychopathic traits. Psychopathy is a personality pattern that researchers often divide into four facets. The interpersonal facet involves manipulation and deceit; the affective facet involves shallow emotions and a lack of empathy and guilt; the lifestyle facet involves impulsivity and thrill-seeking; and the antisocial facet involves rule-breaking behavior. The affective facet closely resembles the defining features of callous-unemotional traits in young people.
Earlier studies have linked parents’ psychopathic traits to callous-unemotional traits in their children, but most focused on younger children, relied on a single overall psychopathy score, and seldom accounted for how callous the child already was. Nicholas D. Thomson and Jessica J. James of Virginia Commonwealth University wanted to know whether mothers’ psychopathic traits predicted teens’ callous-unemotional traits a year later, beyond the teens’ starting levels, and whether any single facet stood out. They expected the affective facet to show the strongest link.
The researchers recruited 99 teenagers and their mothers through a large healthcare system in Virginia, for a total of 198 participants. All of the teens, who were between 13 and 17 years old with an average age of about 15 and a half, had already been diagnosed with conduct disorder by a licensed mental health professional. About 68 percent were boys. Sixty percent identified as Black or African American, 36 percent as white, and 4 percent as American Indian or Alaska Native.
The mothers, most of whom were the teens’ biological mothers, ranged in age from 29 to 68. Three fathers had also taken part, but the researchers excluded them because there were too few to analyze as a separate group. The data came from a larger project, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, examining how fear responses relate to the development of callous-unemotional traits.
At the start of the study and again 12 months later, the teens completed a 24-item questionnaire measuring callous-unemotional traits. Mothers completed a 28-item questionnaire measuring their own psychopathic traits, with seven items for each facet. Sample items included having pretended to be someone else to get something (interpersonal), not feeling bad about hurting people (affective), doing something dangerous just for the thrill of it (lifestyle), and tricking someone into giving them money (antisocial).
The researchers used statistical models that accounted for the teens’ starting callous-unemotional scores, as well as the teens’ age, sex, and race and their mothers’ age. This approach asks whether mothers’ traits help predict where a teen ends up a year later beyond what could be predicted from where the teen started.
Callous-unemotional traits showed moderate stability over the year. Teens who scored higher at the start tended to score higher at follow-up, though the relationship was far from perfect, leaving room for change. Boys also tended to score somewhat higher than girls at follow-up.
The teens’ starting scores and demographic factors together explained about 21 percent of the variation in callous-unemotional traits a year later. Adding mothers’ overall psychopathy scores raised this to about 26 percent, with higher maternal scores linked to higher teen scores at follow-up.
When the researchers split psychopathy into its four facets, the model explained about 31 percent of the variation. Only the affective facet was linked to teens’ later callous-unemotional traits. The interpersonal, lifestyle, and antisocial facets were not statistically significant predictors once all four were considered together.
To give a sense of scale, with the other factors held constant, a mother scoring about four points higher on the affective items, which was roughly the typical spread among mothers in the sample, was associated with her teen scoring nearly four points higher at follow-up. The average teen score at follow-up was about 30.
The researchers also checked whether the pattern differed for boys and girls. Adding this set of comparisons as a group did not significantly improve the model’s predictions, which calls for caution. One specific comparison did stand out, however: the link between mothers’ affective traits and teens’ later callous-unemotional traits appeared among girls but not among boys. Girls made up only about a third of the sample, so this result will need confirmation in larger studies.
The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2022, which found that parents with more psychopathic traits tended to have adolescents with more callous-unemotional traits, partly through harsher and less warm parenting. That earlier study drew on a community sample of twins, whereas the new study followed teens already diagnosed with conduct disorder over the course of a year.
Thomson and James suggest that the emotional side of a mother’s personality, rather than manipulation, impulsivity, or rule-breaking, may be most relevant to whether callous traits persist or grow during adolescence. People high in affective psychopathic traits tend to show less empathy, take others’ perspectives less often, and have trouble identifying and describing emotions. Developmental theories propose that these are the same skills parents draw on to help children build empathy and a conscience, although the study did not measure parenting directly.
The authors also note that the sex difference might reflect something specific to mother-daughter relationships rather than girls being more sensitive to family influences in general. Because treatments that involve caregivers tend to work better for disruptive behavior problems than those focused on the child alone, the researchers suggest that assessing caregivers’ emotional traits could help clinicians understand a family’s risk, though they stop short of recommending specific interventions.
As with all research, there are some caveats to consider. The study shows an association over time, not a cause. Because most participating mothers were biological mothers, the link could reflect shared genes, the way mothers with these traits interact with their children, or a mix of both, and the design cannot tell these apart.
The mothers in the study were not diagnosed with psychopathy. The questionnaire measures traits along a continuum, and the analysis compared mothers who scored somewhat higher or lower on it. Both mothers and teens also reported on themselves, so their answers may have been shaped by how willing or able they were to describe their own emotions honestly.
The sample was relatively small, came from a single healthcare system, and included only teens already diagnosed with conduct disorder, so the results may not apply to teens in the general population. The study also did not measure whether the teens had experienced childhood maltreatment, which may contribute to callous-unemotional traits. The authors call for future studies that combine genetic information with direct observations of how parents and teens interact, and that include fathers, to clarify how caregiver personality and caregiving together shape these traits over time.
The study, “Maternal psychopathic traits prospectively predict youth callous-unemotional traits,” was authored by Nicholas D. Thomson and Jessica J. James.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
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-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #MaternalAffectiveTraits #CallousUnemotional #AdolescentPsychopathy #ConductDisorderResearch #AffectiveFacet #ParentInfluence #TeenBehaviorPrediction #GirlsVsBoys #PsychopathyInParents #MentalHealthResearch
-
DATE: September 29, 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: Desk setups that encourage an expansive posture may boost risk-taking
URL: https://www.psypost.org/desk-setups-that-encourage-an-expansive-posture-may-boost-risk-taking/
A recent study published in British Journal of Psychology suggests that people’s physical posture, even when influenced naturally by their environment, can affect their mood and willingness to take risks. The findings indicate that environments forcing individuals into a more upright, expansive position might subtly encourage riskier decisions compared to settings that cause them to hunch over.
The concept of embodied emotion suggests that adopting the physical expressions of an emotion can trigger the experience of that emotion. For instance, power poses involve making the body expansive and upright to signal dominance, while contractive postures involve hunching and taking up less physical space to signal submission.
Early research claimed that deliberately holding expansive body postures boosts feelings of dominance and leads to riskier decisions, according to a widely cited 2010 study. However, major replication efforts, such as a high-profile 2015 replication, failed to find any change in risk-taking from deliberate power posing. This sparked a debate over whether the original findings were genuine or simply the result of people guessing what the experimenters wanted them to do.
Subsequent research showed that subtly guiding people into specific postures without explicitly telling them how to pose still alters their mood and cognitive performance, as seen in a 2021 study. Relatedly, a study covered by PsyPost in 2024 found that naturally standing more upright is associated with higher levels of social dominance orientation. This progression led researchers to ask a new question: can an incidental manipulation of posture, where the physical environment naturally nudges someone into a stance, influence risk-taking behavior without them knowing it?
The research, led by Soren Wainio-Theberge of McGill University, aimed to test this question. The researchers recruited 198 participants, mostly young women, and randomly assigned them to two different experimental groups. An additional 113 participants, recruited as part of a different project, were included to serve as a control group.
The study utilized an incidental posture manipulation, meaning that instead of instructing participants to sit a certain way, the researchers altered the physical environment. Participants sat at an adjustable table to complete a computerized task on a tablet. For the expansive group, the table was raised and the tablet was placed on a stand slightly above eye level, prompting an upright posture. For the contractive group, the table was lowered to near knee level, forcing participants to hunch over to see the screen.
To measure risk-taking, participants completed the Balloon Analogue Risk Task. In this task, participants earn virtual money by pumping up a digital balloon. Each pump adds virtual money to a temporary pot, but if the balloon pops, the money for that round is lost, requiring participants to decide when to cash out and bank their earnings or take the risk of another pump.
The researchers also recorded participants with a video camera to objectively measure their actual neck angles, ensuring they were genuinely adopting the intended postures. Finally, participants completed questionnaires about their mood and feelings of pride before and after the task.
The environmental manipulation successfully changed participants’ postures without most of them realizing it. Video analysis confirmed that those in the expansive group sat with a more extended, upright neck angle compared to the hunched posture of the contractive group. Most participants later reported having no idea that their posture was being manipulated by the setup.
In terms of behavior, the expansive group exhibited higher levels of risk-taking. As the experiment progressed, participants in the expansive group chose to pump the balloons more times before cashing out compared to those in the contractive group. This increase in risk-taking translated to slightly higher overall earnings for the expansive group, averaging 701 virtual dollars compared to 645 in the contractive group, without an increase in the number of balloons that actually popped.
When comparing the results to the control group, who completed the task at a standard desk setup, the researchers noticed that the expansive group drove the behavioral differences. The expansive group took more risks than the control group, while the contractive group behaved similarly to the controls. Physical posture also influenced emotional states, with a more upright neck angle predicting a stronger sense of self-reported pride after the task.
These results stand in tension with a 2017 study covered by PsyPost, which found that deliberate power posing had no beneficial effects on risk-taking in real-world situations. However, the new study induced posture subtly through environmental setup rather than instructing participants to hold deliberate poses, which may account for the differing behavioral outcomes.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study relied primarily on young, female university students from a single Western country. This specific demographic means the findings might not naturally apply to older adults, males, or people from other cultural backgrounds where social dominance is expressed differently.
Allowing participants to adopt postures naturally in response to their environment also created physical variability. In the contractive group, some people dropped their heads to look at the screen, while others leaned forward from the hips. This inconsistency makes it harder to pin down exactly which physical movements drive the changes in mood and behavior, suggesting a need for future studies to track body mechanics in greater detail.
The study, “Manipulating posture implicitly through environmental constraints influences mood and risk-taking behaviour,” was authored by Soren Wainio-Theberge and Jorge Armony.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/desk-setups-that-encourage-an-expansive-posture-may-boost-risk-taking/
-------------------------------------------------
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #PostureAndRisk #PowerPosing #EmbodiedEmotion #ExpansivePosture #RiskTakingBehavior #EnvironmentalCues #BalloonTask #PsychologyStudy #PostureManipulation #HeadUpMoodBoost
-
DATE: September 29, 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: Desk setups that encourage an expansive posture may boost risk-taking
URL: https://www.psypost.org/desk-setups-that-encourage-an-expansive-posture-may-boost-risk-taking/
A recent study published in British Journal of Psychology suggests that people’s physical posture, even when influenced naturally by their environment, can affect their mood and willingness to take risks. The findings indicate that environments forcing individuals into a more upright, expansive position might subtly encourage riskier decisions compared to settings that cause them to hunch over.
The concept of embodied emotion suggests that adopting the physical expressions of an emotion can trigger the experience of that emotion. For instance, power poses involve making the body expansive and upright to signal dominance, while contractive postures involve hunching and taking up less physical space to signal submission.
Early research claimed that deliberately holding expansive body postures boosts feelings of dominance and leads to riskier decisions, according to a widely cited 2010 study. However, major replication efforts, such as a high-profile 2015 replication, failed to find any change in risk-taking from deliberate power posing. This sparked a debate over whether the original findings were genuine or simply the result of people guessing what the experimenters wanted them to do.
Subsequent research showed that subtly guiding people into specific postures without explicitly telling them how to pose still alters their mood and cognitive performance, as seen in a 2021 study. Relatedly, a study covered by PsyPost in 2024 found that naturally standing more upright is associated with higher levels of social dominance orientation. This progression led researchers to ask a new question: can an incidental manipulation of posture, where the physical environment naturally nudges someone into a stance, influence risk-taking behavior without them knowing it?
The research, led by Soren Wainio-Theberge of McGill University, aimed to test this question. The researchers recruited 198 participants, mostly young women, and randomly assigned them to two different experimental groups. An additional 113 participants, recruited as part of a different project, were included to serve as a control group.
The study utilized an incidental posture manipulation, meaning that instead of instructing participants to sit a certain way, the researchers altered the physical environment. Participants sat at an adjustable table to complete a computerized task on a tablet. For the expansive group, the table was raised and the tablet was placed on a stand slightly above eye level, prompting an upright posture. For the contractive group, the table was lowered to near knee level, forcing participants to hunch over to see the screen.
To measure risk-taking, participants completed the Balloon Analogue Risk Task. In this task, participants earn virtual money by pumping up a digital balloon. Each pump adds virtual money to a temporary pot, but if the balloon pops, the money for that round is lost, requiring participants to decide when to cash out and bank their earnings or take the risk of another pump.
The researchers also recorded participants with a video camera to objectively measure their actual neck angles, ensuring they were genuinely adopting the intended postures. Finally, participants completed questionnaires about their mood and feelings of pride before and after the task.
The environmental manipulation successfully changed participants’ postures without most of them realizing it. Video analysis confirmed that those in the expansive group sat with a more extended, upright neck angle compared to the hunched posture of the contractive group. Most participants later reported having no idea that their posture was being manipulated by the setup.
In terms of behavior, the expansive group exhibited higher levels of risk-taking. As the experiment progressed, participants in the expansive group chose to pump the balloons more times before cashing out compared to those in the contractive group. This increase in risk-taking translated to slightly higher overall earnings for the expansive group, averaging 701 virtual dollars compared to 645 in the contractive group, without an increase in the number of balloons that actually popped.
When comparing the results to the control group, who completed the task at a standard desk setup, the researchers noticed that the expansive group drove the behavioral differences. The expansive group took more risks than the control group, while the contractive group behaved similarly to the controls. Physical posture also influenced emotional states, with a more upright neck angle predicting a stronger sense of self-reported pride after the task.
These results stand in tension with a 2017 study covered by PsyPost, which found that deliberate power posing had no beneficial effects on risk-taking in real-world situations. However, the new study induced posture subtly through environmental setup rather than instructing participants to hold deliberate poses, which may account for the differing behavioral outcomes.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study relied primarily on young, female university students from a single Western country. This specific demographic means the findings might not naturally apply to older adults, males, or people from other cultural backgrounds where social dominance is expressed differently.
Allowing participants to adopt postures naturally in response to their environment also created physical variability. In the contractive group, some people dropped their heads to look at the screen, while others leaned forward from the hips. This inconsistency makes it harder to pin down exactly which physical movements drive the changes in mood and behavior, suggesting a need for future studies to track body mechanics in greater detail.
The study, “Manipulating posture implicitly through environmental constraints influences mood and risk-taking behaviour,” was authored by Soren Wainio-Theberge and Jorge Armony.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/desk-setups-that-encourage-an-expansive-posture-may-boost-risk-taking/
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-
DATE: September 29, 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: Desk setups that encourage an expansive posture may boost risk-taking
URL: https://www.psypost.org/desk-setups-that-encourage-an-expansive-posture-may-boost-risk-taking/
A recent study published in British Journal of Psychology suggests that people’s physical posture, even when influenced naturally by their environment, can affect their mood and willingness to take risks. The findings indicate that environments forcing individuals into a more upright, expansive position might subtly encourage riskier decisions compared to settings that cause them to hunch over.
The concept of embodied emotion suggests that adopting the physical expressions of an emotion can trigger the experience of that emotion. For instance, power poses involve making the body expansive and upright to signal dominance, while contractive postures involve hunching and taking up less physical space to signal submission.
Early research claimed that deliberately holding expansive body postures boosts feelings of dominance and leads to riskier decisions, according to a widely cited 2010 study. However, major replication efforts, such as a high-profile 2015 replication, failed to find any change in risk-taking from deliberate power posing. This sparked a debate over whether the original findings were genuine or simply the result of people guessing what the experimenters wanted them to do.
Subsequent research showed that subtly guiding people into specific postures without explicitly telling them how to pose still alters their mood and cognitive performance, as seen in a 2021 study. Relatedly, a study covered by PsyPost in 2024 found that naturally standing more upright is associated with higher levels of social dominance orientation. This progression led researchers to ask a new question: can an incidental manipulation of posture, where the physical environment naturally nudges someone into a stance, influence risk-taking behavior without them knowing it?
The research, led by Soren Wainio-Theberge of McGill University, aimed to test this question. The researchers recruited 198 participants, mostly young women, and randomly assigned them to two different experimental groups. An additional 113 participants, recruited as part of a different project, were included to serve as a control group.
The study utilized an incidental posture manipulation, meaning that instead of instructing participants to sit a certain way, the researchers altered the physical environment. Participants sat at an adjustable table to complete a computerized task on a tablet. For the expansive group, the table was raised and the tablet was placed on a stand slightly above eye level, prompting an upright posture. For the contractive group, the table was lowered to near knee level, forcing participants to hunch over to see the screen.
To measure risk-taking, participants completed the Balloon Analogue Risk Task. In this task, participants earn virtual money by pumping up a digital balloon. Each pump adds virtual money to a temporary pot, but if the balloon pops, the money for that round is lost, requiring participants to decide when to cash out and bank their earnings or take the risk of another pump.
The researchers also recorded participants with a video camera to objectively measure their actual neck angles, ensuring they were genuinely adopting the intended postures. Finally, participants completed questionnaires about their mood and feelings of pride before and after the task.
The environmental manipulation successfully changed participants’ postures without most of them realizing it. Video analysis confirmed that those in the expansive group sat with a more extended, upright neck angle compared to the hunched posture of the contractive group. Most participants later reported having no idea that their posture was being manipulated by the setup.
In terms of behavior, the expansive group exhibited higher levels of risk-taking. As the experiment progressed, participants in the expansive group chose to pump the balloons more times before cashing out compared to those in the contractive group. This increase in risk-taking translated to slightly higher overall earnings for the expansive group, averaging 701 virtual dollars compared to 645 in the contractive group, without an increase in the number of balloons that actually popped.
When comparing the results to the control group, who completed the task at a standard desk setup, the researchers noticed that the expansive group drove the behavioral differences. The expansive group took more risks than the control group, while the contractive group behaved similarly to the controls. Physical posture also influenced emotional states, with a more upright neck angle predicting a stronger sense of self-reported pride after the task.
These results stand in tension with a 2017 study covered by PsyPost, which found that deliberate power posing had no beneficial effects on risk-taking in real-world situations. However, the new study induced posture subtly through environmental setup rather than instructing participants to hold deliberate poses, which may account for the differing behavioral outcomes.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study relied primarily on young, female university students from a single Western country. This specific demographic means the findings might not naturally apply to older adults, males, or people from other cultural backgrounds where social dominance is expressed differently.
Allowing participants to adopt postures naturally in response to their environment also created physical variability. In the contractive group, some people dropped their heads to look at the screen, while others leaned forward from the hips. This inconsistency makes it harder to pin down exactly which physical movements drive the changes in mood and behavior, suggesting a need for future studies to track body mechanics in greater detail.
The study, “Manipulating posture implicitly through environmental constraints influences mood and risk-taking behaviour,” was authored by Soren Wainio-Theberge and Jorge Armony.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/desk-setups-that-encourage-an-expansive-posture-may-boost-risk-taking/
-------------------------------------------------
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-
DATE: September 29, 2026 at 12:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Brief exposure to uplifting YouTube clips eases depressive feelings
URL: https://www.psypost.org/watching-hopeful-videos-online-can-reduce-short-term-depression/
A new study suggests that watching short, uplifting videos online can reduce momentary feelings of depression. Participants who viewed hopeful video clips experienced increased positive emotions and greater motivation compared to those who watched merely pleasant content. The research was published in Psychology of Popular Media.
Depression affects millions of people globally, ranging from mild daily struggles to severe mood disorders. Despite this widespread burden, a large portion of those individuals never receive formal treatment. Barriers such as limited access to healthcare, financial constraints, and social stigma keep many from seeking traditional face-to-face therapy. This gap in care leaves a pressing need for accessible, low-cost methods to support emotional well-being in daily life.
Psychological research often focuses on positive emotions as a way to buffer against depressive feelings. Theories suggest that positive emotional states broaden a person’s cognitive flexibility, helping them build psychological resilience over time. A specific concept called hope theory breaks this future-oriented motivation down into two distinct parts.
The first is agency thinking, which is the internal motivation or drive to pursue goals. The second is pathway thinking, which involves the ability to create specific plans or strategies to reach those goals. Depression often diminishes both of these capacities, leaving individuals feeling helpless and unmotivated.
Yanhan Zhao, a psychology researcher at Beijing Normal University, led a team to investigate whether everyday digital content could tap into these specific cognitive mechanisms. Zhao and colleagues wanted to see if brief exposure to media tailored to elicit hope could improve mood more effectively than general positive entertainment. They focused on video-sharing platforms, which offer a vast, free library of emotional content that people already use to regulate their daily moods.
To conduct the experiment, the researchers first needed a systematic way to identify hopeful videos. They started with a pool of 236 public YouTube videos and used computer software to analyze the emotional tone of viewer comments. Rather than relying solely on the visual content of the videos, the team looked for content that generated specific reactions from the audience.
