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<td><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:20px;font-weight:bold;">PsyPost – Psychology News Daily Digest (Unofficial)</span></td>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/study-explores-psychological-pathways-from-attachment-style-to-love-addiction/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Study explores psychological pathways from attachment style to love addiction</a>
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<p><p>A study conducted in Italy found that individuals with a fearful attachment pattern tended to exhibit stronger symptoms of love addiction. It is possible that fearful attachment increases separation anxiety. This separation anxiety may make individuals more prone to using immature defense mechanisms, which in turn could heighten the risk of developing love addiction. The research was published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/bs14121222"><em>Behavioral Sciences</em></a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.psypost.org/new-psychology-research-indicates-love-addiction-and-sex-addiction-are-related-but-distinct-phenomena/">Love addiction</a> is a behavioral condition in which a person becomes excessively dependent on romantic relationships, often to the point of obsession. Those affected experience intense cravings for emotional connection and constantly seek validation and attention from their partners. They often live in constant fear of abandonment, which leads to unhealthy relationship patterns such as clinginess, jealousy, or tolerating toxic behaviors.</p>
<p>When separated from their partner, love addicts may experience withdrawal-like symptoms, including anxiety, depression, or compulsive behaviors such as excessive texting or stalking. The condition has been linked to low self-esteem, childhood trauma, and underlying mental health issues such as attachment disorders.</p>
<p>Study author Eleonora Topino and her colleagues hypothesized that separation anxiety and maladaptive defense mechanisms jointly mediate <a href="https://www.psypost.org/insecure-attachment-intensifies-risk-of-love-addiction-study-suggests/">the association between fearful attachment and love addiction</a>. In other words, a fearful attachment pattern may increase separation anxiety and make individuals more likely to use maladaptive defense mechanisms to cope with stress. These factors, in turn, could contribute to love addiction.</p>
<p>Fearful attachment is one of four recognized emotional attachment patterns. It is characterized by a deep desire for closeness combined with an intense fear of rejection, leading individuals to avoid emotional intimacy while simultaneously craving it. The other three patterns include:</p>
<ul>
<li>Secure attachment, where individuals feel comfortable with both intimacy and independence;</li>
<li>Anxious attachment, marked by a strong need for closeness and a fear of abandonment; and</li>
<li>Avoidant attachment, in which individuals prioritize independence and resist emotional closeness.</li>
</ul>
<p>The study involved 332 Italian students who reported being in a romantic relationship. Of the participants, 80% were female, and the average age was 23 years.</p>
<p>Participants completed assessments measuring symptoms of love addiction (using the Love Addiction Inventory – Short Form), attachment patterns (the Relationship Questionnaire), separation anxiety (the Seven Domains Addiction Scale), and defense mechanisms (the Forty Item Defense Style Questionnaire).</p>
<p>Results showed that individuals with a fearful attachment pattern tended to report stronger symptoms of love addiction. Those with higher levels of love addiction also tended to experience greater separation anxiety and more frequent use of neurotic and immature defense mechanisms.</p>
<p>Neurotic defense mechanisms include:</p>
<ul>
<li>Undoing (attempting to “cancel out” an unacceptable thought or action),</li>
<li>Pseudo-altruism (helping others in ways that unconsciously benefit oneself),</li>
<li>Idealization (overestimating someone’s positive qualities while ignoring their flaws), and</li>
<li>Reaction formation (expressing the opposite of one’s true feelings to reduce anxiety).</li>
</ul>
<p>Immature defense mechanisms include:</p>
<ul>
<li>Projection (attributing one’s unacceptable thoughts or feelings to others),</li>
<li>Passive aggression (indirectly expressing anger or resentment),</li>
<li>Acting out (engaging in impulsive or destructive behavior to express emotions),</li>
<li>Denial (refusing to accept reality to avoid distress),</li>
<li>Dissociation (detaching from emotions or reality to cope with stress),</li>
<li>Devaluation (minimizing the worth of oneself or others to manage insecurity),</li>
<li>Autistic fantasy (excessive daydreaming as an escape from reality),</li>
<li>Splitting (viewing people or situations as all good or all bad), and</li>
<li>Somatization (converting emotional distress into physical symptoms).</li>
</ul>
<p>The researchers tested a statistical model proposing that fearful attachment increases both separation anxiety and the use of neurotic defense mechanisms. In this model, separation anxiety further increases the use of immature defense mechanisms. Both categories of defense mechanisms then contribute to the development of love addiction. The results supported the plausibility of this proposed relationship.</p>
<p>“The results highlight the role of insecure attachment, particularly the fearful pattern, as a significant risk factor for love addiction. The study also demonstrates the mediating role of separation anxiety and neurotic/immature defense mechanisms in this relationship. This suggests that individuals with a fearful attachment style may experience higher levels of separation anxiety, leading them to employ maladaptive defense mechanisms, which in turn contribute to the development or maintenance of love addiction,” the study authors concluded.</p>