Using an established psychological model, they categorized hope as a combination of anticipation and trust. Videos that generated high levels of these two emotions in the comments were classified as hopeful. These clips often featured narratives of personal growth, overcoming adversity, and goal pursuit.
For comparison, the team identified a second set of videos that were generally positive but lacked the specific themes of hope. These control videos focused on humor, entertainment, and pleasant daily experiences without any explicit forward-looking narratives. The researchers selected a final pool of thirty hopeful videos and thirty non-hopeful positive videos to use in their experiment. Expert psychologists reviewed the final selections to verify that the videos matched their intended categories.
The study included 385 adult participants recruited online. The researchers started with a larger pool of volunteers but excluded those who failed attention checks or completed the task too quickly, ensuring the final data represented genuine engagement. Before watching any videos, participants completed questionnaires measuring their baseline levels of depression. They also answered questions to determine their general, long-term tendencies toward hopefulness, establishing a baseline for both their agency and pathway thinking.
The researchers then randomly assigned each person to watch either the hopeful videos or the positive control videos. Participants watched two videos from their assigned category, mimicking a natural browsing experience that lasted around ten minutes. Immediately after viewing the content, the participants filled out a second round of questionnaires. These surveys assessed their current momentary feelings of depression, their immediate positive and negative emotions, and their current state of hopefulness.
The researchers observed measurable differences between the two groups. Participants who watched the hopeful videos reported lower momentary depression scores than those who watched the standard positive videos. This benefit occurred consistently regardless of a person’s baseline depression level. The videos helped individuals with severe depression just as much as they helped those with mild or subclinical symptoms.
By analyzing the survey responses, the team identified how the hopeful videos altered the participants’ mindsets. The videos successfully elevated general positive emotions, which in turn contributed to the drop in depressive feelings. This boost in positive emotion accounted for a quarter of the overall reduction in momentary depression.
The hopeful content also sparked a distinct rise in state agency thinking. This means participants felt a temporary boost in their motivation and internal drive to pursue goals. This motivational shift accounted for about fifteen percent of the relief from depressive symptoms. The hopeful videos produced a direct benefit on mood that extended beyond these measured emotional and cognitive shifts, highlighting the unique impact of hope-oriented media.
While the videos improved motivation, they did not increase state pathway thinking. Participants felt more driven, but they did not feel any more equipped to formulate concrete strategies for their goals. The researchers suggest that pathway thinking might represent a more stable psychological trait. Generating concrete plans likely requires longer-term, skill-based interventions rather than a brief emotional boost.
The intervention also failed to alter negative emotions. While participants felt more positive and motivated, their underlying negative feelings remained unchanged. Negative emotions often involve persistent cognitive patterns, like repetitive worrying or rumination. A short video clip might elevate positive feelings without directly dismantling those ingrained negative thoughts.
The research relies entirely on self-reported questionnaires, which can sometimes fail to capture the full depth of a person’s emotional state. People might answer questions in ways they believe the researchers expect, introducing potential bias. The experiment also only tested a single, brief viewing session.
It remains unknown if repeated exposure to hopeful media over days or weeks could produce lasting benefits. Future studies could explore whether combining this accessible digital mood regulation with other psychological treatments offers stronger, more durable results for those struggling with depression.
The study, “Brief Exposure to Hopeful YouTube Videos Reduces Depressive Symptoms: Evidence From a Preliminary Study,” was authored by Yanhan Zhao, Danni Wang, Yang Yang, and Zhijin Hou.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/watching-hopeful-videos-online-can-reduce-short-term-depression/
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #HopefulYouTube #MoodBoost #DepressionRelief #PositiveContent #StateAgency #HopeTheory #MentalHealthTech #DigitalWellBeing #ShortVideoTherapy #PsychologyResearch
-
DATE: September 29, 2026 at 12:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Brief exposure to uplifting YouTube clips eases depressive feelings
URL: https://www.psypost.org/watching-hopeful-videos-online-can-reduce-short-term-depression/
A new study suggests that watching short, uplifting videos online can reduce momentary feelings of depression. Participants who viewed hopeful video clips experienced increased positive emotions and greater motivation compared to those who watched merely pleasant content. The research was published in Psychology of Popular Media.
Depression affects millions of people globally, ranging from mild daily struggles to severe mood disorders. Despite this widespread burden, a large portion of those individuals never receive formal treatment. Barriers such as limited access to healthcare, financial constraints, and social stigma keep many from seeking traditional face-to-face therapy. This gap in care leaves a pressing need for accessible, low-cost methods to support emotional well-being in daily life.
Psychological research often focuses on positive emotions as a way to buffer against depressive feelings. Theories suggest that positive emotional states broaden a person’s cognitive flexibility, helping them build psychological resilience over time. A specific concept called hope theory breaks this future-oriented motivation down into two distinct parts.
The first is agency thinking, which is the internal motivation or drive to pursue goals. The second is pathway thinking, which involves the ability to create specific plans or strategies to reach those goals. Depression often diminishes both of these capacities, leaving individuals feeling helpless and unmotivated.
Yanhan Zhao, a psychology researcher at Beijing Normal University, led a team to investigate whether everyday digital content could tap into these specific cognitive mechanisms. Zhao and colleagues wanted to see if brief exposure to media tailored to elicit hope could improve mood more effectively than general positive entertainment. They focused on video-sharing platforms, which offer a vast, free library of emotional content that people already use to regulate their daily moods.
To conduct the experiment, the researchers first needed a systematic way to identify hopeful videos. They started with a pool of 236 public YouTube videos and used computer software to analyze the emotional tone of viewer comments. Rather than relying solely on the visual content of the videos, the team looked for content that generated specific reactions from the audience.
Using an established psychological model, they categorized hope as a combination of anticipation and trust. Videos that generated high levels of these two emotions in the comments were classified as hopeful. These clips often featured narratives of personal growth, overcoming adversity, and goal pursuit.
For comparison, the team identified a second set of videos that were generally positive but lacked the specific themes of hope. These control videos focused on humor, entertainment, and pleasant daily experiences without any explicit forward-looking narratives. The researchers selected a final pool of thirty hopeful videos and thirty non-hopeful positive videos to use in their experiment. Expert psychologists reviewed the final selections to verify that the videos matched their intended categories.
The study included 385 adult participants recruited online. The researchers started with a larger pool of volunteers but excluded those who failed attention checks or completed the task too quickly, ensuring the final data represented genuine engagement. Before watching any videos, participants completed questionnaires measuring their baseline levels of depression. They also answered questions to determine their general, long-term tendencies toward hopefulness, establishing a baseline for both their agency and pathway thinking.
The researchers then randomly assigned each person to watch either the hopeful videos or the positive control videos. Participants watched two videos from their assigned category, mimicking a natural browsing experience that lasted around ten minutes. Immediately after viewing the content, the participants filled out a second round of questionnaires. These surveys assessed their current momentary feelings of depression, their immediate positive and negative emotions, and their current state of hopefulness.
The researchers observed measurable differences between the two groups. Participants who watched the hopeful videos reported lower momentary depression scores than those who watched the standard positive videos. This benefit occurred consistently regardless of a person’s baseline depression level. The videos helped individuals with severe depression just as much as they helped those with mild or subclinical symptoms.
By analyzing the survey responses, the team identified how the hopeful videos altered the participants’ mindsets. The videos successfully elevated general positive emotions, which in turn contributed to the drop in depressive feelings. This boost in positive emotion accounted for a quarter of the overall reduction in momentary depression.
The hopeful content also sparked a distinct rise in state agency thinking. This means participants felt a temporary boost in their motivation and internal drive to pursue goals. This motivational shift accounted for about fifteen percent of the relief from depressive symptoms. The hopeful videos produced a direct benefit on mood that extended beyond these measured emotional and cognitive shifts, highlighting the unique impact of hope-oriented media.
While the videos improved motivation, they did not increase state pathway thinking. Participants felt more driven, but they did not feel any more equipped to formulate concrete strategies for their goals. The researchers suggest that pathway thinking might represent a more stable psychological trait. Generating concrete plans likely requires longer-term, skill-based interventions rather than a brief emotional boost.
The intervention also failed to alter negative emotions. While participants felt more positive and motivated, their underlying negative feelings remained unchanged. Negative emotions often involve persistent cognitive patterns, like repetitive worrying or rumination. A short video clip might elevate positive feelings without directly dismantling those ingrained negative thoughts.
The research relies entirely on self-reported questionnaires, which can sometimes fail to capture the full depth of a person’s emotional state. People might answer questions in ways they believe the researchers expect, introducing potential bias. The experiment also only tested a single, brief viewing session.
It remains unknown if repeated exposure to hopeful media over days or weeks could produce lasting benefits. Future studies could explore whether combining this accessible digital mood regulation with other psychological treatments offers stronger, more durable results for those struggling with depression.
The study, “Brief Exposure to Hopeful YouTube Videos Reduces Depressive Symptoms: Evidence From a Preliminary Study,” was authored by Yanhan Zhao, Danni Wang, Yang Yang, and Zhijin Hou.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/watching-hopeful-videos-online-can-reduce-short-term-depression/
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #HopefulYouTube #MoodBoost #DepressionRelief #PositiveContent #StateAgency #HopeTheory #MentalHealthTech #DigitalWellBeing #ShortVideoTherapy #PsychologyResearch
-
DATE: September 29, 2026 at 12:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Brief exposure to uplifting YouTube clips eases depressive feelings
URL: https://www.psypost.org/watching-hopeful-videos-online-can-reduce-short-term-depression/
A new study suggests that watching short, uplifting videos online can reduce momentary feelings of depression. Participants who viewed hopeful video clips experienced increased positive emotions and greater motivation compared to those who watched merely pleasant content. The research was published in Psychology of Popular Media.
Depression affects millions of people globally, ranging from mild daily struggles to severe mood disorders. Despite this widespread burden, a large portion of those individuals never receive formal treatment. Barriers such as limited access to healthcare, financial constraints, and social stigma keep many from seeking traditional face-to-face therapy. This gap in care leaves a pressing need for accessible, low-cost methods to support emotional well-being in daily life.
Psychological research often focuses on positive emotions as a way to buffer against depressive feelings. Theories suggest that positive emotional states broaden a person’s cognitive flexibility, helping them build psychological resilience over time. A specific concept called hope theory breaks this future-oriented motivation down into two distinct parts.
The first is agency thinking, which is the internal motivation or drive to pursue goals. The second is pathway thinking, which involves the ability to create specific plans or strategies to reach those goals. Depression often diminishes both of these capacities, leaving individuals feeling helpless and unmotivated.
Yanhan Zhao, a psychology researcher at Beijing Normal University, led a team to investigate whether everyday digital content could tap into these specific cognitive mechanisms. Zhao and colleagues wanted to see if brief exposure to media tailored to elicit hope could improve mood more effectively than general positive entertainment. They focused on video-sharing platforms, which offer a vast, free library of emotional content that people already use to regulate their daily moods.
To conduct the experiment, the researchers first needed a systematic way to identify hopeful videos. They started with a pool of 236 public YouTube videos and used computer software to analyze the emotional tone of viewer comments. Rather than relying solely on the visual content of the videos, the team looked for content that generated specific reactions from the audience.
Using an established psychological model, they categorized hope as a combination of anticipation and trust. Videos that generated high levels of these two emotions in the comments were classified as hopeful. These clips often featured narratives of personal growth, overcoming adversity, and goal pursuit.
For comparison, the team identified a second set of videos that were generally positive but lacked the specific themes of hope. These control videos focused on humor, entertainment, and pleasant daily experiences without any explicit forward-looking narratives. The researchers selected a final pool of thirty hopeful videos and thirty non-hopeful positive videos to use in their experiment. Expert psychologists reviewed the final selections to verify that the videos matched their intended categories.
The study included 385 adult participants recruited online. The researchers started with a larger pool of volunteers but excluded those who failed attention checks or completed the task too quickly, ensuring the final data represented genuine engagement. Before watching any videos, participants completed questionnaires measuring their baseline levels of depression. They also answered questions to determine their general, long-term tendencies toward hopefulness, establishing a baseline for both their agency and pathway thinking.
The researchers then randomly assigned each person to watch either the hopeful videos or the positive control videos. Participants watched two videos from their assigned category, mimicking a natural browsing experience that lasted around ten minutes. Immediately after viewing the content, the participants filled out a second round of questionnaires. These surveys assessed their current momentary feelings of depression, their immediate positive and negative emotions, and their current state of hopefulness.
The researchers observed measurable differences between the two groups. Participants who watched the hopeful videos reported lower momentary depression scores than those who watched the standard positive videos. This benefit occurred consistently regardless of a person’s baseline depression level. The videos helped individuals with severe depression just as much as they helped those with mild or subclinical symptoms.
By analyzing the survey responses, the team identified how the hopeful videos altered the participants’ mindsets. The videos successfully elevated general positive emotions, which in turn contributed to the drop in depressive feelings. This boost in positive emotion accounted for a quarter of the overall reduction in momentary depression.
The hopeful content also sparked a distinct rise in state agency thinking. This means participants felt a temporary boost in their motivation and internal drive to pursue goals. This motivational shift accounted for about fifteen percent of the relief from depressive symptoms. The hopeful videos produced a direct benefit on mood that extended beyond these measured emotional and cognitive shifts, highlighting the unique impact of hope-oriented media.
While the videos improved motivation, they did not increase state pathway thinking. Participants felt more driven, but they did not feel any more equipped to formulate concrete strategies for their goals. The researchers suggest that pathway thinking might represent a more stable psychological trait. Generating concrete plans likely requires longer-term, skill-based interventions rather than a brief emotional boost.
The intervention also failed to alter negative emotions. While participants felt more positive and motivated, their underlying negative feelings remained unchanged. Negative emotions often involve persistent cognitive patterns, like repetitive worrying or rumination. A short video clip might elevate positive feelings without directly dismantling those ingrained negative thoughts.
The research relies entirely on self-reported questionnaires, which can sometimes fail to capture the full depth of a person’s emotional state. People might answer questions in ways they believe the researchers expect, introducing potential bias. The experiment also only tested a single, brief viewing session.
It remains unknown if repeated exposure to hopeful media over days or weeks could produce lasting benefits. Future studies could explore whether combining this accessible digital mood regulation with other psychological treatments offers stronger, more durable results for those struggling with depression.
The study, “Brief Exposure to Hopeful YouTube Videos Reduces Depressive Symptoms: Evidence From a Preliminary Study,” was authored by Yanhan Zhao, Danni Wang, Yang Yang, and Zhijin Hou.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/watching-hopeful-videos-online-can-reduce-short-term-depression/
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #HopefulYouTube #MoodBoost #DepressionRelief #PositiveContent #StateAgency #HopeTheory #MentalHealthTech #DigitalWellBeing #ShortVideoTherapy #PsychologyResearch
-
DATE: September 29, 2026 at 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: Psychological resilience may buffer children’s brains against some effects of abuse
Among children with lower psychological resilience, those who experienced more abuse showed brain-network patterns linked with depression, physical symptoms and later anxiety, according to a study published in Development and Psychopathology. These associations did not appear in children with average or higher resilience. The findings suggest resilience may protect against some effects of abuse, although it did not appear to provide the same protection against neglect.
Childhood adversity can influence mental health in many ways. Abuse may place children in a state of heightened alertness, making them more sensitive to possible danger and more likely to interpret ordinary experiences as threatening. Stress can also affect how the brain coordinates systems involved in emotions, attention and physical sensations.
Psychological resilience describes the ability to adapt and continue functioning during difficult circumstances. It is not necessarily a fixed personality trait. Researchers increasingly view resilience as a capacity that can change with support, relationships and intervention.
The research team wanted to investigate whether resilience altered the relationship between different forms of adversity and the way brain networks communicate. They were particularly interested in whether abuse and neglect affected the brain in the same way. Although both experiences can harm children, abuse involves threat and fear, while neglect more often involves a lack of emotional, physical or material support.
Led by Yuanyuan Li of Beijing Normal University, the team studied 94 children, 48 boys and 46 girls, between the ages of 10 and 14 who attended elementary schools in rural China. The authors describe the sample as marked by poverty and by the experience of being “left behind,” a term for children in rural China whose parents have migrated to cities for work.
Participants completed questionnaires about childhood adversity, resilience, depression, anxiety and physical symptoms. Abuse was measured as a combination of physical and emotional abuse, and neglect as a combination of physical and emotional neglect. Resilience was assessed with a questionnaire asking how well children cope with challenges, such as whether they feel able to deal with whatever comes their way.
Immediately afterward, the children underwent a resting-state functional MRI scan, which tracks how closely activity in different brain systems rises and falls together while a person lies still without performing a specific task. This synchronization, known as functional connectivity, is often interpreted as a sign of how strongly brain systems communicate. Six months later, the children again reported their depression, anxiety and physical symptoms.
Two children were excluded because they moved excessively during scanning, leaving 92 participants, with an average age of about 11.8 years, for the main analysis. The researchers examined connections within and between seven large-scale brain networks. The key findings involved three of them: the limbic network, which helps process emotions and motivation; the ventral attention network, also known as the salience network, which identifies important or potentially threatening information; and the somatomotor network, which processes movement and bodily sensations.
Across the full sample, neither abuse nor neglect was linked to any of the brain-network measures after the researchers accounted for age, sex, perceived socioeconomic status and the other type of adversity. The associations with abuse emerged only when children’s resilience levels were taken into account.
Among children with lower resilience, greater exposure to abuse was associated with stronger connectivity between the limbic network and the somatomotor network. This pattern helped explain the link between abuse and more physical complaints, such as headaches, stomachaches and tiredness, as well as higher depression scores at the initial assessment.
In these children, greater abuse was also associated with stronger connectivity between the limbic and ventral attention networks. Both brain patterns helped explain higher anxiety levels six months later, even after the researchers accounted for the children’s anxiety at the start of the study. These associations were absent in children with average or higher resilience.
However, the results did not show the same protective effect for neglect. Neglect was not significantly associated with the brain-network measures, regardless of the children’s resilience levels, although children who reported more neglect did tend to report more depressive symptoms, both at the start of the study and six months later. This ran counter to the researchers’ expectation that resilience would protect against both forms of adversity.
The authors suggested that neglect may be more chronic and widespread in the study population, potentially making it harder for resilience alone to offset its effects. They argued that addressing neglect may require easing the underlying deprivation, for example by providing more material resources and supporting more responsive caregiving.
Li and colleagues concluded: “Our findings reveal that psychological resilience specifically shields against the neurotoxic effects of abuse by modulating networks involved in emotion regulation, salience, and sensorimotor processing.”
Some limitations should be noted. For example, the study measured adversity and brain connectivity at the same time, so it cannot establish cause and effect. The children also reported their own past experiences of adversity, which may introduce recall bias, since children may not remember or report past experiences accurately. Sexual abuse was not assessed because of the sensitivity of the topic in Chinese elementary schools. The sample was also relatively small for detecting subtle effects, and the link between brain connectivity and later anxiety was no longer statistically significant when the researchers used a stricter standard for excluding children who moved during scanning.
The study “Psychological resilience moderates the relationship between childhood adversity, brain network connectivity, and wellness” was authored by Yuanyuan Li, Zelin Liu, Bowen Hu, Jiahua Xu, Jiale Xiao, Boxuan Chen, Ting Tian, Ying He, Shaozheng Qin and Danhua Lin.
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-
DATE: September 29, 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: Psychological resilience may buffer children’s brains against some effects of abuse
Among children with lower psychological resilience, those who experienced more abuse showed brain-network patterns linked with depression, physical symptoms and later anxiety, according to a study published in Development and Psychopathology. These associations did not appear in children with average or higher resilience. The findings suggest resilience may protect against some effects of abuse, although it did not appear to provide the same protection against neglect.
Childhood adversity can influence mental health in many ways. Abuse may place children in a state of heightened alertness, making them more sensitive to possible danger and more likely to interpret ordinary experiences as threatening. Stress can also affect how the brain coordinates systems involved in emotions, attention and physical sensations.
Psychological resilience describes the ability to adapt and continue functioning during difficult circumstances. It is not necessarily a fixed personality trait. Researchers increasingly view resilience as a capacity that can change with support, relationships and intervention.
The research team wanted to investigate whether resilience altered the relationship between different forms of adversity and the way brain networks communicate. They were particularly interested in whether abuse and neglect affected the brain in the same way. Although both experiences can harm children, abuse involves threat and fear, while neglect more often involves a lack of emotional, physical or material support.
Led by Yuanyuan Li of Beijing Normal University, the team studied 94 children, 48 boys and 46 girls, between the ages of 10 and 14 who attended elementary schools in rural China. The authors describe the sample as marked by poverty and by the experience of being “left behind,” a term for children in rural China whose parents have migrated to cities for work.
Participants completed questionnaires about childhood adversity, resilience, depression, anxiety and physical symptoms. Abuse was measured as a combination of physical and emotional abuse, and neglect as a combination of physical and emotional neglect. Resilience was assessed with a questionnaire asking how well children cope with challenges, such as whether they feel able to deal with whatever comes their way.
Immediately afterward, the children underwent a resting-state functional MRI scan, which tracks how closely activity in different brain systems rises and falls together while a person lies still without performing a specific task. This synchronization, known as functional connectivity, is often interpreted as a sign of how strongly brain systems communicate. Six months later, the children again reported their depression, anxiety and physical symptoms.
Two children were excluded because they moved excessively during scanning, leaving 92 participants, with an average age of about 11.8 years, for the main analysis. The researchers examined connections within and between seven large-scale brain networks. The key findings involved three of them: the limbic network, which helps process emotions and motivation; the ventral attention network, also known as the salience network, which identifies important or potentially threatening information; and the somatomotor network, which processes movement and bodily sensations.
Across the full sample, neither abuse nor neglect was linked to any of the brain-network measures after the researchers accounted for age, sex, perceived socioeconomic status and the other type of adversity. The associations with abuse emerged only when children’s resilience levels were taken into account.
Among children with lower resilience, greater exposure to abuse was associated with stronger connectivity between the limbic network and the somatomotor network. This pattern helped explain the link between abuse and more physical complaints, such as headaches, stomachaches and tiredness, as well as higher depression scores at the initial assessment.
In these children, greater abuse was also associated with stronger connectivity between the limbic and ventral attention networks. Both brain patterns helped explain higher anxiety levels six months later, even after the researchers accounted for the children’s anxiety at the start of the study. These associations were absent in children with average or higher resilience.
However, the results did not show the same protective effect for neglect. Neglect was not significantly associated with the brain-network measures, regardless of the children’s resilience levels, although children who reported more neglect did tend to report more depressive symptoms, both at the start of the study and six months later. This ran counter to the researchers’ expectation that resilience would protect against both forms of adversity.
The authors suggested that neglect may be more chronic and widespread in the study population, potentially making it harder for resilience alone to offset its effects. They argued that addressing neglect may require easing the underlying deprivation, for example by providing more material resources and supporting more responsive caregiving.
Li and colleagues concluded: “Our findings reveal that psychological resilience specifically shields against the neurotoxic effects of abuse by modulating networks involved in emotion regulation, salience, and sensorimotor processing.”
Some limitations should be noted. For example, the study measured adversity and brain connectivity at the same time, so it cannot establish cause and effect. The children also reported their own past experiences of adversity, which may introduce recall bias, since children may not remember or report past experiences accurately. Sexual abuse was not assessed because of the sensitivity of the topic in Chinese elementary schools. The sample was also relatively small for detecting subtle effects, and the link between brain connectivity and later anxiety was no longer statistically significant when the researchers used a stricter standard for excluding children who moved during scanning.
The study “Psychological resilience moderates the relationship between childhood adversity, brain network connectivity, and wellness” was authored by Yuanyuan Li, Zelin Liu, Bowen Hu, Jiahua Xu, Jiale Xiao, Boxuan Chen, Ting Tian, Ying He, Shaozheng Qin and Danhua Lin.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #PsychologicalResilience #ChildhoodAdversity #BrainConnectivity #LimbicNetwork #SalienceNetwork #SensorimotorProcessing #AbuseAndWellbeing #DepressionInChildren #AnxietyInChildren #NeurodevelopmentalPsychology
-
DATE: September 29, 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: Psychological resilience may buffer children’s brains against some effects of abuse
Among children with lower psychological resilience, those who experienced more abuse showed brain-network patterns linked with depression, physical symptoms and later anxiety, according to a study published in Development and Psychopathology. These associations did not appear in children with average or higher resilience. The findings suggest resilience may protect against some effects of abuse, although it did not appear to provide the same protection against neglect.
Childhood adversity can influence mental health in many ways. Abuse may place children in a state of heightened alertness, making them more sensitive to possible danger and more likely to interpret ordinary experiences as threatening. Stress can also affect how the brain coordinates systems involved in emotions, attention and physical sensations.
Psychological resilience describes the ability to adapt and continue functioning during difficult circumstances. It is not necessarily a fixed personality trait. Researchers increasingly view resilience as a capacity that can change with support, relationships and intervention.
The research team wanted to investigate whether resilience altered the relationship between different forms of adversity and the way brain networks communicate. They were particularly interested in whether abuse and neglect affected the brain in the same way. Although both experiences can harm children, abuse involves threat and fear, while neglect more often involves a lack of emotional, physical or material support.
Led by Yuanyuan Li of Beijing Normal University, the team studied 94 children, 48 boys and 46 girls, between the ages of 10 and 14 who attended elementary schools in rural China. The authors describe the sample as marked by poverty and by the experience of being “left behind,” a term for children in rural China whose parents have migrated to cities for work.
Participants completed questionnaires about childhood adversity, resilience, depression, anxiety and physical symptoms. Abuse was measured as a combination of physical and emotional abuse, and neglect as a combination of physical and emotional neglect. Resilience was assessed with a questionnaire asking how well children cope with challenges, such as whether they feel able to deal with whatever comes their way.
Immediately afterward, the children underwent a resting-state functional MRI scan, which tracks how closely activity in different brain systems rises and falls together while a person lies still without performing a specific task. This synchronization, known as functional connectivity, is often interpreted as a sign of how strongly brain systems communicate. Six months later, the children again reported their depression, anxiety and physical symptoms.
Two children were excluded because they moved excessively during scanning, leaving 92 participants, with an average age of about 11.8 years, for the main analysis. The researchers examined connections within and between seven large-scale brain networks. The key findings involved three of them: the limbic network, which helps process emotions and motivation; the ventral attention network, also known as the salience network, which identifies important or potentially threatening information; and the somatomotor network, which processes movement and bodily sensations.
Across the full sample, neither abuse nor neglect was linked to any of the brain-network measures after the researchers accounted for age, sex, perceived socioeconomic status and the other type of adversity. The associations with abuse emerged only when children’s resilience levels were taken into account.
Among children with lower resilience, greater exposure to abuse was associated with stronger connectivity between the limbic network and the somatomotor network. This pattern helped explain the link between abuse and more physical complaints, such as headaches, stomachaches and tiredness, as well as higher depression scores at the initial assessment.
In these children, greater abuse was also associated with stronger connectivity between the limbic and ventral attention networks. Both brain patterns helped explain higher anxiety levels six months later, even after the researchers accounted for the children’s anxiety at the start of the study. These associations were absent in children with average or higher resilience.
However, the results did not show the same protective effect for neglect. Neglect was not significantly associated with the brain-network measures, regardless of the children’s resilience levels, although children who reported more neglect did tend to report more depressive symptoms, both at the start of the study and six months later. This ran counter to the researchers’ expectation that resilience would protect against both forms of adversity.
The authors suggested that neglect may be more chronic and widespread in the study population, potentially making it harder for resilience alone to offset its effects. They argued that addressing neglect may require easing the underlying deprivation, for example by providing more material resources and supporting more responsive caregiving.
Li and colleagues concluded: “Our findings reveal that psychological resilience specifically shields against the neurotoxic effects of abuse by modulating networks involved in emotion regulation, salience, and sensorimotor processing.”
Some limitations should be noted. For example, the study measured adversity and brain connectivity at the same time, so it cannot establish cause and effect. The children also reported their own past experiences of adversity, which may introduce recall bias, since children may not remember or report past experiences accurately. Sexual abuse was not assessed because of the sensitivity of the topic in Chinese elementary schools. The sample was also relatively small for detecting subtle effects, and the link between brain connectivity and later anxiety was no longer statistically significant when the researchers used a stricter standard for excluding children who moved during scanning.
The study “Psychological resilience moderates the relationship between childhood adversity, brain network connectivity, and wellness” was authored by Yuanyuan Li, Zelin Liu, Bowen Hu, Jiahua Xu, Jiale Xiao, Boxuan Chen, Ting Tian, Ying He, Shaozheng Qin and Danhua Lin.
-------------------------------------------------
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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 #PsychologicalResilience #ChildhoodAdversity #BrainConnectivity #LimbicNetwork #SalienceNetwork #SensorimotorProcessing #AbuseAndWellbeing #DepressionInChildren #AnxietyInChildren #NeurodevelopmentalPsychology
-
DATE: September 29, 2026 at 10:53AM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMESDirect article link at end of text block below.
A new cross-sectional study found that 49.0% of US adults who used both alcohol and cannabis in the past month reported using them simultaneously, despite potential compounded risks, including impaired judgment, injury, and intoxication effects. https://t.co/2UNvQZSh4q
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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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #psychotherapist #AlcoholAndCannabis #SubstanceUse #PublicHealth #ImpairedJudgment #CannabisResearch
-
DATE: September 29, 2026 at 10:53AM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMESDirect article link at end of text block below.
A new cross-sectional study found that 49.0% of US adults who used both alcohol and cannabis in the past month reported using them simultaneously, despite potential compounded risks, including impaired judgment, injury, and intoxication effects. https://t.co/2UNvQZSh4q
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".
-------------------------------------------------
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 #AlcoholAndCannabis #SubstanceUse #PublicHealth #ImpairedJudgment #CannabisResearch
-
DATE: September 29, 2026 at 10:53AM
SOURCE: PSYCHIATRIC TIMESDirect article link at end of text block below.
A new cross-sectional study found that 49.0% of US adults who used both alcohol and cannabis in the past month reported using them simultaneously, despite potential compounded risks, including impaired judgment, injury, and intoxication effects. https://t.co/2UNvQZSh4q
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".
-------------------------------------------------
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 #AlcoholAndCannabis #SubstanceUse #PublicHealth #ImpairedJudgment #CannabisResearch
-
DATE: September 29, 2026 at 10:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Faces and bodies send matching signals of attractiveness, but voices tell a different story
People often judge a potential partner based on a combination of their face, body, and voice. A recent study reveals that while facial and bodily attractiveness tend to match up, a person’s voice provides an independent cue about their traits. These findings, published in Evolution and Human Behavior, suggest that our physical features send a mix of redundant and distinct messages to observers.
Evolutionary psychology proposes that human physical traits communicate genetic quality and health to potential mates or rivals. During the search for a partner, individuals evaluate physical attractiveness to gauge underlying fitness. During competition with rivals, individuals might assess physical dominance to determine formidability. Researchers study how these visual and vocal cues combine to form an overall impression of an individual.
One major theoretical framework is the “one ornament hypothesis.” This concept suggests that different physical traits, such as the face and body, are shaped by the same underlying biological factors. In this view, various body parts act as a single, unified signal of health or genetic fitness. If a person has robust immune function or developmental stability, it should reflect across their entire physical appearance.
The second major framework is the “multiple messages hypothesis.” This theory argues that different parts of the body convey entirely separate pieces of information. For example, a face might signal immune system strength, while a voice might indicate physical dominance. If this theory holds true, a person’s individual physical features would not necessarily correlate with one another in the eyes of an observer.
Researchers also suspect that sex hormones like testosterone and estradiol might drive the synchronized development of these physical traits. These hormones guide sexual dimorphism, which refers to the biological differences in physical characteristics between men and women. Higher testosterone in men and higher estradiol in women are thought to influence the development of traits that others perceive as attractive, healthy, or dominant.
To test these competing hypotheses, a research team led by Tobias L. Kordsmeyer of the University of Goettingen designed an experiment. They wanted to examine how independent raters perceived the attractiveness, health, and physical dominance of faces, bodies, and voices. The researchers also sought to test whether sex hormones act as a biological bridge linking these disparate features.
The study included 165 men and 155 women as evaluation targets. The research team collected standardized facial photographs, three-dimensional body scans, and short audio recordings from each participant. The facial photographs featured participants standing against a white wall with a neutral expression.
The three-dimensional body scans were rendered as digital figures that rotated over an eight-second duration. The researchers deliberately removed skin color and texture from these digital models, converting them to a uniform gray. This step ensured that raters would focus entirely on physical shape and proportions, removing skin quality as a potential confounding factor.
To collect voice samples, male participants were recorded speaking about positive aspects of their lives for one minute. Female participants were recorded reading a standardized text known as the rainbow passage. The researchers extracted five-second audio clips from the men’s recordings and used the second sentence of the passage (about 3.5 seconds on average) from the women’s recordings for the final evaluation.
A separate group of 400 independent raters evaluated the collected stimuli. To prevent their judgments of one trait from influencing another, the raters were divided into specific groups. A single rater only evaluated one type of stimulus, such as male faces, female bodies, or male voices. The raters scored the targets for attractiveness, health, and physical dominance using standardized rating scales.
The research team also gathered saliva and hair samples from the targets to measure hormone levels. They measured baseline testosterone and reactive testosterone in men. Reactive testosterone was captured shortly after the men engaged in a competitive task. For women, the researchers assessed baseline testosterone and estradiol levels across different phases of the menstrual cycle.
When analyzing the rating data, the researchers found positive correlations between how raters perceived faces and bodies. Targets whose faces were rated highly for attractiveness and health also tended to receive high ratings for their body shapes. The effects were of medium size, showing a consistent pattern across both male and female targets.
This pattern also held true for physical dominance, though it was only observed for male targets. Men with faces rated as physically dominant also had bodies rated as physically dominant. Female targets did not exhibit a coordinated rating for physical dominance between their faces and bodies.
These positive associations between the face and the body align with the one ornament hypothesis. Observers seem to interpret facial and bodily cues redundantly, picking up on shared information about the individual’s physical condition. Even without skin texture, the bodies provided enough shape information to align with the health and attractiveness ratings of the faces.
The results for vocal recordings painted a different picture. The researchers found very few measurable associations between how raters judged a target’s voice and how they judged the target’s face or body. Voice ratings appeared to operate independently from visual appearance.
An individual might possess a highly rated face or body, but this did not guarantee their voice would be perceived in the same way. This independence supports the multiple messages hypothesis. The human voice seems to act as a separate channel of communication, offering non-redundant information to observers rather than echoing visual cues.
The hormone analysis yielded unexpected results. The researchers found that adult hormone levels did not mediate the correlated perceptions of faces and bodies. While men’s baseline testosterone levels did show some positive associations with facial dominance and vocal attractiveness, the hormones did not serve as the underlying link for synchronized ratings across body parts.
The proposed mechanism of adult sex hormones bridging these distinct traits was not supported by the data. Adjusting for the targets’ body mass index or relationship status did not alter these outcomes. The correlations between traits remained robust even when accounting for body fat.
The study measured adult baseline and reactive hormone levels rather than developmental hormones. Physical traits like bone structure and vocal cord length are heavily shaped by organizational hormones during fetal development and puberty. Adult hormone levels might not accurately reflect the specific hormonal environment that originally sculpted these physical characteristics.
Additionally, the body scans lacked skin color and texture. Skin quality is a known biological indicator of physical health. Stripping this information away might have altered how raters evaluated the overall condition of the targets, even though it successfully isolated the role of physical shape.
The researchers measured subjective impressions of health, dominance, and attractiveness rather than objective medical data. The ratings reveal how people perceive others based on evolutionary psychological cues. They do not confirm whether the highly rated individuals were objectively healthier or physically stronger in reality.
Future investigations could incorporate developmental hormone tracking during adolescence to better understand how biology links physical traits. Researchers might also include other sensory cues, such as body odor or dynamic movement, to build a more comprehensive picture of human nonverbal signaling.
The study, “Correlated perceptions and underlying hormonal factors of bodily, facial, and vocal attractiveness, health, and physical dominance,” was authored by Tobias L. Kordsmeyer, Philine A.C. Rasokat, Julia Stern, Christoph Schild, and Lars Penke.
-------------------------------------------------
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Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #attractiveness #facialandbodysignals #voicevsappearance #oneornamenthypothesis #multiplemessages #hormonesandtraits #physicaldominance #evolutionarypsychology #bodyshape #socialperception
-
DATE: September 29, 2026 at 10:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Faces and bodies send matching signals of attractiveness, but voices tell a different story
People often judge a potential partner based on a combination of their face, body, and voice. A recent study reveals that while facial and bodily attractiveness tend to match up, a person’s voice provides an independent cue about their traits. These findings, published in Evolution and Human Behavior, suggest that our physical features send a mix of redundant and distinct messages to observers.
Evolutionary psychology proposes that human physical traits communicate genetic quality and health to potential mates or rivals. During the search for a partner, individuals evaluate physical attractiveness to gauge underlying fitness. During competition with rivals, individuals might assess physical dominance to determine formidability. Researchers study how these visual and vocal cues combine to form an overall impression of an individual.
One major theoretical framework is the “one ornament hypothesis.” This concept suggests that different physical traits, such as the face and body, are shaped by the same underlying biological factors. In this view, various body parts act as a single, unified signal of health or genetic fitness. If a person has robust immune function or developmental stability, it should reflect across their entire physical appearance.
The second major framework is the “multiple messages hypothesis.” This theory argues that different parts of the body convey entirely separate pieces of information. For example, a face might signal immune system strength, while a voice might indicate physical dominance. If this theory holds true, a person’s individual physical features would not necessarily correlate with one another in the eyes of an observer.
Researchers also suspect that sex hormones like testosterone and estradiol might drive the synchronized development of these physical traits. These hormones guide sexual dimorphism, which refers to the biological differences in physical characteristics between men and women. Higher testosterone in men and higher estradiol in women are thought to influence the development of traits that others perceive as attractive, healthy, or dominant.
To test these competing hypotheses, a research team led by Tobias L. Kordsmeyer of the University of Goettingen designed an experiment. They wanted to examine how independent raters perceived the attractiveness, health, and physical dominance of faces, bodies, and voices. The researchers also sought to test whether sex hormones act as a biological bridge linking these disparate features.
The study included 165 men and 155 women as evaluation targets. The research team collected standardized facial photographs, three-dimensional body scans, and short audio recordings from each participant. The facial photographs featured participants standing against a white wall with a neutral expression.
The three-dimensional body scans were rendered as digital figures that rotated over an eight-second duration. The researchers deliberately removed skin color and texture from these digital models, converting them to a uniform gray. This step ensured that raters would focus entirely on physical shape and proportions, removing skin quality as a potential confounding factor.
To collect voice samples, male participants were recorded speaking about positive aspects of their lives for one minute. Female participants were recorded reading a standardized text known as the rainbow passage. The researchers extracted five-second audio clips from the men’s recordings and used the second sentence of the passage (about 3.5 seconds on average) from the women’s recordings for the final evaluation.
A separate group of 400 independent raters evaluated the collected stimuli. To prevent their judgments of one trait from influencing another, the raters were divided into specific groups. A single rater only evaluated one type of stimulus, such as male faces, female bodies, or male voices. The raters scored the targets for attractiveness, health, and physical dominance using standardized rating scales.
The research team also gathered saliva and hair samples from the targets to measure hormone levels. They measured baseline testosterone and reactive testosterone in men. Reactive testosterone was captured shortly after the men engaged in a competitive task. For women, the researchers assessed baseline testosterone and estradiol levels across different phases of the menstrual cycle.
When analyzing the rating data, the researchers found positive correlations between how raters perceived faces and bodies. Targets whose faces were rated highly for attractiveness and health also tended to receive high ratings for their body shapes. The effects were of medium size, showing a consistent pattern across both male and female targets.
This pattern also held true for physical dominance, though it was only observed for male targets. Men with faces rated as physically dominant also had bodies rated as physically dominant. Female targets did not exhibit a coordinated rating for physical dominance between their faces and bodies.
These positive associations between the face and the body align with the one ornament hypothesis. Observers seem to interpret facial and bodily cues redundantly, picking up on shared information about the individual’s physical condition. Even without skin texture, the bodies provided enough shape information to align with the health and attractiveness ratings of the faces.
The results for vocal recordings painted a different picture. The researchers found very few measurable associations between how raters judged a target’s voice and how they judged the target’s face or body. Voice ratings appeared to operate independently from visual appearance.
An individual might possess a highly rated face or body, but this did not guarantee their voice would be perceived in the same way. This independence supports the multiple messages hypothesis. The human voice seems to act as a separate channel of communication, offering non-redundant information to observers rather than echoing visual cues.
The hormone analysis yielded unexpected results. The researchers found that adult hormone levels did not mediate the correlated perceptions of faces and bodies. While men’s baseline testosterone levels did show some positive associations with facial dominance and vocal attractiveness, the hormones did not serve as the underlying link for synchronized ratings across body parts.
The proposed mechanism of adult sex hormones bridging these distinct traits was not supported by the data. Adjusting for the targets’ body mass index or relationship status did not alter these outcomes. The correlations between traits remained robust even when accounting for body fat.
The study measured adult baseline and reactive hormone levels rather than developmental hormones. Physical traits like bone structure and vocal cord length are heavily shaped by organizational hormones during fetal development and puberty. Adult hormone levels might not accurately reflect the specific hormonal environment that originally sculpted these physical characteristics.
Additionally, the body scans lacked skin color and texture. Skin quality is a known biological indicator of physical health. Stripping this information away might have altered how raters evaluated the overall condition of the targets, even though it successfully isolated the role of physical shape.
The researchers measured subjective impressions of health, dominance, and attractiveness rather than objective medical data. The ratings reveal how people perceive others based on evolutionary psychological cues. They do not confirm whether the highly rated individuals were objectively healthier or physically stronger in reality.
Future investigations could incorporate developmental hormone tracking during adolescence to better understand how biology links physical traits. Researchers might also include other sensory cues, such as body odor or dynamic movement, to build a more comprehensive picture of human nonverbal signaling.
The study, “Correlated perceptions and underlying hormonal factors of bodily, facial, and vocal attractiveness, health, and physical dominance,” was authored by Tobias L. Kordsmeyer, Philine A.C. Rasokat, Julia Stern, Christoph Schild, and Lars Penke.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #attractiveness #facialandbodysignals #voicevsappearance #oneornamenthypothesis #multiplemessages #hormonesandtraits #physicaldominance #evolutionarypsychology #bodyshape #socialperception
-
DATE: September 29, 2026 at 10:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Faces and bodies send matching signals of attractiveness, but voices tell a different story
People often judge a potential partner based on a combination of their face, body, and voice. A recent study reveals that while facial and bodily attractiveness tend to match up, a person’s voice provides an independent cue about their traits. These findings, published in Evolution and Human Behavior, suggest that our physical features send a mix of redundant and distinct messages to observers.
Evolutionary psychology proposes that human physical traits communicate genetic quality and health to potential mates or rivals. During the search for a partner, individuals evaluate physical attractiveness to gauge underlying fitness. During competition with rivals, individuals might assess physical dominance to determine formidability. Researchers study how these visual and vocal cues combine to form an overall impression of an individual.
One major theoretical framework is the “one ornament hypothesis.” This concept suggests that different physical traits, such as the face and body, are shaped by the same underlying biological factors. In this view, various body parts act as a single, unified signal of health or genetic fitness. If a person has robust immune function or developmental stability, it should reflect across their entire physical appearance.
The second major framework is the “multiple messages hypothesis.” This theory argues that different parts of the body convey entirely separate pieces of information. For example, a face might signal immune system strength, while a voice might indicate physical dominance. If this theory holds true, a person’s individual physical features would not necessarily correlate with one another in the eyes of an observer.
Researchers also suspect that sex hormones like testosterone and estradiol might drive the synchronized development of these physical traits. These hormones guide sexual dimorphism, which refers to the biological differences in physical characteristics between men and women. Higher testosterone in men and higher estradiol in women are thought to influence the development of traits that others perceive as attractive, healthy, or dominant.
To test these competing hypotheses, a research team led by Tobias L. Kordsmeyer of the University of Goettingen designed an experiment. They wanted to examine how independent raters perceived the attractiveness, health, and physical dominance of faces, bodies, and voices. The researchers also sought to test whether sex hormones act as a biological bridge linking these disparate features.
The study included 165 men and 155 women as evaluation targets. The research team collected standardized facial photographs, three-dimensional body scans, and short audio recordings from each participant. The facial photographs featured participants standing against a white wall with a neutral expression.
The three-dimensional body scans were rendered as digital figures that rotated over an eight-second duration. The researchers deliberately removed skin color and texture from these digital models, converting them to a uniform gray. This step ensured that raters would focus entirely on physical shape and proportions, removing skin quality as a potential confounding factor.
To collect voice samples, male participants were recorded speaking about positive aspects of their lives for one minute. Female participants were recorded reading a standardized text known as the rainbow passage. The researchers extracted five-second audio clips from the men’s recordings and used the second sentence of the passage (about 3.5 seconds on average) from the women’s recordings for the final evaluation.
A separate group of 400 independent raters evaluated the collected stimuli. To prevent their judgments of one trait from influencing another, the raters were divided into specific groups. A single rater only evaluated one type of stimulus, such as male faces, female bodies, or male voices. The raters scored the targets for attractiveness, health, and physical dominance using standardized rating scales.
The research team also gathered saliva and hair samples from the targets to measure hormone levels. They measured baseline testosterone and reactive testosterone in men. Reactive testosterone was captured shortly after the men engaged in a competitive task. For women, the researchers assessed baseline testosterone and estradiol levels across different phases of the menstrual cycle.
When analyzing the rating data, the researchers found positive correlations between how raters perceived faces and bodies. Targets whose faces were rated highly for attractiveness and health also tended to receive high ratings for their body shapes. The effects were of medium size, showing a consistent pattern across both male and female targets.
This pattern also held true for physical dominance, though it was only observed for male targets. Men with faces rated as physically dominant also had bodies rated as physically dominant. Female targets did not exhibit a coordinated rating for physical dominance between their faces and bodies.
These positive associations between the face and the body align with the one ornament hypothesis. Observers seem to interpret facial and bodily cues redundantly, picking up on shared information about the individual’s physical condition. Even without skin texture, the bodies provided enough shape information to align with the health and attractiveness ratings of the faces.
The results for vocal recordings painted a different picture. The researchers found very few measurable associations between how raters judged a target’s voice and how they judged the target’s face or body. Voice ratings appeared to operate independently from visual appearance.
An individual might possess a highly rated face or body, but this did not guarantee their voice would be perceived in the same way. This independence supports the multiple messages hypothesis. The human voice seems to act as a separate channel of communication, offering non-redundant information to observers rather than echoing visual cues.
The hormone analysis yielded unexpected results. The researchers found that adult hormone levels did not mediate the correlated perceptions of faces and bodies. While men’s baseline testosterone levels did show some positive associations with facial dominance and vocal attractiveness, the hormones did not serve as the underlying link for synchronized ratings across body parts.
The proposed mechanism of adult sex hormones bridging these distinct traits was not supported by the data. Adjusting for the targets’ body mass index or relationship status did not alter these outcomes. The correlations between traits remained robust even when accounting for body fat.
The study measured adult baseline and reactive hormone levels rather than developmental hormones. Physical traits like bone structure and vocal cord length are heavily shaped by organizational hormones during fetal development and puberty. Adult hormone levels might not accurately reflect the specific hormonal environment that originally sculpted these physical characteristics.
Additionally, the body scans lacked skin color and texture. Skin quality is a known biological indicator of physical health. Stripping this information away might have altered how raters evaluated the overall condition of the targets, even though it successfully isolated the role of physical shape.
The researchers measured subjective impressions of health, dominance, and attractiveness rather than objective medical data. The ratings reveal how people perceive others based on evolutionary psychological cues. They do not confirm whether the highly rated individuals were objectively healthier or physically stronger in reality.
Future investigations could incorporate developmental hormone tracking during adolescence to better understand how biology links physical traits. Researchers might also include other sensory cues, such as body odor or dynamic movement, to build a more comprehensive picture of human nonverbal signaling.
The study, “Correlated perceptions and underlying hormonal factors of bodily, facial, and vocal attractiveness, health, and physical dominance,” was authored by Tobias L. Kordsmeyer, Philine A.C. Rasokat, Julia Stern, Christoph Schild, and Lars Penke.
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-
DATE: September 29, 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: As America shifted left under Trump, emotional hostility widened the partisan gap
Over the course of Donald Trump’s first presidential term, American public opinion generally shifted in a more liberal direction, driven primarily by left-leaning and independent voters changing their minds on specific issues. At the same time, emotional animosity between the two major political parties intensified, a shift that appears connected to the widening gap in policy preferences. These findings were recently published in American Politics Research.
Political scientists often track changes in public opinion using a concept known as the public mood. This mood tends to operate like a thermostat. When a conservative administration is in power, the public typically reacts by moving to the left, and when a liberal administration takes over, the public usually shifts to the right.
Beneath these broad swings, there is also a phenomenon called partisan divergence. This refers to the growing gap between Democrats and Republicans on specific policy issues, such as health care, taxation, and immigration. Over the past few decades, the two parties have moved further apart on these topics.
This policy divide has been accompanied by a rise in affective partisanship, which is the emotional dislike or hostility that voters feel toward the opposing party. Theoretical models help explain how these factors interact. For instance, a 2024 study covered by PsyPost demonstrated that a stronger connection between political disagreement and personal dislike tends to drive people into two opposing ideological camps.
Understanding how public opinion shifts requires looking at individual voters. The authors of the new study note that a study covered by PsyPost in 2023 found that party identification remained remarkably stable between 2011 and 2020. This indicates that when the public mood changes, it is often because people who already identify with a party are changing their minds on issues, rather than simply switching their party allegiance.
The research was conducted by Alan Yang, a senior lecturer at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and Robert Y. Shapiro, a professor in Columbia’s Department of Political Science and School of International and Public Affairs. “We were interested in whether the election of an ‘untraditional’ Republican president in 2016 may have upended or accelerated past patterns of opinion change, partisan divergence, and ‘affective partisanship,'” the researchers told PsyPost.
Because Donald Trump’s platform did not always align with traditional conservatism, it was an open question whether the expected liberal reaction would occur. The authors wanted to see if partisan gaps continued to widen, and whether the emotional animosity of the era played a role in how individuals changed their minds on policy issues.
To explore these questions, the researchers analyzed data from the 2016-2020 American National Election Study (ANES) and the 2016-2020 General Social Survey (GSS). Both datasets are uniquely useful because they use panel designs, meaning they surveyed the exact same individuals at multiple points in time. This setup allows researchers to track whether an individual actually changed their answer from one election year to the next.
The team examined 32 specific policy questions from the ANES and 40 questions from the GSS. These questions covered a wide range of topics, including government spending, racial equality, immigration, foreign affairs, and social issues like abortion and gay rights. The researchers tracked how responses changed between 2016 and 2020 across the entire sample and within specific political groups.
To measure affective partisanship, the surveys used a feeling thermometer scale. Respondents were asked to rate their feelings toward Democrats and Republicans on a scale from 0 to 100 degrees, with higher numbers indicating warmer, more positive feelings.
The analysis indicates a noticeable overall shift in a liberal direction between 2016 and 2020 across many policy areas. For example, support for keeping or increasing welfare spending, providing more government services, and expanding immigration levels grew substantially. “We found an (expected) liberal rebound in aggregate opinion after the election of a Republican president, which was an open question given that Donald Trump was not a mainstream conservative Republican,” the researchers noted.
However, this overall shift masked a growing divide between the political parties. The partisan divergence continued to expand, and it did so asymmetrically. The liberal shift in the broader public mood was driven almost entirely by Democrats and Independents adopting more progressive positions on issues like government spending and racial equality.
In contrast, Republican opinions generally remained stable on these issues, or moved slightly to the right on specific topics like scientific research and alternative energy. The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2026, which found that widening issue divisions were largely driven by the left shifting in a more progressive direction. It is worth noting a slight measurement difference, as the previous study clustered respondents purely by their policy beliefs, whereas the new study measured divergence between self-identified partisans.
The emotional temperature of the country also shifted notably. Overall affective partisanship increased, but the most dramatic changes occurred among Republicans. Between 2016 and 2020, Democratic panelists maintained a steady level of warmth toward their own party and cooled by roughly four degrees toward Republicans.
Republican panelists, on the other hand, grew over 10 degrees warmer toward their fellow Republicans and cooled by about eight degrees toward Democrats. The gap between how much Republicans liked their own party versus the opposing party grew by nearly 19 degrees, which was a much larger jump than the three-degree increase observed among Democrats.
When the researchers looked at individual changes, they found that these short-term increases in emotional polarization predicted changes in actual policy preferences. For both Democrats and Republicans, individuals whose partisan animosity intensified were more likely to change their minds on specific high-profile issues. At the individual level, the researchers found that an “increased affective partisanship level was associated with Republican partisans moving rightward and Democratic partisans moving leftward across a number of highly salient policy preferences during the period of the first Trump presidency.”
For example, voters who developed stronger negative feelings toward the opposing party were more likely to adopt their own party’s typical stance on issues like immigration, the environment, and racial justice.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study looks at a relatively short four-year window that was dominated by a highly unusual political environment and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is hard to know whether the specific dynamics of the Trump presidency will continue into future election cycles.
The relationship between emotional animosity and policy opinions is also highly complex. The data shows an association between the two, but untangling which one causes the other is a challenge. People might develop stronger negative feelings toward the opposing party because they disagree on policy, or they might change their policy views because they want to distance themselves from a party they dislike. Both processes likely happen at the same time.
To see if these dynamics persisted after Trump left office, the authors plan to expand their timeline. “We see as a next step for us and others to extend this analysis to 2020 to 2024 using the available panel data for this period,” Yang and Shapiro said.
The study, “Individuals and Public Opinion Change: The Liberal Rebound, Continued Partisan Divergence and Affective Partisanship 2016–2020,” was authored by Alan Yang and Robert Y. Shapiro.
-------------------------------------------------
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-------------------------------------------------
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-
DATE: September 29, 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: As America shifted left under Trump, emotional hostility widened the partisan gap
Over the course of Donald Trump’s first presidential term, American public opinion generally shifted in a more liberal direction, driven primarily by left-leaning and independent voters changing their minds on specific issues. At the same time, emotional animosity between the two major political parties intensified, a shift that appears connected to the widening gap in policy preferences. These findings were recently published in American Politics Research.
Political scientists often track changes in public opinion using a concept known as the public mood. This mood tends to operate like a thermostat. When a conservative administration is in power, the public typically reacts by moving to the left, and when a liberal administration takes over, the public usually shifts to the right.
Beneath these broad swings, there is also a phenomenon called partisan divergence. This refers to the growing gap between Democrats and Republicans on specific policy issues, such as health care, taxation, and immigration. Over the past few decades, the two parties have moved further apart on these topics.
This policy divide has been accompanied by a rise in affective partisanship, which is the emotional dislike or hostility that voters feel toward the opposing party. Theoretical models help explain how these factors interact. For instance, a 2024 study covered by PsyPost demonstrated that a stronger connection between political disagreement and personal dislike tends to drive people into two opposing ideological camps.
Understanding how public opinion shifts requires looking at individual voters. The authors of the new study note that a study covered by PsyPost in 2023 found that party identification remained remarkably stable between 2011 and 2020. This indicates that when the public mood changes, it is often because people who already identify with a party are changing their minds on issues, rather than simply switching their party allegiance.
The research was conducted by Alan Yang, a senior lecturer at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and Robert Y. Shapiro, a professor in Columbia’s Department of Political Science and School of International and Public Affairs. “We were interested in whether the election of an ‘untraditional’ Republican president in 2016 may have upended or accelerated past patterns of opinion change, partisan divergence, and ‘affective partisanship,'” the researchers told PsyPost.
Because Donald Trump’s platform did not always align with traditional conservatism, it was an open question whether the expected liberal reaction would occur. The authors wanted to see if partisan gaps continued to widen, and whether the emotional animosity of the era played a role in how individuals changed their minds on policy issues.
To explore these questions, the researchers analyzed data from the 2016-2020 American National Election Study (ANES) and the 2016-2020 General Social Survey (GSS). Both datasets are uniquely useful because they use panel designs, meaning they surveyed the exact same individuals at multiple points in time. This setup allows researchers to track whether an individual actually changed their answer from one election year to the next.
The team examined 32 specific policy questions from the ANES and 40 questions from the GSS. These questions covered a wide range of topics, including government spending, racial equality, immigration, foreign affairs, and social issues like abortion and gay rights. The researchers tracked how responses changed between 2016 and 2020 across the entire sample and within specific political groups.
To measure affective partisanship, the surveys used a feeling thermometer scale. Respondents were asked to rate their feelings toward Democrats and Republicans on a scale from 0 to 100 degrees, with higher numbers indicating warmer, more positive feelings.
The analysis indicates a noticeable overall shift in a liberal direction between 2016 and 2020 across many policy areas. For example, support for keeping or increasing welfare spending, providing more government services, and expanding immigration levels grew substantially. “We found an (expected) liberal rebound in aggregate opinion after the election of a Republican president, which was an open question given that Donald Trump was not a mainstream conservative Republican,” the researchers noted.
However, this overall shift masked a growing divide between the political parties. The partisan divergence continued to expand, and it did so asymmetrically. The liberal shift in the broader public mood was driven almost entirely by Democrats and Independents adopting more progressive positions on issues like government spending and racial equality.
In contrast, Republican opinions generally remained stable on these issues, or moved slightly to the right on specific topics like scientific research and alternative energy. The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2026, which found that widening issue divisions were largely driven by the left shifting in a more progressive direction. It is worth noting a slight measurement difference, as the previous study clustered respondents purely by their policy beliefs, whereas the new study measured divergence between self-identified partisans.
The emotional temperature of the country also shifted notably. Overall affective partisanship increased, but the most dramatic changes occurred among Republicans. Between 2016 and 2020, Democratic panelists maintained a steady level of warmth toward their own party and cooled by roughly four degrees toward Republicans.
Republican panelists, on the other hand, grew over 10 degrees warmer toward their fellow Republicans and cooled by about eight degrees toward Democrats. The gap between how much Republicans liked their own party versus the opposing party grew by nearly 19 degrees, which was a much larger jump than the three-degree increase observed among Democrats.
When the researchers looked at individual changes, they found that these short-term increases in emotional polarization predicted changes in actual policy preferences. For both Democrats and Republicans, individuals whose partisan animosity intensified were more likely to change their minds on specific high-profile issues. At the individual level, the researchers found that an “increased affective partisanship level was associated with Republican partisans moving rightward and Democratic partisans moving leftward across a number of highly salient policy preferences during the period of the first Trump presidency.”
For example, voters who developed stronger negative feelings toward the opposing party were more likely to adopt their own party’s typical stance on issues like immigration, the environment, and racial justice.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study looks at a relatively short four-year window that was dominated by a highly unusual political environment and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is hard to know whether the specific dynamics of the Trump presidency will continue into future election cycles.
The relationship between emotional animosity and policy opinions is also highly complex. The data shows an association between the two, but untangling which one causes the other is a challenge. People might develop stronger negative feelings toward the opposing party because they disagree on policy, or they might change their policy views because they want to distance themselves from a party they dislike. Both processes likely happen at the same time.
To see if these dynamics persisted after Trump left office, the authors plan to expand their timeline. “We see as a next step for us and others to extend this analysis to 2020 to 2024 using the available panel data for this period,” Yang and Shapiro said.
The study, “Individuals and Public Opinion Change: The Liberal Rebound, Continued Partisan Divergence and Affective Partisanship 2016–2020,” was authored by Alan Yang and Robert Y. Shapiro.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #PublicOpinion #PoliticalPolarization #AffectivePartisanship #PartisanDivergence #LiberalRebound #TrumpEra #PublicMood #PolicyChange #ANES #GSS
-
DATE: September 29, 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: As America shifted left under Trump, emotional hostility widened the partisan gap
Over the course of Donald Trump’s first presidential term, American public opinion generally shifted in a more liberal direction, driven primarily by left-leaning and independent voters changing their minds on specific issues. At the same time, emotional animosity between the two major political parties intensified, a shift that appears connected to the widening gap in policy preferences. These findings were recently published in American Politics Research.
Political scientists often track changes in public opinion using a concept known as the public mood. This mood tends to operate like a thermostat. When a conservative administration is in power, the public typically reacts by moving to the left, and when a liberal administration takes over, the public usually shifts to the right.
Beneath these broad swings, there is also a phenomenon called partisan divergence. This refers to the growing gap between Democrats and Republicans on specific policy issues, such as health care, taxation, and immigration. Over the past few decades, the two parties have moved further apart on these topics.
This policy divide has been accompanied by a rise in affective partisanship, which is the emotional dislike or hostility that voters feel toward the opposing party. Theoretical models help explain how these factors interact. For instance, a 2024 study covered by PsyPost demonstrated that a stronger connection between political disagreement and personal dislike tends to drive people into two opposing ideological camps.
Understanding how public opinion shifts requires looking at individual voters. The authors of the new study note that a study covered by PsyPost in 2023 found that party identification remained remarkably stable between 2011 and 2020. This indicates that when the public mood changes, it is often because people who already identify with a party are changing their minds on issues, rather than simply switching their party allegiance.
The research was conducted by Alan Yang, a senior lecturer at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and Robert Y. Shapiro, a professor in Columbia’s Department of Political Science and School of International and Public Affairs. “We were interested in whether the election of an ‘untraditional’ Republican president in 2016 may have upended or accelerated past patterns of opinion change, partisan divergence, and ‘affective partisanship,'” the researchers told PsyPost.
Because Donald Trump’s platform did not always align with traditional conservatism, it was an open question whether the expected liberal reaction would occur. The authors wanted to see if partisan gaps continued to widen, and whether the emotional animosity of the era played a role in how individuals changed their minds on policy issues.
To explore these questions, the researchers analyzed data from the 2016-2020 American National Election Study (ANES) and the 2016-2020 General Social Survey (GSS). Both datasets are uniquely useful because they use panel designs, meaning they surveyed the exact same individuals at multiple points in time. This setup allows researchers to track whether an individual actually changed their answer from one election year to the next.
The team examined 32 specific policy questions from the ANES and 40 questions from the GSS. These questions covered a wide range of topics, including government spending, racial equality, immigration, foreign affairs, and social issues like abortion and gay rights. The researchers tracked how responses changed between 2016 and 2020 across the entire sample and within specific political groups.
To measure affective partisanship, the surveys used a feeling thermometer scale. Respondents were asked to rate their feelings toward Democrats and Republicans on a scale from 0 to 100 degrees, with higher numbers indicating warmer, more positive feelings.
The analysis indicates a noticeable overall shift in a liberal direction between 2016 and 2020 across many policy areas. For example, support for keeping or increasing welfare spending, providing more government services, and expanding immigration levels grew substantially. “We found an (expected) liberal rebound in aggregate opinion after the election of a Republican president, which was an open question given that Donald Trump was not a mainstream conservative Republican,” the researchers noted.
However, this overall shift masked a growing divide between the political parties. The partisan divergence continued to expand, and it did so asymmetrically. The liberal shift in the broader public mood was driven almost entirely by Democrats and Independents adopting more progressive positions on issues like government spending and racial equality.
In contrast, Republican opinions generally remained stable on these issues, or moved slightly to the right on specific topics like scientific research and alternative energy. The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2026, which found that widening issue divisions were largely driven by the left shifting in a more progressive direction. It is worth noting a slight measurement difference, as the previous study clustered respondents purely by their policy beliefs, whereas the new study measured divergence between self-identified partisans.
The emotional temperature of the country also shifted notably. Overall affective partisanship increased, but the most dramatic changes occurred among Republicans. Between 2016 and 2020, Democratic panelists maintained a steady level of warmth toward their own party and cooled by roughly four degrees toward Republicans.
Republican panelists, on the other hand, grew over 10 degrees warmer toward their fellow Republicans and cooled by about eight degrees toward Democrats. The gap between how much Republicans liked their own party versus the opposing party grew by nearly 19 degrees, which was a much larger jump than the three-degree increase observed among Democrats.
When the researchers looked at individual changes, they found that these short-term increases in emotional polarization predicted changes in actual policy preferences. For both Democrats and Republicans, individuals whose partisan animosity intensified were more likely to change their minds on specific high-profile issues. At the individual level, the researchers found that an “increased affective partisanship level was associated with Republican partisans moving rightward and Democratic partisans moving leftward across a number of highly salient policy preferences during the period of the first Trump presidency.”
For example, voters who developed stronger negative feelings toward the opposing party were more likely to adopt their own party’s typical stance on issues like immigration, the environment, and racial justice.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study looks at a relatively short four-year window that was dominated by a highly unusual political environment and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is hard to know whether the specific dynamics of the Trump presidency will continue into future election cycles.
The relationship between emotional animosity and policy opinions is also highly complex. The data shows an association between the two, but untangling which one causes the other is a challenge. People might develop stronger negative feelings toward the opposing party because they disagree on policy, or they might change their policy views because they want to distance themselves from a party they dislike. Both processes likely happen at the same time.
To see if these dynamics persisted after Trump left office, the authors plan to expand their timeline. “We see as a next step for us and others to extend this analysis to 2020 to 2024 using the available panel data for this period,” Yang and Shapiro said.
The study, “Individuals and Public Opinion Change: The Liberal Rebound, Continued Partisan Divergence and Affective Partisanship 2016–2020,” was authored by Alan Yang and Robert Y. Shapiro.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #PublicOpinion #PoliticalPolarization #AffectivePartisanship #PartisanDivergence #LiberalRebound #TrumpEra #PublicMood #PolicyChange #ANES #GSS
-
DATE: September 29, 2026 at 08:59AM
SOURCE: HEALTHCARE INFO SECURITYDirect article link at end of text block below.
#Estonia Tests #SovereignAI on National #HealthData:
@OwkinScience 's #AgenticAI Will Support Nation's #Biomed Research While Preserving Data Sovereignty
https://t.co/fO39ctKSvOHere are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at https://www.healthcareinfosecurity.com/ under the title "Latest"
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-
DATE: September 29, 2026 at 08:59AM
SOURCE: HEALTHCARE INFO SECURITYDirect article link at end of text block below.
#Estonia Tests #SovereignAI on National #HealthData:
@OwkinScience 's #AgenticAI Will Support Nation's #Biomed Research While Preserving Data Sovereignty
https://t.co/fO39ctKSvOHere are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at https://www.healthcareinfosecurity.com/ under the title "Latest"
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Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Healthcare security & privacy posts not related to IT or infosec are at @HIPAABot . Even so, they mix in some infosec with the legal & regulatory information.
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#security #healthcare #doctors #itsecurity #hacking #doxxing #psychotherapy #securitynews #psychotherapist #mentalhealth #psychiatry #hospital #socialwork #datasecurity #webbeacons #cookies #HIPAA #privacy #datanalytics #healthcaresecurity #healthitsecurity #patientrecords @infosec #telehealth #netneutrality #socialengineering
-
DATE: September 29, 2026 at 08:59AM
SOURCE: HEALTHCARE INFO SECURITYDirect article link at end of text block below.
#Estonia Tests #SovereignAI on National #HealthData:
@OwkinScience 's #AgenticAI Will Support Nation's #Biomed Research While Preserving Data Sovereignty
https://t.co/fO39ctKSvOHere are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at https://www.healthcareinfosecurity.com/ under the title "Latest"
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Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Healthcare security & privacy posts not related to IT or infosec are at @HIPAABot . Even so, they mix in some infosec with the legal & regulatory information.
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-
DATE: September 29, 2026 at 08:59AM
SOURCE: HEALTHCARE INFO SECURITYDirect article link at end of text block below.
#Estonia Tests #SovereignAI on National #HealthData:
@OwkinScience 's #AgenticAI Will Support Nation's #Biomed Research While Preserving Data Sovereignty
https://t.co/fO39ctKSvOHere are any URLs found in the article text:
Articles can be found by scrolling down the page at https://www.healthcareinfosecurity.com/ under the title "Latest"
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Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Healthcare security & privacy posts not related to IT or infosec are at @HIPAABot . Even so, they mix in some infosec with the legal & regulatory information.
-------------------------------------------------
#security #healthcare #doctors #itsecurity #hacking #doxxing #psychotherapy #securitynews #psychotherapist #mentalhealth #psychiatry #hospital #socialwork #datasecurity #webbeacons #cookies #HIPAA #privacy #datanalytics #healthcaresecurity #healthitsecurity #patientrecords @infosec #telehealth #netneutrality #socialengineering
-
DATE: September 29, 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: Brain structure linked to how well patients respond to an antidepressant, small study finds
An exploratory study of people with major depressive disorder found that the shape and structure of several regions of the brain’s outer layer, measured before treatment began, were associated with how much patients’ symptoms improved over about eight weeks of taking the antidepressant vortioxetine. The regions included areas of the frontal lobes involved in emotion regulation and planning, visual areas at the back of the brain, and the insula, a region involved in emotional awareness and in sensing the body’s internal state. The paper was published in BMC Psychiatry.
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a common and often recurring psychiatric condition that can substantially impair everyday functioning and quality of life. Although many antidepressant medications are available, only about one-third of patients achieve remission, meaning their symptoms largely resolve, after their first treatment. People differ considerably in how well they respond to antidepressants, making it difficult to know in advance which treatment will work best for a particular patient.
Researchers are therefore trying to identify characteristics that might help predict treatment response and support more personalized approaches to care. Clinical factors such as the initial severity of depression, duration of illness, anxiety symptoms, and early improvement during treatment have all been linked to later outcomes.
Yingna Li and colleagues at Beijing HuiLongGuan Hospital in China used high-resolution structural magnetic resonance imaging, which captures the brain’s anatomy rather than its activity, along with a technique called surface-based morphometry, to explore whether features of the cortex, the brain’s wrinkled outer layer, could help predict improvement in depressive symptoms after antidepressant treatment.
They also wanted to know whether cognitive improvement is associated with these brain characteristics. The researchers were particularly interested in memory performance. They noted that cognitive problems are common in depression and sometimes persist even after mood symptoms improve. Because cognitive impairments can negatively affect the lives of depressed individuals, finding ways to predict their recovery is also an important goal.
The researchers initially recruited 34 adults between the ages of 18 and 50 who met diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder, along with 26 healthy individuals for comparison who were matched with the depressed participants on age and sex. All of the patients had experienced at least one previous depressive episode and had not taken antidepressants in the eight weeks before enrolling. Four participants with depression and three healthy participants were excluded because of poor-quality brain scans, mostly due to excessive head movement, and 10 more participants with depression did not return for the follow-up visit. As a result, all analyses were performed on 22 participants with depression and 21 healthy participants.
All participants with depression took a daily 10-milligram dose of vortioxetine. Before and after treatment, they were assessed with the 17-item Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression and the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale, two clinician-administered measures of symptom severity, and completed the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status, a set of brief tests of memory, attention, language, and visual-spatial skills. On average, participants’ depression scores fell from about 27 to about 8 over the course of treatment.
Participants with depression had brain scans at the start of the study and again about eight weeks later, after treatment, while healthy participants were scanned once. However, this study analyzed only the scans taken at the start, because the goal was to see whether brain features measured before treatment were linked to later improvement.
The researchers used these scans to measure four features of the cortical surface: cortical thickness; the gyrification index, which reflects how much of the cortex is tucked into folds rather than exposed at the surface; sulcus depth, the depth of the grooves between folds; and fractal dimension, a measure of how complex and irregular the folding pattern is.
Compared with healthy participants, those with depression showed less folding in the right insula.
Among participants with depression, higher fractal dimension, indicating more complex folding, in the left superior frontal cortex, the right rostral middle frontal cortex, and the right lateral occipital cortex was associated with greater symptom improvement. The two frontal regions are part of the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in emotion regulation and executive control, while the lateral occipital cortex is a visual area. Greater cortical thickness in the insula on both sides of the brain and in the left pericalcarine cortex, part of the primary visual cortex, was also linked to greater improvement.
In contrast, lower fractal dimension in the left cuneus, another visual region, and less folding (a lower gyrification index) in the left lateral occipital cortex were associated with greater improvement. Several of these associations, including those involving the insula and the right lateral occipital cortex, concerned improvement in anxiety scores rather than depression scores.
On the cognitive side, shallower grooves (lower sulcus depth) in the left lateral occipital cortex were associated with greater improvement in delayed memory, the ability to recall information after some time has passed since it was first learned.
To check whether these associations might hold up beyond the specific people studied, the researchers used a technique called leave-one-out cross-validation, in which a statistical model is built using all but one participant and then used to predict the remaining participant’s outcome, with the process repeated for everyone.
In these tests, which also accounted for participants’ age and sex, fractal dimension of the left cuneus was associated with changes in depression scores, though this result was only borderline statistically significant, and fractal dimension of the left superior frontal cortex was associated with changes in anxiety scores. The link between sulcus depth in the left lateral occipital cortex and delayed memory did not reach statistical significance in this test.
“Baseline cortical morphometric features were associated with clinical and cognitive changes following antidepressant treatment in MDD [major depressive disorder],” the study authors concluded. They also added that “these findings are preliminary and should be interpreted with caution, pending replication in independent cohorts.”
The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the links between the brain’s structure and the course of depression during treatment. However, it should be noted that the study was conducted on a very small sample of participants, and the authors acknowledge that because many separate analyses were run, some associations may be false positives and their strength is likely overestimated. Results of larger studies may differ.
All patients received the same drug, so the findings may not apply to other antidepressants, and participants were relatively young. There was also no placebo group, so the study cannot separate improvement caused by the medication from improvement that might have happened for other reasons. Additionally, the design of the study does not allow any causal inferences to be derived from the results.
The paper “Baseline cortical structural features are associated with depressive and cognitive improvement in major depressive disorder” was authored by Yingna Li, Shuping Tian, Siyan Zan, Ruonan Du, Wenzhou Liang, Liying Zhao, and Zhiren Wang.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #BrainStructure #DepressionTreatment #AntidepressantResponse #Vortioxetine #CorticalMorphometry #FrontalLobe #Insula #VisualCortex #Neuroimaging #PersonalizedMedicine
-
DATE: September 29, 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: Brain structure linked to how well patients respond to an antidepressant, small study finds
An exploratory study of people with major depressive disorder found that the shape and structure of several regions of the brain’s outer layer, measured before treatment began, were associated with how much patients’ symptoms improved over about eight weeks of taking the antidepressant vortioxetine. The regions included areas of the frontal lobes involved in emotion regulation and planning, visual areas at the back of the brain, and the insula, a region involved in emotional awareness and in sensing the body’s internal state. The paper was published in BMC Psychiatry.
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a common and often recurring psychiatric condition that can substantially impair everyday functioning and quality of life. Although many antidepressant medications are available, only about one-third of patients achieve remission, meaning their symptoms largely resolve, after their first treatment. People differ considerably in how well they respond to antidepressants, making it difficult to know in advance which treatment will work best for a particular patient.
Researchers are therefore trying to identify characteristics that might help predict treatment response and support more personalized approaches to care. Clinical factors such as the initial severity of depression, duration of illness, anxiety symptoms, and early improvement during treatment have all been linked to later outcomes.
Yingna Li and colleagues at Beijing HuiLongGuan Hospital in China used high-resolution structural magnetic resonance imaging, which captures the brain’s anatomy rather than its activity, along with a technique called surface-based morphometry, to explore whether features of the cortex, the brain’s wrinkled outer layer, could help predict improvement in depressive symptoms after antidepressant treatment.
They also wanted to know whether cognitive improvement is associated with these brain characteristics. The researchers were particularly interested in memory performance. They noted that cognitive problems are common in depression and sometimes persist even after mood symptoms improve. Because cognitive impairments can negatively affect the lives of depressed individuals, finding ways to predict their recovery is also an important goal.
The researchers initially recruited 34 adults between the ages of 18 and 50 who met diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder, along with 26 healthy individuals for comparison who were matched with the depressed participants on age and sex. All of the patients had experienced at least one previous depressive episode and had not taken antidepressants in the eight weeks before enrolling. Four participants with depression and three healthy participants were excluded because of poor-quality brain scans, mostly due to excessive head movement, and 10 more participants with depression did not return for the follow-up visit. As a result, all analyses were performed on 22 participants with depression and 21 healthy participants.
All participants with depression took a daily 10-milligram dose of vortioxetine. Before and after treatment, they were assessed with the 17-item Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression and the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale, two clinician-administered measures of symptom severity, and completed the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status, a set of brief tests of memory, attention, language, and visual-spatial skills. On average, participants’ depression scores fell from about 27 to about 8 over the course of treatment.
Participants with depression had brain scans at the start of the study and again about eight weeks later, after treatment, while healthy participants were scanned once. However, this study analyzed only the scans taken at the start, because the goal was to see whether brain features measured before treatment were linked to later improvement.
The researchers used these scans to measure four features of the cortical surface: cortical thickness; the gyrification index, which reflects how much of the cortex is tucked into folds rather than exposed at the surface; sulcus depth, the depth of the grooves between folds; and fractal dimension, a measure of how complex and irregular the folding pattern is.
Compared with healthy participants, those with depression showed less folding in the right insula.
Among participants with depression, higher fractal dimension, indicating more complex folding, in the left superior frontal cortex, the right rostral middle frontal cortex, and the right lateral occipital cortex was associated with greater symptom improvement. The two frontal regions are part of the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in emotion regulation and executive control, while the lateral occipital cortex is a visual area. Greater cortical thickness in the insula on both sides of the brain and in the left pericalcarine cortex, part of the primary visual cortex, was also linked to greater improvement.
In contrast, lower fractal dimension in the left cuneus, another visual region, and less folding (a lower gyrification index) in the left lateral occipital cortex were associated with greater improvement. Several of these associations, including those involving the insula and the right lateral occipital cortex, concerned improvement in anxiety scores rather than depression scores.
On the cognitive side, shallower grooves (lower sulcus depth) in the left lateral occipital cortex were associated with greater improvement in delayed memory, the ability to recall information after some time has passed since it was first learned.
To check whether these associations might hold up beyond the specific people studied, the researchers used a technique called leave-one-out cross-validation, in which a statistical model is built using all but one participant and then used to predict the remaining participant’s outcome, with the process repeated for everyone.
In these tests, which also accounted for participants’ age and sex, fractal dimension of the left cuneus was associated with changes in depression scores, though this result was only borderline statistically significant, and fractal dimension of the left superior frontal cortex was associated with changes in anxiety scores. The link between sulcus depth in the left lateral occipital cortex and delayed memory did not reach statistical significance in this test.
“Baseline cortical morphometric features were associated with clinical and cognitive changes following antidepressant treatment in MDD [major depressive disorder],” the study authors concluded. They also added that “these findings are preliminary and should be interpreted with caution, pending replication in independent cohorts.”
The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the links between the brain’s structure and the course of depression during treatment. However, it should be noted that the study was conducted on a very small sample of participants, and the authors acknowledge that because many separate analyses were run, some associations may be false positives and their strength is likely overestimated. Results of larger studies may differ.
All patients received the same drug, so the findings may not apply to other antidepressants, and participants were relatively young. There was also no placebo group, so the study cannot separate improvement caused by the medication from improvement that might have happened for other reasons. Additionally, the design of the study does not allow any causal inferences to be derived from the results.
The paper “Baseline cortical structural features are associated with depressive and cognitive improvement in major depressive disorder” was authored by Yingna Li, Shuping Tian, Siyan Zan, Ruonan Du, Wenzhou Liang, Liying Zhao, and Zhiren Wang.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #BrainStructure #DepressionTreatment #AntidepressantResponse #Vortioxetine #CorticalMorphometry #FrontalLobe #Insula #VisualCortex #Neuroimaging #PersonalizedMedicine
-
DATE: September 29, 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: Brain structure linked to how well patients respond to an antidepressant, small study finds
An exploratory study of people with major depressive disorder found that the shape and structure of several regions of the brain’s outer layer, measured before treatment began, were associated with how much patients’ symptoms improved over about eight weeks of taking the antidepressant vortioxetine. The regions included areas of the frontal lobes involved in emotion regulation and planning, visual areas at the back of the brain, and the insula, a region involved in emotional awareness and in sensing the body’s internal state. The paper was published in BMC Psychiatry.
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a common and often recurring psychiatric condition that can substantially impair everyday functioning and quality of life. Although many antidepressant medications are available, only about one-third of patients achieve remission, meaning their symptoms largely resolve, after their first treatment. People differ considerably in how well they respond to antidepressants, making it difficult to know in advance which treatment will work best for a particular patient.
Researchers are therefore trying to identify characteristics that might help predict treatment response and support more personalized approaches to care. Clinical factors such as the initial severity of depression, duration of illness, anxiety symptoms, and early improvement during treatment have all been linked to later outcomes.
Yingna Li and colleagues at Beijing HuiLongGuan Hospital in China used high-resolution structural magnetic resonance imaging, which captures the brain’s anatomy rather than its activity, along with a technique called surface-based morphometry, to explore whether features of the cortex, the brain’s wrinkled outer layer, could help predict improvement in depressive symptoms after antidepressant treatment.
They also wanted to know whether cognitive improvement is associated with these brain characteristics. The researchers were particularly interested in memory performance. They noted that cognitive problems are common in depression and sometimes persist even after mood symptoms improve. Because cognitive impairments can negatively affect the lives of depressed individuals, finding ways to predict their recovery is also an important goal.
The researchers initially recruited 34 adults between the ages of 18 and 50 who met diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder, along with 26 healthy individuals for comparison who were matched with the depressed participants on age and sex. All of the patients had experienced at least one previous depressive episode and had not taken antidepressants in the eight weeks before enrolling. Four participants with depression and three healthy participants were excluded because of poor-quality brain scans, mostly due to excessive head movement, and 10 more participants with depression did not return for the follow-up visit. As a result, all analyses were performed on 22 participants with depression and 21 healthy participants.
All participants with depression took a daily 10-milligram dose of vortioxetine. Before and after treatment, they were assessed with the 17-item Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression and the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale, two clinician-administered measures of symptom severity, and completed the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status, a set of brief tests of memory, attention, language, and visual-spatial skills. On average, participants’ depression scores fell from about 27 to about 8 over the course of treatment.
Participants with depression had brain scans at the start of the study and again about eight weeks later, after treatment, while healthy participants were scanned once. However, this study analyzed only the scans taken at the start, because the goal was to see whether brain features measured before treatment were linked to later improvement.
The researchers used these scans to measure four features of the cortical surface: cortical thickness; the gyrification index, which reflects how much of the cortex is tucked into folds rather than exposed at the surface; sulcus depth, the depth of the grooves between folds; and fractal dimension, a measure of how complex and irregular the folding pattern is.
Compared with healthy participants, those with depression showed less folding in the right insula.
Among participants with depression, higher fractal dimension, indicating more complex folding, in the left superior frontal cortex, the right rostral middle frontal cortex, and the right lateral occipital cortex was associated with greater symptom improvement. The two frontal regions are part of the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in emotion regulation and executive control, while the lateral occipital cortex is a visual area. Greater cortical thickness in the insula on both sides of the brain and in the left pericalcarine cortex, part of the primary visual cortex, was also linked to greater improvement.
In contrast, lower fractal dimension in the left cuneus, another visual region, and less folding (a lower gyrification index) in the left lateral occipital cortex were associated with greater improvement. Several of these associations, including those involving the insula and the right lateral occipital cortex, concerned improvement in anxiety scores rather than depression scores.
On the cognitive side, shallower grooves (lower sulcus depth) in the left lateral occipital cortex were associated with greater improvement in delayed memory, the ability to recall information after some time has passed since it was first learned.
To check whether these associations might hold up beyond the specific people studied, the researchers used a technique called leave-one-out cross-validation, in which a statistical model is built using all but one participant and then used to predict the remaining participant’s outcome, with the process repeated for everyone.
In these tests, which also accounted for participants’ age and sex, fractal dimension of the left cuneus was associated with changes in depression scores, though this result was only borderline statistically significant, and fractal dimension of the left superior frontal cortex was associated with changes in anxiety scores. The link between sulcus depth in the left lateral occipital cortex and delayed memory did not reach statistical significance in this test.
“Baseline cortical morphometric features were associated with clinical and cognitive changes following antidepressant treatment in MDD [major depressive disorder],” the study authors concluded. They also added that “these findings are preliminary and should be interpreted with caution, pending replication in independent cohorts.”
The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the links between the brain’s structure and the course of depression during treatment. However, it should be noted that the study was conducted on a very small sample of participants, and the authors acknowledge that because many separate analyses were run, some associations may be false positives and their strength is likely overestimated. Results of larger studies may differ.
All patients received the same drug, so the findings may not apply to other antidepressants, and participants were relatively young. There was also no placebo group, so the study cannot separate improvement caused by the medication from improvement that might have happened for other reasons. Additionally, the design of the study does not allow any causal inferences to be derived from the results.
The paper “Baseline cortical structural features are associated with depressive and cognitive improvement in major depressive disorder” was authored by Yingna Li, Shuping Tian, Siyan Zan, Ruonan Du, Wenzhou Liang, Liying Zhao, and Zhiren Wang.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #BrainStructure #DepressionTreatment #AntidepressantResponse #Vortioxetine #CorticalMorphometry #FrontalLobe #Insula #VisualCortex #Neuroimaging #PersonalizedMedicine
-
TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology
DATE: September 29, 2026 at 08:09AM
SOURCE: CONSORTIUM FOR DEFENSE PSYCHOLOGYDirect article link at end of text block below.
In volatile and uncertain times, strong social support is your best tool for stress optimization. Don't miss our October webinar, Resilient Communities of Practice: How to Optimize Stress in Challenging Times. 🎟 Details & Registration: https://t.co/f2KyGDgIdZ
#Resilience https://t.co/cBV6mAGOkVHere are any URLs found in the article text:
https://t.co/f2KyGDgIdZ
#ResilienceArticles can be found at https://deploymentpsych.org/.
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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 #depression #psychotherapist #military #militarypsych #militarypsychology #militarycounseling #APA #Division19 #militaryhealth #DeploymentPsychology #DefensePsychology #ConsortiumForDefensePsychology #UniformServicesUniversity
-
TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology
DATE: September 29, 2026 at 08:09AM
SOURCE: CONSORTIUM FOR DEFENSE PSYCHOLOGYDirect article link at end of text block below.
In volatile and uncertain times, strong social support is your best tool for stress optimization. Don't miss our October webinar, Resilient Communities of Practice: How to Optimize Stress in Challenging Times. 🎟 Details & Registration: https://t.co/f2KyGDgIdZ
#Resilience https://t.co/cBV6mAGOkVHere are any URLs found in the article text:
https://t.co/f2KyGDgIdZ
#ResilienceArticles can be found at https://deploymentpsych.org/.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #depression #psychotherapist #military #militarypsych #militarypsychology #militarycounseling #APA #Division19 #militaryhealth #DeploymentPsychology #DefensePsychology #ConsortiumForDefensePsychology #UniformServicesUniversity
-
TRIGGER WARNING: Military Psychology
DATE: September 29, 2026 at 08:09AM
SOURCE: CONSORTIUM FOR DEFENSE PSYCHOLOGYDirect article link at end of text block below.
In volatile and uncertain times, strong social support is your best tool for stress optimization. Don't miss our October webinar, Resilient Communities of Practice: How to Optimize Stress in Challenging Times. 🎟 Details & Registration: https://t.co/f2KyGDgIdZ
#Resilience https://t.co/cBV6mAGOkVHere are any URLs found in the article text:
https://t.co/f2KyGDgIdZ
#ResilienceArticles can be found at https://deploymentpsych.org/.
-------------------------------------------------
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 #depression #psychotherapist #military #militarypsych #militarypsychology #militarycounseling #APA #Division19 #militaryhealth #DeploymentPsychology #DefensePsychology #ConsortiumForDefensePsychology #UniformServicesUniversity
-
DATE: September 29, 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: Taylor Swift fans lower climate concerns to justify star’s carbon footprint
URL: https://www.psypost.org/taylor-swift-fans-lower-climate-concerns-to-justify-star-s-carbon-footprint/
Young adults who consider themselves devoted fans of pop star Taylor Swift may lower their own environmental concerns to justify the singer’s high carbon dioxide emissions. When confronted with news about the excessive pollution generated by her private jet, highly identified fans tend to rationalize the behavior, which correlates with a decrease in their personal intentions to engage in climate-friendly actions. These findings were published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media.
Young adults belonging to Generation Z, people born between 1995 and 2012, are known for their high levels of environmental awareness. Many individuals in this demographic express deep anxiety about global warming and actively engage in climate advocacy. At the same time, this generation came of age alongside the explosion of social media and celebrity culture.
A tension arises when a beloved public figure engages in actions that harm the environment. In 2022, data tracking private jet flights named Taylor Swift the biggest celebrity emitter of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere and acts as a primary driver of global climate change. Swift’s private jet use produced about 1,185 times more carbon pollution than the average person generates in a year.
Researchers wanted to understand how young, climate-conscious fans process information that puts their fandom in direct conflict with their environmental values. The research team included Leah Dajches of New Mexico State University, Taylor A. Foerster of Oregon State University, Juliana L. Barbati of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Jessica Gall Myrick of Good Pug Media. They focused on a psychological process known as moral reasoning.
Moral reasoning refers to the mental strategies people use to resolve the discomfort they feel when someone they admire violates a social or ethical norm. One strategy is called decoupling, where a person separates their judgment of the bad behavior from their appreciation of the celebrity’s professional work. A person using this strategy might condemn a star’s pollution but continue to stream their music.
Another strategy is rationalization, which involves making excuses for the behavior or convincing oneself that the actions are not actually that bad. The researchers proposed that people with a strong fan identity would be highly motivated to use these strategies. Fan identity goes beyond simply enjoying a musician’s work; it involves feeling a sense of belonging to a broader social community of supporters. When a celebrity at the center of that community does something wrong, fans may feel a personal need to protect the group’s reputation.
To test this dynamic, the researchers recruited about 1,000 undergraduate students from two public universities in the United States. They filtered the group to include only adults between the ages of 18 and 29. The participants began by completing a survey that measured their level of Taylor Swift fan identity, answering questions about how much they liked her and how often they engaged with her fan community.
The study participants were then randomly assigned to read one of three mock news articles. The first article discussed the massive carbon footprints of celebrities in general. The second article covered the exact same topic but explicitly named Taylor Swift in the headline and included specific data about her private jet emissions. The third article was a control story about an unrelated topic, such as multitasking or common air travel questions.
After reading their assigned article, the participants completed another series of questionnaires. These surveys asked them to rate their agreement with statements representing different moral reasoning strategies. For example, a rationalization statement read, “High CO2 emissions are not as bad as some other things celebrities do.” Another statement measuring decoupling read, “A celebrity’s CO2 emissions do not change my assessment of them as an artist.”
Finally, the participants answered questions to measure their personal concern about carbon dioxide emissions. They were also asked to rate their intentions to engage in climate-friendly behaviors. For instance, they indicated their agreement with statements about taking steps to reduce their own contribution to global warming.
The researchers found that merely reading about Swift’s carbon emissions did not automatically change a person’s environmental views across the entire group. Differences in environmental concern between the three article conditions were not statistically significant on their own. The outcomes depended heavily on how strongly a participant identified as a fan of the pop star.
High-level Swift fans who read the article specifically highlighting her emissions reported the highest levels of rationalization. When these devoted fans read about Swift’s environmental impact, they were much more likely to justify or excuse the behavior compared to high-level fans who only read about the carbon footprints of general celebrities. This psychological defense mechanism had a ripple effect on their broader views.
Engaging in rationalization was linked to lower overall concern about carbon dioxide emissions. It also predicted a decrease in the participants’ stated intentions to engage in environmentally friendly behaviors. By making excuses for the pop star to protect their fan identity, the individuals ultimately weakened their own pro-environmental attitudes.
The data showed that having a strong fan identity was directly associated with higher environmental concerns. The act of rationalizing the celebrity’s specific transgression reduced those pro-environmental attitudes. The fans effectively prioritized their psychological connection to the celebrity over their climate values.
The study relies on a specific demographic, which limits how broadly the conclusions can be applied. The participant pool consisted mostly of white, heterosexual, cisgender women who attended college and leaned politically Democratic. People from different age groups, educational backgrounds, or political affiliations might process celebrity transgressions using entirely different psychological mechanisms.
The researchers also noted that they could not reliably measure one specific type of moral reasoning, known as coupling. Coupling happens when a person allows a celebrity’s bad behavior to permanently ruin their opinion of the star’s professional work. Because the survey questions designed to measure this strategy did not yield reliable data, the researchers had to exclude it from their final analysis.
The experiment focused exclusively on Taylor Swift, meaning the results might not hold true for fans of other public figures or different types of media personalities. The study also did not measure whether participants already knew about the singer’s private jet usage before taking the survey. Prior knowledge could have influenced how strongly the mock news articles affected their responses.
Future investigations could explore how different types of fandoms, such as sports enthusiasts or political followers, react to environmental scandals. Researchers might also track people over a longer period to see if the drop in environmental concern is temporary or if excusing a celebrity’s pollution leads to lasting changes in personal habits.
The study, ““Don’t Blame Me”: Testing the Effects of Taylor Swift Fan Identity on Emerging Adults’ Moral Reasoning Strategies and Environmental Cognitions,” was authored by Leah Dajches, Taylor A. Foerster, Juliana L. Barbati, and Jessica Gall Myrick.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/taylor-swift-fans-lower-climate-concerns-to-justify-star-s-carbon-footprint/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #TaylorSwift #ClimateChange #FanIdentity #MoralReasoning #Rationalization #Decoupling #PrivateJet #CelebrityEmissions #EnvironmentalCognition #SustainabilityAwareness
-
DATE: September 29, 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: Taylor Swift fans lower climate concerns to justify star’s carbon footprint
URL: https://www.psypost.org/taylor-swift-fans-lower-climate-concerns-to-justify-star-s-carbon-footprint/
Young adults who consider themselves devoted fans of pop star Taylor Swift may lower their own environmental concerns to justify the singer’s high carbon dioxide emissions. When confronted with news about the excessive pollution generated by her private jet, highly identified fans tend to rationalize the behavior, which correlates with a decrease in their personal intentions to engage in climate-friendly actions. These findings were published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media.
Young adults belonging to Generation Z, people born between 1995 and 2012, are known for their high levels of environmental awareness. Many individuals in this demographic express deep anxiety about global warming and actively engage in climate advocacy. At the same time, this generation came of age alongside the explosion of social media and celebrity culture.
A tension arises when a beloved public figure engages in actions that harm the environment. In 2022, data tracking private jet flights named Taylor Swift the biggest celebrity emitter of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere and acts as a primary driver of global climate change. Swift’s private jet use produced about 1,185 times more carbon pollution than the average person generates in a year.
Researchers wanted to understand how young, climate-conscious fans process information that puts their fandom in direct conflict with their environmental values. The research team included Leah Dajches of New Mexico State University, Taylor A. Foerster of Oregon State University, Juliana L. Barbati of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Jessica Gall Myrick of Good Pug Media. They focused on a psychological process known as moral reasoning.
Moral reasoning refers to the mental strategies people use to resolve the discomfort they feel when someone they admire violates a social or ethical norm. One strategy is called decoupling, where a person separates their judgment of the bad behavior from their appreciation of the celebrity’s professional work. A person using this strategy might condemn a star’s pollution but continue to stream their music.
Another strategy is rationalization, which involves making excuses for the behavior or convincing oneself that the actions are not actually that bad. The researchers proposed that people with a strong fan identity would be highly motivated to use these strategies. Fan identity goes beyond simply enjoying a musician’s work; it involves feeling a sense of belonging to a broader social community of supporters. When a celebrity at the center of that community does something wrong, fans may feel a personal need to protect the group’s reputation.
To test this dynamic, the researchers recruited about 1,000 undergraduate students from two public universities in the United States. They filtered the group to include only adults between the ages of 18 and 29. The participants began by completing a survey that measured their level of Taylor Swift fan identity, answering questions about how much they liked her and how often they engaged with her fan community.
The study participants were then randomly assigned to read one of three mock news articles. The first article discussed the massive carbon footprints of celebrities in general. The second article covered the exact same topic but explicitly named Taylor Swift in the headline and included specific data about her private jet emissions. The third article was a control story about an unrelated topic, such as multitasking or common air travel questions.
After reading their assigned article, the participants completed another series of questionnaires. These surveys asked them to rate their agreement with statements representing different moral reasoning strategies. For example, a rationalization statement read, “High CO2 emissions are not as bad as some other things celebrities do.” Another statement measuring decoupling read, “A celebrity’s CO2 emissions do not change my assessment of them as an artist.”
Finally, the participants answered questions to measure their personal concern about carbon dioxide emissions. They were also asked to rate their intentions to engage in climate-friendly behaviors. For instance, they indicated their agreement with statements about taking steps to reduce their own contribution to global warming.
The researchers found that merely reading about Swift’s carbon emissions did not automatically change a person’s environmental views across the entire group. Differences in environmental concern between the three article conditions were not statistically significant on their own. The outcomes depended heavily on how strongly a participant identified as a fan of the pop star.
High-level Swift fans who read the article specifically highlighting her emissions reported the highest levels of rationalization. When these devoted fans read about Swift’s environmental impact, they were much more likely to justify or excuse the behavior compared to high-level fans who only read about the carbon footprints of general celebrities. This psychological defense mechanism had a ripple effect on their broader views.
Engaging in rationalization was linked to lower overall concern about carbon dioxide emissions. It also predicted a decrease in the participants’ stated intentions to engage in environmentally friendly behaviors. By making excuses for the pop star to protect their fan identity, the individuals ultimately weakened their own pro-environmental attitudes.
The data showed that having a strong fan identity was directly associated with higher environmental concerns. The act of rationalizing the celebrity’s specific transgression reduced those pro-environmental attitudes. The fans effectively prioritized their psychological connection to the celebrity over their climate values.
The study relies on a specific demographic, which limits how broadly the conclusions can be applied. The participant pool consisted mostly of white, heterosexual, cisgender women who attended college and leaned politically Democratic. People from different age groups, educational backgrounds, or political affiliations might process celebrity transgressions using entirely different psychological mechanisms.
The researchers also noted that they could not reliably measure one specific type of moral reasoning, known as coupling. Coupling happens when a person allows a celebrity’s bad behavior to permanently ruin their opinion of the star’s professional work. Because the survey questions designed to measure this strategy did not yield reliable data, the researchers had to exclude it from their final analysis.
The experiment focused exclusively on Taylor Swift, meaning the results might not hold true for fans of other public figures or different types of media personalities. The study also did not measure whether participants already knew about the singer’s private jet usage before taking the survey. Prior knowledge could have influenced how strongly the mock news articles affected their responses.
Future investigations could explore how different types of fandoms, such as sports enthusiasts or political followers, react to environmental scandals. Researchers might also track people over a longer period to see if the drop in environmental concern is temporary or if excusing a celebrity’s pollution leads to lasting changes in personal habits.
The study, ““Don’t Blame Me”: Testing the Effects of Taylor Swift Fan Identity on Emerging Adults’ Moral Reasoning Strategies and Environmental Cognitions,” was authored by Leah Dajches, Taylor A. Foerster, Juliana L. Barbati, and Jessica Gall Myrick.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/taylor-swift-fans-lower-climate-concerns-to-justify-star-s-carbon-footprint/
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #TaylorSwift #ClimateChange #FanIdentity #MoralReasoning #Rationalization #Decoupling #PrivateJet #CelebrityEmissions #EnvironmentalCognition #SustainabilityAwareness
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DATE: September 29, 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: Taylor Swift fans lower climate concerns to justify star’s carbon footprint
URL: https://www.psypost.org/taylor-swift-fans-lower-climate-concerns-to-justify-star-s-carbon-footprint/
Young adults who consider themselves devoted fans of pop star Taylor Swift may lower their own environmental concerns to justify the singer’s high carbon dioxide emissions. When confronted with news about the excessive pollution generated by her private jet, highly identified fans tend to rationalize the behavior, which correlates with a decrease in their personal intentions to engage in climate-friendly actions. These findings were published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media.
Young adults belonging to Generation Z, people born between 1995 and 2012, are known for their high levels of environmental awareness. Many individuals in this demographic express deep anxiety about global warming and actively engage in climate advocacy. At the same time, this generation came of age alongside the explosion of social media and celebrity culture.
A tension arises when a beloved public figure engages in actions that harm the environment. In 2022, data tracking private jet flights named Taylor Swift the biggest celebrity emitter of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere and acts as a primary driver of global climate change. Swift’s private jet use produced about 1,185 times more carbon pollution than the average person generates in a year.
Researchers wanted to understand how young, climate-conscious fans process information that puts their fandom in direct conflict with their environmental values. The research team included Leah Dajches of New Mexico State University, Taylor A. Foerster of Oregon State University, Juliana L. Barbati of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Jessica Gall Myrick of Good Pug Media. They focused on a psychological process known as moral reasoning.
Moral reasoning refers to the mental strategies people use to resolve the discomfort they feel when someone they admire violates a social or ethical norm. One strategy is called decoupling, where a person separates their judgment of the bad behavior from their appreciation of the celebrity’s professional work. A person using this strategy might condemn a star’s pollution but continue to stream their music.
Another strategy is rationalization, which involves making excuses for the behavior or convincing oneself that the actions are not actually that bad. The researchers proposed that people with a strong fan identity would be highly motivated to use these strategies. Fan identity goes beyond simply enjoying a musician’s work; it involves feeling a sense of belonging to a broader social community of supporters. When a celebrity at the center of that community does something wrong, fans may feel a personal need to protect the group’s reputation.
To test this dynamic, the researchers recruited about 1,000 undergraduate students from two public universities in the United States. They filtered the group to include only adults between the ages of 18 and 29. The participants began by completing a survey that measured their level of Taylor Swift fan identity, answering questions about how much they liked her and how often they engaged with her fan community.
The study participants were then randomly assigned to read one of three mock news articles. The first article discussed the massive carbon footprints of celebrities in general. The second article covered the exact same topic but explicitly named Taylor Swift in the headline and included specific data about her private jet emissions. The third article was a control story about an unrelated topic, such as multitasking or common air travel questions.
After reading their assigned article, the participants completed another series of questionnaires. These surveys asked them to rate their agreement with statements representing different moral reasoning strategies. For example, a rationalization statement read, “High CO2 emissions are not as bad as some other things celebrities do.” Another statement measuring decoupling read, “A celebrity’s CO2 emissions do not change my assessment of them as an artist.”
Finally, the participants answered questions to measure their personal concern about carbon dioxide emissions. They were also asked to rate their intentions to engage in climate-friendly behaviors. For instance, they indicated their agreement with statements about taking steps to reduce their own contribution to global warming.
The researchers found that merely reading about Swift’s carbon emissions did not automatically change a person’s environmental views across the entire group. Differences in environmental concern between the three article conditions were not statistically significant on their own. The outcomes depended heavily on how strongly a participant identified as a fan of the pop star.
High-level Swift fans who read the article specifically highlighting her emissions reported the highest levels of rationalization. When these devoted fans read about Swift’s environmental impact, they were much more likely to justify or excuse the behavior compared to high-level fans who only read about the carbon footprints of general celebrities. This psychological defense mechanism had a ripple effect on their broader views.
Engaging in rationalization was linked to lower overall concern about carbon dioxide emissions. It also predicted a decrease in the participants’ stated intentions to engage in environmentally friendly behaviors. By making excuses for the pop star to protect their fan identity, the individuals ultimately weakened their own pro-environmental attitudes.
The data showed that having a strong fan identity was directly associated with higher environmental concerns. The act of rationalizing the celebrity’s specific transgression reduced those pro-environmental attitudes. The fans effectively prioritized their psychological connection to the celebrity over their climate values.
The study relies on a specific demographic, which limits how broadly the conclusions can be applied. The participant pool consisted mostly of white, heterosexual, cisgender women who attended college and leaned politically Democratic. People from different age groups, educational backgrounds, or political affiliations might process celebrity transgressions using entirely different psychological mechanisms.
The researchers also noted that they could not reliably measure one specific type of moral reasoning, known as coupling. Coupling happens when a person allows a celebrity’s bad behavior to permanently ruin their opinion of the star’s professional work. Because the survey questions designed to measure this strategy did not yield reliable data, the researchers had to exclude it from their final analysis.
The experiment focused exclusively on Taylor Swift, meaning the results might not hold true for fans of other public figures or different types of media personalities. The study also did not measure whether participants already knew about the singer’s private jet usage before taking the survey. Prior knowledge could have influenced how strongly the mock news articles affected their responses.
Future investigations could explore how different types of fandoms, such as sports enthusiasts or political followers, react to environmental scandals. Researchers might also track people over a longer period to see if the drop in environmental concern is temporary or if excusing a celebrity’s pollution leads to lasting changes in personal habits.
The study, ““Don’t Blame Me”: Testing the Effects of Taylor Swift Fan Identity on Emerging Adults’ Moral Reasoning Strategies and Environmental Cognitions,” was authored by Leah Dajches, Taylor A. Foerster, Juliana L. Barbati, and Jessica Gall Myrick.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/taylor-swift-fans-lower-climate-concerns-to-justify-star-s-carbon-footprint/
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #TaylorSwift #ClimateChange #FanIdentity #MoralReasoning #Rationalization #Decoupling #PrivateJet #CelebrityEmissions #EnvironmentalCognition #SustainabilityAwareness
-
DATE: September 29, 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: Taylor Swift fans lower climate concerns to justify star’s carbon footprint
URL: https://www.psypost.org/taylor-swift-fans-lower-climate-concerns-to-justify-star-s-carbon-footprint/
Young adults who consider themselves devoted fans of pop star Taylor Swift may lower their own environmental concerns to justify the singer’s high carbon dioxide emissions. When confronted with news about the excessive pollution generated by her private jet, highly identified fans tend to rationalize the behavior, which correlates with a decrease in their personal intentions to engage in climate-friendly actions. These findings were published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media.
Young adults belonging to Generation Z, people born between 1995 and 2012, are known for their high levels of environmental awareness. Many individuals in this demographic express deep anxiety about global warming and actively engage in climate advocacy. At the same time, this generation came of age alongside the explosion of social media and celebrity culture.
A tension arises when a beloved public figure engages in actions that harm the environment. In 2022, data tracking private jet flights named Taylor Swift the biggest celebrity emitter of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere and acts as a primary driver of global climate change. Swift’s private jet use produced about 1,185 times more carbon pollution than the average person generates in a year.
Researchers wanted to understand how young, climate-conscious fans process information that puts their fandom in direct conflict with their environmental values. The research team included Leah Dajches of New Mexico State University, Taylor A. Foerster of Oregon State University, Juliana L. Barbati of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Jessica Gall Myrick of Good Pug Media. They focused on a psychological process known as moral reasoning.
Moral reasoning refers to the mental strategies people use to resolve the discomfort they feel when someone they admire violates a social or ethical norm. One strategy is called decoupling, where a person separates their judgment of the bad behavior from their appreciation of the celebrity’s professional work. A person using this strategy might condemn a star’s pollution but continue to stream their music.
Another strategy is rationalization, which involves making excuses for the behavior or convincing oneself that the actions are not actually that bad. The researchers proposed that people with a strong fan identity would be highly motivated to use these strategies. Fan identity goes beyond simply enjoying a musician’s work; it involves feeling a sense of belonging to a broader social community of supporters. When a celebrity at the center of that community does something wrong, fans may feel a personal need to protect the group’s reputation.
To test this dynamic, the researchers recruited about 1,000 undergraduate students from two public universities in the United States. They filtered the group to include only adults between the ages of 18 and 29. The participants began by completing a survey that measured their level of Taylor Swift fan identity, answering questions about how much they liked her and how often they engaged with her fan community.
The study participants were then randomly assigned to read one of three mock news articles. The first article discussed the massive carbon footprints of celebrities in general. The second article covered the exact same topic but explicitly named Taylor Swift in the headline and included specific data about her private jet emissions. The third article was a control story about an unrelated topic, such as multitasking or common air travel questions.
After reading their assigned article, the participants completed another series of questionnaires. These surveys asked them to rate their agreement with statements representing different moral reasoning strategies. For example, a rationalization statement read, “High CO2 emissions are not as bad as some other things celebrities do.” Another statement measuring decoupling read, “A celebrity’s CO2 emissions do not change my assessment of them as an artist.”
Finally, the participants answered questions to measure their personal concern about carbon dioxide emissions. They were also asked to rate their intentions to engage in climate-friendly behaviors. For instance, they indicated their agreement with statements about taking steps to reduce their own contribution to global warming.
The researchers found that merely reading about Swift’s carbon emissions did not automatically change a person’s environmental views across the entire group. Differences in environmental concern between the three article conditions were not statistically significant on their own. The outcomes depended heavily on how strongly a participant identified as a fan of the pop star.
High-level Swift fans who read the article specifically highlighting her emissions reported the highest levels of rationalization. When these devoted fans read about Swift’s environmental impact, they were much more likely to justify or excuse the behavior compared to high-level fans who only read about the carbon footprints of general celebrities. This psychological defense mechanism had a ripple effect on their broader views.
Engaging in rationalization was linked to lower overall concern about carbon dioxide emissions. It also predicted a decrease in the participants’ stated intentions to engage in environmentally friendly behaviors. By making excuses for the pop star to protect their fan identity, the individuals ultimately weakened their own pro-environmental attitudes.
The data showed that having a strong fan identity was directly associated with higher environmental concerns. The act of rationalizing the celebrity’s specific transgression reduced those pro-environmental attitudes. The fans effectively prioritized their psychological connection to the celebrity over their climate values.
The study relies on a specific demographic, which limits how broadly the conclusions can be applied. The participant pool consisted mostly of white, heterosexual, cisgender women who attended college and leaned politically Democratic. People from different age groups, educational backgrounds, or political affiliations might process celebrity transgressions using entirely different psychological mechanisms.
The researchers also noted that they could not reliably measure one specific type of moral reasoning, known as coupling. Coupling happens when a person allows a celebrity’s bad behavior to permanently ruin their opinion of the star’s professional work. Because the survey questions designed to measure this strategy did not yield reliable data, the researchers had to exclude it from their final analysis.
The experiment focused exclusively on Taylor Swift, meaning the results might not hold true for fans of other public figures or different types of media personalities. The study also did not measure whether participants already knew about the singer’s private jet usage before taking the survey. Prior knowledge could have influenced how strongly the mock news articles affected their responses.
Future investigations could explore how different types of fandoms, such as sports enthusiasts or political followers, react to environmental scandals. Researchers might also track people over a longer period to see if the drop in environmental concern is temporary or if excusing a celebrity’s pollution leads to lasting changes in personal habits.
The study, ““Don’t Blame Me”: Testing the Effects of Taylor Swift Fan Identity on Emerging Adults’ Moral Reasoning Strategies and Environmental Cognitions,” was authored by Leah Dajches, Taylor A. Foerster, Juliana L. Barbati, and Jessica Gall Myrick.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/taylor-swift-fans-lower-climate-concerns-to-justify-star-s-carbon-footprint/
-------------------------------------------------
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 #TaylorSwift #ClimateChange #FanIdentity #MoralReasoning #Rationalization #Decoupling #PrivateJet #CelebrityEmissions #EnvironmentalCognition #SustainabilityAwareness
-
DATE: September 29, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: The brain is built from two separate sources, not one, new research suggests
URL: https://www.psypost.org/the-brain-is-built-from-two-separate-sources-not-one-new-research-suggests/
The brain is often viewed as developing from a single starting pool of cells, but recent research suggests a different story. New evidence indicates that the brain actually arises from two distinct, parallel sets of early cells, one that builds the forebrain and midbrain and another that builds the hindbrain. These cells are restricted to forming specific regions from very early in development. These findings, detailed in a study published in Nature Neuroscience, point to an evolutionary strategy that has shaped nervous system development for hundreds of millions of years.
To understand how the brain forms, scientists study pluripotent stem cells. These are unique cells capable of developing into nearly any tissue in the body. During an early phase of embryonic development known as gastrulation, the basic body plan begins to take shape. At this stage, some stem cells become a tissue called the neural ectoderm, which eventually forms the brain, while other structures like the spinal cord arise from different early tissues.
Generating specific types of brain cells in the lab is a major goal in regenerative medicine. Scientists are particularly interested in the hindbrain, a region that manages vital body processes like breathing, swallowing, and sleep. Motor neuron diseases such as spinal muscular atrophy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which damage nerve cells in both the brainstem and spinal cord, are often fatal. A 2026 study found that stem cells guided to the same type of neuron through hindbrain-like versus spinal cord-like routes ended up with distinct patterns of gene activity, suggesting a cell’s developmental history leaves a lasting mark.
This highlights why researchers need an accurate roadmap of brain development. Historically, one popular model proposed that all brain regions emerge from a common pool of neural progenitor cells. A progenitor is an early, not-yet-specialized cell in the embryo that divides and gives rise to more specialized cells. Neural progenitors are the early cells whose descendants become the brain and spinal cord. While other early studies mapping cell fates hinted that cells might be dedicated to specific brain regions early on, they could not confirm if the cells were permanently committed to those paths or just following local chemical signals.
“We certainly didn’t expect to find that the brain comes from two different sources! In 1952, the trailblazing Dutch scientist Pieter Nieuwkoop proposed that the entire brain arises from a common source,” study author Kyle M. Loh of Stanford University told PsyPost. “This led to the prevailing model in the field. Therefore, finding two different brain origins surprised us.”
“I also want to emphasize that we built on important work by other scientists in the 1990s who also suggested that there are perhaps multiple origins of the brain,” Loh added. “The origins of the brain remain a longstanding question, with many twists and turns along the way, and we are excited to work with others to continue to explore this area.”
The research, led by Rayyan T. Jokhai, Carolyn E. Dundes, and Loh, aimed to resolve this debate. They wanted to see if the earliest brain cells are already restricted in what they can become. The team looked at both mouse embryos and human stem cells to track how these initial developmental decisions are made.
“The brain is one organ, but we found that it is built from two different sources while a baby is growing in a mother’s womb,” Loh explained. “These two pieces—the front part of the brain and the back part of the brain—are pushed together to create one integrated organ. For instance, a smartphone is built from many different pieces that come from different countries, but they are later connected to form one integrated unit.”
First, the researchers used a technique called genetic lineage tracing in mouse embryos. They applied a fluorescent tag to a specific group of early neural cells right as gastrulation was ending. This tag allowed them to track the exact locations of these cells and their descendants as the embryos continued to grow until just before birth.
The tagged cells, which expressed a specific gene called Gbx2, were almost exclusively found in the developing hindbrain. They were essentially absent from the forebrain and midbrain. This provided evidence that in a living embryo, this specific population of cells is already on a dedicated path to form the hindbrain.
To test if these cells could be forced to change their destiny, the team turned to human pluripotent stem cells grown in lab dishes. They exposed the stem cells to specific mixtures of chemical signals to mimic early embryonic development.
Using different chemical recipes, the researchers turned the stem cells into two separate types of early brain tissue within just two days. One recipe yielded anterior neural ectoderm, which naturally forms the forebrain and midbrain. Another recipe, which included the signaling molecules FGF and retinoic acid, produced posterior neural ectoderm, which naturally forms the hindbrain. The researchers then challenged these cells by exposing them to the opposite developmental signals.
The cells largely resisted the new instructions. When the anterior cells were given chemical signals meant to create a hindbrain, they mostly failed to make the switch. In the same way, the posterior cells could rarely be coaxed into becoming forebrain or midbrain cells. Both cell types generally held their identities even when the two were mixed together in the same dish.
To understand this stubbornness, the researchers looked at the cells’ chromatin, which is the way DNA is packaged and organized. They found that the anterior and posterior cells had markedly different chromatin landscapes. The genes required for forebrain development were accessible and ready for action in the anterior cells, while the hindbrain genes were locked away.
The most important takeaway is “that the neuroectoderm divides into two separate progenitor populations that diverge in their potential to generate different brain regions,” Eduardo Sequerra, a researcher at the Brain Institute at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte who was not involved in the study, told PsyPost. He emphasized that this split happens “much earlier than the neural tube formation,” referring to the formation of the early embryonic structure that eventually becomes the brain and spinal cord.
“I am quite confident in their very interesting finding,” Sequerra said. “They joined in vivo developmental studies across different species with in vitro differentiation systems to show their hypothesis is solid in different ways.” In vivo means studies done in living organisms, such as embryos, while in vitro means studies done on cells grown outside the body, such as in a lab dish. Differentiation is the process by which an unspecialized cell, like a stem cell, turns into a specific cell type, such as a neuron.
This early division aligns with older clues in the field. “During the ’90s Nicole Le Douarin’s group performed a series of transplantation studies showing that the folding neural tube is divided into two parts,” Sequerra explained. He noted that one part sits above the notochord, a flexible rod of tissue that helps organize the developing embryo, and “cannot differentiate into anterior structures.” The other part, which lacks a notochord below it, “differentiates into the midbrain and forebrain,” he said.
“This article shows that the split into two populations occurs much earlier than the established notochord and neural folds stage,” Sequerra added, referring to the ridges of tissue on the embryo’s back that rise up and merge to form the neural tube. “This split possibly occurs when the future notochord-mesoderm cells are still migrating.” The mesoderm is the middle layer of cells in an early embryo, which goes on to form muscles, bones, blood, and other tissues.
Using this new knowledge, the research team successfully directed the posterior neural ectoderm cells to grow into specialized hindbrain motor neurons. These particular neurons are responsible for controlling muscles in the face and neck, including those necessary for swallowing. The lab-grown neurons showed spontaneous calcium activity and fired electrical impulses when stimulated, signs that they were functional.
“We are excited by the ability to create human hindbrain neurons in a Petri dish,” Loh said. “The hindbrain—the back part of the brain, otherwise known as the brainstem—controls life-sustaining functions such as sleep, wakefulness, consciousness, hunger, and so on. The ability to create human hindbrain neurons in a Petri dish may help us better understand these fundamental, life-sustaining processes, and diseases that impact them.”
“Both amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and spinal muscular atrophy are deadly diseases,” Loh noted. “In particular, spinal muscular atrophy is the #1 genetic cause of death in babies under 1 year of age. Both diseases kill hindbrain motor neurons that control muscles involved in eating, swallowing, and speech.”
“We cannot sample living motor neurons from a patient’s hindbrain to watch how these diseases attack these neurons. Growing these hindbrain motor neurons in a dish gives us a way to investigate these diseases,” Loh explained. “We hope to explore how amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, spinal muscular atrophy, and other diseases affect human hindbrain motor neurons, with the hope of using this system to discover and test potential treatments.”
“The development of a method to differentiate motor neurons in vitro has the potential to bring hope for those with neuromuscular disorders,” Sequerra said. However, he cautioned that this approach relies on studying patient-specific cells in a dish, rather than replacing damaged tissue in the body. “Of course it has the potential of becoming a way of studying specific patients’ motor neurons through iPSCs [induced pluripotent stem cells] but it definitely is not close to a stem cell therapy for regeneration.”
The researchers also examined the embryos of several other species, including macaques, chickens, zebrafish, and acorn worms. Acorn worms are small marine worms that burrow in the seafloor and are distant relatives of animals with backbones. The researchers found distinct anterior and posterior neural cell groups in all of them. This suggests that the mechanism of using two parallel starting populations to build a brain has been conserved across different species for roughly 550 million years.
“We hope to learn more about how the brain was built during evolution,” Loh said. “In humans, mice, and other types of animals, the two parts of the brain develop next to one another, even though they originate from different sources. However, other pioneering scientists discovered that jellyfish—which diverged from us 600 million years ago—have two separate nerve rings at different ends of the body.”
“Our speculation is that early during evolution, there was perhaps no ‘grand plan’ to create a single brain, but rather potentially two separate nervous systems were created,” Loh continued. “Later in evolution, these two nervous systems may have been pushed together to give rise to the appearance of one integrated brain. It is important to emphasize that this is only an idea, and it might change as scientists learn more.”
“The expansion of the midbrain-forebrain progenitor field was probably an important phenomenon in the vertebrate nervous system evolution,” Sequerra noted. Moving forward, he said “it will be nice to go deeper into the mechanisms for the segregation of the two populations in both vertebrates and invertebrate chordates, or even other deuterostomes.” Invertebrate chordates are animals without a backbone that still share key body features with vertebrates, such as a notochord at some stage of life. Examples include sea squirts and lancelets, which belong to the broader deuterostome group alongside vertebrates.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. Growing human cells in a plastic dish does not perfectly recreate the complex, three-dimensional environment of a developing embryo. The cells might behave slightly differently when isolated from the intricate chemical exchanges that happen naturally in the body.
Additionally, the researchers emphasize that their findings should not be misinterpreted as suggesting the brain lacks unity. “Some people reading our paper sometimes think it suggests the brain is two separate organs. More precisely, the brain is one organ, but it is built from two different sources,” Loh explained. “By the analogy, the heart is likewise built from two different sources: one source creates the right ventricle, and another source creates the three other chambers of the heart. But ultimately, all four chambers of the heart work together, similar to how different parts of the brain all work together to give rise to all the amazing things that the brain can do.”
In addition, while the lab-grown cells appeared strongly committed to their specific paths, other unknown chemical combinations might exist that could force them to switch identities. Testing this in living mammals is technically difficult and would require placing labeled progenitor cells into the wrong location in a growing mammalian embryo. Despite these caveats, the ability to predictably grow specialized hindbrain neurons offers a highly useful tool for studying fatal neurodegenerative diseases in the lab. These are diseases in which nerve cells gradually break down and die over time, such as ALS.
The study, “Two parallel neural ectoderm progenitors contribute to the developing brain,” was authored by Rayyan T. Jokhai, Carolyn E. Dundes, Hadia S. Ahsan, Rachel S. Kang, Rachel E.A. Salomon-Shulman, Arjun Rajan, Yoon Seok Kim, Liam J. Stanton, Christine Xu, Stephanie Do, Brennan D. McDonald, José Miguel Andrade López, Hugo A. Urrutia, Hannah Greenfeld, Alicia Wong, Yimiao Qu, Andrew S. Petkovic, Yi Miao, K. Christopher Garcia, Michelle Monje, Daniel E. Wagner, Marianne E. Bronner, Christopher J. Lowe, and Kyle M. Loh.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/the-brain-is-built-from-two-separate-sources-not-one-new-research-suggests/
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #braindevelopment #neurogenesis #TwoSourcesBrain #forebrainmidbrain #hindbrain #neuralectoderm #stemcells #neuroscience #neuroregeneration #NatureNeuroscience
-
DATE: September 29, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: The brain is built from two separate sources, not one, new research suggests
URL: https://www.psypost.org/the-brain-is-built-from-two-separate-sources-not-one-new-research-suggests/
The brain is often viewed as developing from a single starting pool of cells, but recent research suggests a different story. New evidence indicates that the brain actually arises from two distinct, parallel sets of early cells, one that builds the forebrain and midbrain and another that builds the hindbrain. These cells are restricted to forming specific regions from very early in development. These findings, detailed in a study published in Nature Neuroscience, point to an evolutionary strategy that has shaped nervous system development for hundreds of millions of years.
To understand how the brain forms, scientists study pluripotent stem cells. These are unique cells capable of developing into nearly any tissue in the body. During an early phase of embryonic development known as gastrulation, the basic body plan begins to take shape. At this stage, some stem cells become a tissue called the neural ectoderm, which eventually forms the brain, while other structures like the spinal cord arise from different early tissues.
Generating specific types of brain cells in the lab is a major goal in regenerative medicine. Scientists are particularly interested in the hindbrain, a region that manages vital body processes like breathing, swallowing, and sleep. Motor neuron diseases such as spinal muscular atrophy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which damage nerve cells in both the brainstem and spinal cord, are often fatal. A 2026 study found that stem cells guided to the same type of neuron through hindbrain-like versus spinal cord-like routes ended up with distinct patterns of gene activity, suggesting a cell’s developmental history leaves a lasting mark.
This highlights why researchers need an accurate roadmap of brain development. Historically, one popular model proposed that all brain regions emerge from a common pool of neural progenitor cells. A progenitor is an early, not-yet-specialized cell in the embryo that divides and gives rise to more specialized cells. Neural progenitors are the early cells whose descendants become the brain and spinal cord. While other early studies mapping cell fates hinted that cells might be dedicated to specific brain regions early on, they could not confirm if the cells were permanently committed to those paths or just following local chemical signals.
“We certainly didn’t expect to find that the brain comes from two different sources! In 1952, the trailblazing Dutch scientist Pieter Nieuwkoop proposed that the entire brain arises from a common source,” study author Kyle M. Loh of Stanford University told PsyPost. “This led to the prevailing model in the field. Therefore, finding two different brain origins surprised us.”
“I also want to emphasize that we built on important work by other scientists in the 1990s who also suggested that there are perhaps multiple origins of the brain,” Loh added. “The origins of the brain remain a longstanding question, with many twists and turns along the way, and we are excited to work with others to continue to explore this area.”
The research, led by Rayyan T. Jokhai, Carolyn E. Dundes, and Loh, aimed to resolve this debate. They wanted to see if the earliest brain cells are already restricted in what they can become. The team looked at both mouse embryos and human stem cells to track how these initial developmental decisions are made.
“The brain is one organ, but we found that it is built from two different sources while a baby is growing in a mother’s womb,” Loh explained. “These two pieces—the front part of the brain and the back part of the brain—are pushed together to create one integrated organ. For instance, a smartphone is built from many different pieces that come from different countries, but they are later connected to form one integrated unit.”
First, the researchers used a technique called genetic lineage tracing in mouse embryos. They applied a fluorescent tag to a specific group of early neural cells right as gastrulation was ending. This tag allowed them to track the exact locations of these cells and their descendants as the embryos continued to grow until just before birth.
The tagged cells, which expressed a specific gene called Gbx2, were almost exclusively found in the developing hindbrain. They were essentially absent from the forebrain and midbrain. This provided evidence that in a living embryo, this specific population of cells is already on a dedicated path to form the hindbrain.
To test if these cells could be forced to change their destiny, the team turned to human pluripotent stem cells grown in lab dishes. They exposed the stem cells to specific mixtures of chemical signals to mimic early embryonic development.
Using different chemical recipes, the researchers turned the stem cells into two separate types of early brain tissue within just two days. One recipe yielded anterior neural ectoderm, which naturally forms the forebrain and midbrain. Another recipe, which included the signaling molecules FGF and retinoic acid, produced posterior neural ectoderm, which naturally forms the hindbrain. The researchers then challenged these cells by exposing them to the opposite developmental signals.
The cells largely resisted the new instructions. When the anterior cells were given chemical signals meant to create a hindbrain, they mostly failed to make the switch. In the same way, the posterior cells could rarely be coaxed into becoming forebrain or midbrain cells. Both cell types generally held their identities even when the two were mixed together in the same dish.
To understand this stubbornness, the researchers looked at the cells’ chromatin, which is the way DNA is packaged and organized. They found that the anterior and posterior cells had markedly different chromatin landscapes. The genes required for forebrain development were accessible and ready for action in the anterior cells, while the hindbrain genes were locked away.
The most important takeaway is “that the neuroectoderm divides into two separate progenitor populations that diverge in their potential to generate different brain regions,” Eduardo Sequerra, a researcher at the Brain Institute at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte who was not involved in the study, told PsyPost. He emphasized that this split happens “much earlier than the neural tube formation,” referring to the formation of the early embryonic structure that eventually becomes the brain and spinal cord.
“I am quite confident in their very interesting finding,” Sequerra said. “They joined in vivo developmental studies across different species with in vitro differentiation systems to show their hypothesis is solid in different ways.” In vivo means studies done in living organisms, such as embryos, while in vitro means studies done on cells grown outside the body, such as in a lab dish. Differentiation is the process by which an unspecialized cell, like a stem cell, turns into a specific cell type, such as a neuron.
This early division aligns with older clues in the field. “During the ’90s Nicole Le Douarin’s group performed a series of transplantation studies showing that the folding neural tube is divided into two parts,” Sequerra explained. He noted that one part sits above the notochord, a flexible rod of tissue that helps organize the developing embryo, and “cannot differentiate into anterior structures.” The other part, which lacks a notochord below it, “differentiates into the midbrain and forebrain,” he said.
“This article shows that the split into two populations occurs much earlier than the established notochord and neural folds stage,” Sequerra added, referring to the ridges of tissue on the embryo’s back that rise up and merge to form the neural tube. “This split possibly occurs when the future notochord-mesoderm cells are still migrating.” The mesoderm is the middle layer of cells in an early embryo, which goes on to form muscles, bones, blood, and other tissues.
Using this new knowledge, the research team successfully directed the posterior neural ectoderm cells to grow into specialized hindbrain motor neurons. These particular neurons are responsible for controlling muscles in the face and neck, including those necessary for swallowing. The lab-grown neurons showed spontaneous calcium activity and fired electrical impulses when stimulated, signs that they were functional.
“We are excited by the ability to create human hindbrain neurons in a Petri dish,” Loh said. “The hindbrain—the back part of the brain, otherwise known as the brainstem—controls life-sustaining functions such as sleep, wakefulness, consciousness, hunger, and so on. The ability to create human hindbrain neurons in a Petri dish may help us better understand these fundamental, life-sustaining processes, and diseases that impact them.”
“Both amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and spinal muscular atrophy are deadly diseases,” Loh noted. “In particular, spinal muscular atrophy is the #1 genetic cause of death in babies under 1 year of age. Both diseases kill hindbrain motor neurons that control muscles involved in eating, swallowing, and speech.”
“We cannot sample living motor neurons from a patient’s hindbrain to watch how these diseases attack these neurons. Growing these hindbrain motor neurons in a dish gives us a way to investigate these diseases,” Loh explained. “We hope to explore how amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, spinal muscular atrophy, and other diseases affect human hindbrain motor neurons, with the hope of using this system to discover and test potential treatments.”
“The development of a method to differentiate motor neurons in vitro has the potential to bring hope for those with neuromuscular disorders,” Sequerra said. However, he cautioned that this approach relies on studying patient-specific cells in a dish, rather than replacing damaged tissue in the body. “Of course it has the potential of becoming a way of studying specific patients’ motor neurons through iPSCs [induced pluripotent stem cells] but it definitely is not close to a stem cell therapy for regeneration.”
The researchers also examined the embryos of several other species, including macaques, chickens, zebrafish, and acorn worms. Acorn worms are small marine worms that burrow in the seafloor and are distant relatives of animals with backbones. The researchers found distinct anterior and posterior neural cell groups in all of them. This suggests that the mechanism of using two parallel starting populations to build a brain has been conserved across different species for roughly 550 million years.
“We hope to learn more about how the brain was built during evolution,” Loh said. “In humans, mice, and other types of animals, the two parts of the brain develop next to one another, even though they originate from different sources. However, other pioneering scientists discovered that jellyfish—which diverged from us 600 million years ago—have two separate nerve rings at different ends of the body.”
“Our speculation is that early during evolution, there was perhaps no ‘grand plan’ to create a single brain, but rather potentially two separate nervous systems were created,” Loh continued. “Later in evolution, these two nervous systems may have been pushed together to give rise to the appearance of one integrated brain. It is important to emphasize that this is only an idea, and it might change as scientists learn more.”
“The expansion of the midbrain-forebrain progenitor field was probably an important phenomenon in the vertebrate nervous system evolution,” Sequerra noted. Moving forward, he said “it will be nice to go deeper into the mechanisms for the segregation of the two populations in both vertebrates and invertebrate chordates, or even other deuterostomes.” Invertebrate chordates are animals without a backbone that still share key body features with vertebrates, such as a notochord at some stage of life. Examples include sea squirts and lancelets, which belong to the broader deuterostome group alongside vertebrates.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. Growing human cells in a plastic dish does not perfectly recreate the complex, three-dimensional environment of a developing embryo. The cells might behave slightly differently when isolated from the intricate chemical exchanges that happen naturally in the body.
Additionally, the researchers emphasize that their findings should not be misinterpreted as suggesting the brain lacks unity. “Some people reading our paper sometimes think it suggests the brain is two separate organs. More precisely, the brain is one organ, but it is built from two different sources,” Loh explained. “By the analogy, the heart is likewise built from two different sources: one source creates the right ventricle, and another source creates the three other chambers of the heart. But ultimately, all four chambers of the heart work together, similar to how different parts of the brain all work together to give rise to all the amazing things that the brain can do.”
In addition, while the lab-grown cells appeared strongly committed to their specific paths, other unknown chemical combinations might exist that could force them to switch identities. Testing this in living mammals is technically difficult and would require placing labeled progenitor cells into the wrong location in a growing mammalian embryo. Despite these caveats, the ability to predictably grow specialized hindbrain neurons offers a highly useful tool for studying fatal neurodegenerative diseases in the lab. These are diseases in which nerve cells gradually break down and die over time, such as ALS.
The study, “Two parallel neural ectoderm progenitors contribute to the developing brain,” was authored by Rayyan T. Jokhai, Carolyn E. Dundes, Hadia S. Ahsan, Rachel S. Kang, Rachel E.A. Salomon-Shulman, Arjun Rajan, Yoon Seok Kim, Liam J. Stanton, Christine Xu, Stephanie Do, Brennan D. McDonald, José Miguel Andrade López, Hugo A. Urrutia, Hannah Greenfeld, Alicia Wong, Yimiao Qu, Andrew S. Petkovic, Yi Miao, K. Christopher Garcia, Michelle Monje, Daniel E. Wagner, Marianne E. Bronner, Christopher J. Lowe, and Kyle M. Loh.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/the-brain-is-built-from-two-separate-sources-not-one-new-research-suggests/
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DATE: September 29, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: The brain is built from two separate sources, not one, new research suggests
URL: https://www.psypost.org/the-brain-is-built-from-two-separate-sources-not-one-new-research-suggests/
The brain is often viewed as developing from a single starting pool of cells, but recent research suggests a different story. New evidence indicates that the brain actually arises from two distinct, parallel sets of early cells, one that builds the forebrain and midbrain and another that builds the hindbrain. These cells are restricted to forming specific regions from very early in development. These findings, detailed in a study published in Nature Neuroscience, point to an evolutionary strategy that has shaped nervous system development for hundreds of millions of years.
To understand how the brain forms, scientists study pluripotent stem cells. These are unique cells capable of developing into nearly any tissue in the body. During an early phase of embryonic development known as gastrulation, the basic body plan begins to take shape. At this stage, some stem cells become a tissue called the neural ectoderm, which eventually forms the brain, while other structures like the spinal cord arise from different early tissues.
Generating specific types of brain cells in the lab is a major goal in regenerative medicine. Scientists are particularly interested in the hindbrain, a region that manages vital body processes like breathing, swallowing, and sleep. Motor neuron diseases such as spinal muscular atrophy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which damage nerve cells in both the brainstem and spinal cord, are often fatal. A 2026 study found that stem cells guided to the same type of neuron through hindbrain-like versus spinal cord-like routes ended up with distinct patterns of gene activity, suggesting a cell’s developmental history leaves a lasting mark.
This highlights why researchers need an accurate roadmap of brain development. Historically, one popular model proposed that all brain regions emerge from a common pool of neural progenitor cells. A progenitor is an early, not-yet-specialized cell in the embryo that divides and gives rise to more specialized cells. Neural progenitors are the early cells whose descendants become the brain and spinal cord. While other early studies mapping cell fates hinted that cells might be dedicated to specific brain regions early on, they could not confirm if the cells were permanently committed to those paths or just following local chemical signals.
“We certainly didn’t expect to find that the brain comes from two different sources! In 1952, the trailblazing Dutch scientist Pieter Nieuwkoop proposed that the entire brain arises from a common source,” study author Kyle M. Loh of Stanford University told PsyPost. “This led to the prevailing model in the field. Therefore, finding two different brain origins surprised us.”
“I also want to emphasize that we built on important work by other scientists in the 1990s who also suggested that there are perhaps multiple origins of the brain,” Loh added. “The origins of the brain remain a longstanding question, with many twists and turns along the way, and we are excited to work with others to continue to explore this area.”
The research, led by Rayyan T. Jokhai, Carolyn E. Dundes, and Loh, aimed to resolve this debate. They wanted to see if the earliest brain cells are already restricted in what they can become. The team looked at both mouse embryos and human stem cells to track how these initial developmental decisions are made.
“The brain is one organ, but we found that it is built from two different sources while a baby is growing in a mother’s womb,” Loh explained. “These two pieces—the front part of the brain and the back part of the brain—are pushed together to create one integrated organ. For instance, a smartphone is built from many different pieces that come from different countries, but they are later connected to form one integrated unit.”
First, the researchers used a technique called genetic lineage tracing in mouse embryos. They applied a fluorescent tag to a specific group of early neural cells right as gastrulation was ending. This tag allowed them to track the exact locations of these cells and their descendants as the embryos continued to grow until just before birth.
The tagged cells, which expressed a specific gene called Gbx2, were almost exclusively found in the developing hindbrain. They were essentially absent from the forebrain and midbrain. This provided evidence that in a living embryo, this specific population of cells is already on a dedicated path to form the hindbrain.
To test if these cells could be forced to change their destiny, the team turned to human pluripotent stem cells grown in lab dishes. They exposed the stem cells to specific mixtures of chemical signals to mimic early embryonic development.
Using different chemical recipes, the researchers turned the stem cells into two separate types of early brain tissue within just two days. One recipe yielded anterior neural ectoderm, which naturally forms the forebrain and midbrain. Another recipe, which included the signaling molecules FGF and retinoic acid, produced posterior neural ectoderm, which naturally forms the hindbrain. The researchers then challenged these cells by exposing them to the opposite developmental signals.
The cells largely resisted the new instructions. When the anterior cells were given chemical signals meant to create a hindbrain, they mostly failed to make the switch. In the same way, the posterior cells could rarely be coaxed into becoming forebrain or midbrain cells. Both cell types generally held their identities even when the two were mixed together in the same dish.
To understand this stubbornness, the researchers looked at the cells’ chromatin, which is the way DNA is packaged and organized. They found that the anterior and posterior cells had markedly different chromatin landscapes. The genes required for forebrain development were accessible and ready for action in the anterior cells, while the hindbrain genes were locked away.
The most important takeaway is “that the neuroectoderm divides into two separate progenitor populations that diverge in their potential to generate different brain regions,” Eduardo Sequerra, a researcher at the Brain Institute at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte who was not involved in the study, told PsyPost. He emphasized that this split happens “much earlier than the neural tube formation,” referring to the formation of the early embryonic structure that eventually becomes the brain and spinal cord.
“I am quite confident in their very interesting finding,” Sequerra said. “They joined in vivo developmental studies across different species with in vitro differentiation systems to show their hypothesis is solid in different ways.” In vivo means studies done in living organisms, such as embryos, while in vitro means studies done on cells grown outside the body, such as in a lab dish. Differentiation is the process by which an unspecialized cell, like a stem cell, turns into a specific cell type, such as a neuron.
This early division aligns with older clues in the field. “During the ’90s Nicole Le Douarin’s group performed a series of transplantation studies showing that the folding neural tube is divided into two parts,” Sequerra explained. He noted that one part sits above the notochord, a flexible rod of tissue that helps organize the developing embryo, and “cannot differentiate into anterior structures.” The other part, which lacks a notochord below it, “differentiates into the midbrain and forebrain,” he said.
“This article shows that the split into two populations occurs much earlier than the established notochord and neural folds stage,” Sequerra added, referring to the ridges of tissue on the embryo’s back that rise up and merge to form the neural tube. “This split possibly occurs when the future notochord-mesoderm cells are still migrating.” The mesoderm is the middle layer of cells in an early embryo, which goes on to form muscles, bones, blood, and other tissues.
Using this new knowledge, the research team successfully directed the posterior neural ectoderm cells to grow into specialized hindbrain motor neurons. These particular neurons are responsible for controlling muscles in the face and neck, including those necessary for swallowing. The lab-grown neurons showed spontaneous calcium activity and fired electrical impulses when stimulated, signs that they were functional.
“We are excited by the ability to create human hindbrain neurons in a Petri dish,” Loh said. “The hindbrain—the back part of the brain, otherwise known as the brainstem—controls life-sustaining functions such as sleep, wakefulness, consciousness, hunger, and so on. The ability to create human hindbrain neurons in a Petri dish may help us better understand these fundamental, life-sustaining processes, and diseases that impact them.”
“Both amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and spinal muscular atrophy are deadly diseases,” Loh noted. “In particular, spinal muscular atrophy is the #1 genetic cause of death in babies under 1 year of age. Both diseases kill hindbrain motor neurons that control muscles involved in eating, swallowing, and speech.”
“We cannot sample living motor neurons from a patient’s hindbrain to watch how these diseases attack these neurons. Growing these hindbrain motor neurons in a dish gives us a way to investigate these diseases,” Loh explained. “We hope to explore how amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, spinal muscular atrophy, and other diseases affect human hindbrain motor neurons, with the hope of using this system to discover and test potential treatments.”
“The development of a method to differentiate motor neurons in vitro has the potential to bring hope for those with neuromuscular disorders,” Sequerra said. However, he cautioned that this approach relies on studying patient-specific cells in a dish, rather than replacing damaged tissue in the body. “Of course it has the potential of becoming a way of studying specific patients’ motor neurons through iPSCs [induced pluripotent stem cells] but it definitely is not close to a stem cell therapy for regeneration.”
The researchers also examined the embryos of several other species, including macaques, chickens, zebrafish, and acorn worms. Acorn worms are small marine worms that burrow in the seafloor and are distant relatives of animals with backbones. The researchers found distinct anterior and posterior neural cell groups in all of them. This suggests that the mechanism of using two parallel starting populations to build a brain has been conserved across different species for roughly 550 million years.
“We hope to learn more about how the brain was built during evolution,” Loh said. “In humans, mice, and other types of animals, the two parts of the brain develop next to one another, even though they originate from different sources. However, other pioneering scientists discovered that jellyfish—which diverged from us 600 million years ago—have two separate nerve rings at different ends of the body.”
“Our speculation is that early during evolution, there was perhaps no ‘grand plan’ to create a single brain, but rather potentially two separate nervous systems were created,” Loh continued. “Later in evolution, these two nervous systems may have been pushed together to give rise to the appearance of one integrated brain. It is important to emphasize that this is only an idea, and it might change as scientists learn more.”
“The expansion of the midbrain-forebrain progenitor field was probably an important phenomenon in the vertebrate nervous system evolution,” Sequerra noted. Moving forward, he said “it will be nice to go deeper into the mechanisms for the segregation of the two populations in both vertebrates and invertebrate chordates, or even other deuterostomes.” Invertebrate chordates are animals without a backbone that still share key body features with vertebrates, such as a notochord at some stage of life. Examples include sea squirts and lancelets, which belong to the broader deuterostome group alongside vertebrates.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. Growing human cells in a plastic dish does not perfectly recreate the complex, three-dimensional environment of a developing embryo. The cells might behave slightly differently when isolated from the intricate chemical exchanges that happen naturally in the body.
Additionally, the researchers emphasize that their findings should not be misinterpreted as suggesting the brain lacks unity. “Some people reading our paper sometimes think it suggests the brain is two separate organs. More precisely, the brain is one organ, but it is built from two different sources,” Loh explained. “By the analogy, the heart is likewise built from two different sources: one source creates the right ventricle, and another source creates the three other chambers of the heart. But ultimately, all four chambers of the heart work together, similar to how different parts of the brain all work together to give rise to all the amazing things that the brain can do.”
In addition, while the lab-grown cells appeared strongly committed to their specific paths, other unknown chemical combinations might exist that could force them to switch identities. Testing this in living mammals is technically difficult and would require placing labeled progenitor cells into the wrong location in a growing mammalian embryo. Despite these caveats, the ability to predictably grow specialized hindbrain neurons offers a highly useful tool for studying fatal neurodegenerative diseases in the lab. These are diseases in which nerve cells gradually break down and die over time, such as ALS.
The study, “Two parallel neural ectoderm progenitors contribute to the developing brain,” was authored by Rayyan T. Jokhai, Carolyn E. Dundes, Hadia S. Ahsan, Rachel S. Kang, Rachel E.A. Salomon-Shulman, Arjun Rajan, Yoon Seok Kim, Liam J. Stanton, Christine Xu, Stephanie Do, Brennan D. McDonald, José Miguel Andrade López, Hugo A. Urrutia, Hannah Greenfeld, Alicia Wong, Yimiao Qu, Andrew S. Petkovic, Yi Miao, K. Christopher Garcia, Michelle Monje, Daniel E. Wagner, Marianne E. Bronner, Christopher J. Lowe, and Kyle M. Loh.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/the-brain-is-built-from-two-separate-sources-not-one-new-research-suggests/
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DATE: September 29, 2026 at 05:03AM
SOURCE:
NEW YORK TIMES PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGISTS FEEDTITLE: I’m Exhausted. You’re Demoralized. We Weren’t Built for a World Like This.
URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/opinion/boring-politics-exhaustion.html
A greatly underappreciated virtue of other presidents was that you could forget about them for weeks at a time.
URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/opinion/boring-politics-exhaustion.html
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DATE: September 29, 2026 at 05:03AM
SOURCE:
NEW YORK TIMES PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGISTS FEEDTITLE: I’m Exhausted. You’re Demoralized. We Weren’t Built for a World Like This.
URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/opinion/boring-politics-exhaustion.html
A greatly underappreciated virtue of other presidents was that you could forget about them for weeks at a time.
URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/opinion/boring-politics-exhaustion.html
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #ImExhausted #Demoralized #WeWerenTBuiltForThis #WorldLikeThis #PresidentialVirtues #ForgettablePresidents #Underappreciated #PublicSentiment #MentalFatigue #PoliticalCommentary