<p>The study sheds light on the links between attachment patterns and love addiction. However, the design of the study does not allow any causal inferences to be drawn from the data. The psychological mechanism proposed in the study remains only a possibility until it can be verified with a stronger study design.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/bs14121222">Risk Factors for Love Addiction in a Sample of Young Adult Students: A Multiple Mediation Model Exploring the Role of Adult Attachment, Separation Anxiety, and Defense Mechanisms,</a>” was authored by Eleonora Topino, Marco Cacioppo, Shady Dell’Amico, and Alessio Gori.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/believing-youre-working-with-a-machine-lowers-your-confidence-even-if-youre-right/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Believing you’re working with a machine lowers your confidence — even if you’re right</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 24th 2025, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niae018" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Neuroscience of Consciousness</a></em> sheds light on a surprisingly powerful factor that shapes how we make — and revise — decisions: our own sense of confidence. The research found that people’s subjective confidence in their perceptual judgments more strongly predicted whether they would change their mind than how accurate their decision was or how difficult the task seemed. Moreover, confidence dropped when people believed they were interacting with a machine instead of another person, even when both “partners” performed identically.</p>
<p>The researchers wanted to better understand the role of confidence in decision-making. While many theories propose that confidence is a key internal signal that helps guide learning, behavior, and interactions with others — including machines — there have been relatively few direct studies testing exactly how it influences decisions. One challenge is that confidence and accuracy tend to go hand in hand, making it difficult to tease apart which one truly drives behavior. The study set out to address that gap by designing a task that could separate the influence of confidence from task accuracy and difficulty.</p>
<p>“Most studies on confidence — the evaluation of our own decisions — focus on understanding how confidence feelings are generated, specifically the underlying signals that influence why we feel more or less confident. However, less attention has been given to the actual function of confidence in cognition,” said study author Rémi Sanchez of ONERA and Aix-Marseille University.</p>
<p>“Why do we experience confidence as a distinct feeling? Does it serve a purpose in decision-making? In this study, we aimed to explore whether confidence plays a role in guiding interactions with a partner during a perceptual task. We made the participants believe that their partner could be either another human who had previously performed the task, or a machine trained to perform as well as a human. Would the nature of the partner, a human or a machine, impact participants’ decision-making behavior?”</p>
<p>“Additionally, we wanted to examine whether participants’ confidence can be tracked through eye pupil dynamics. While a few studies have investigated this, the findings remain inconclusive, so we sought to bring further clarity to this question.”</p>
<p>For their study, the researchers recruited 14 adults to complete a perceptual decision-making task. Participants viewed two displays of moving dots and had to decide which one moved in a direction closer to vertical. After making this initial choice, they rated how confident they were in their answer. Then, they were shown the response of a supposed partner — either another human or a computer algorithm — and were told they could either keep their original answer or switch to match their partner’s.</p>
<p>Importantly, both “partners” were actually computer-generated and were programmed to perform equally well across all trials. This allowed the researchers to manipulate only the perceived identity of the partner — machine or human — while keeping everything else constant.</p>
<p>The task was designed to encourage participants to vary their confidence. The researchers adjusted the difficulty of the motion discrimination task for each participant and also manipulated how consistent the motion direction was within each dot display — a feature known to influence confidence without affecting actual performance. Eye-tracking equipment was also used throughout the experiment to measure changes in pupil size, which can reflect shifts in arousal and attention.</p>
<p>Across hundreds of trials, participants were more likely to change their answer when they felt unsure about their initial decision. In fact, confidence predicted whether someone would switch their answer almost three times more strongly than whether their initial answer was actually right or wrong. People changed their minds in about half of the trials where they felt low confidence, compared to only 16% of trials where their answer was incorrect — an indication that how sure they felt mattered more than whether they were right.</p>
<p>“Confidence predicted participants’ switch decisions (change of mind) more strongly than difficulty or accuracy,” Sanchez told PsyPost.</p>
<p>Interestingly, this tendency to rely on confidence was influenced by social context. Participants reported feeling less confident in their decisions when they believed they were interacting with a machine, even though their actual performance didn’t change. They also switched their answers more often in these “machine partner” trials than in the human partner trials. These effects suggest that context — in this case, who you think you’re working with — can influence internal evaluations like confidence, which in turn shape how we behave.</p>
<p>Importantly, the partner’s identity had no impact on how accurate participants were in their initial responses. This suggests the drop in confidence when interacting with a machine wasn’t driven by worse performance or more difficult stimuli, but likely reflected a belief that machines might be more reliable — despite being told that both human and machine partners performed the same.</p>
<p>“We were quite surprised to find that participants had lower confidence in their own decisions when they believed their task partner was a machine — even though their actual performance remained the same,” Sanchez explained. “It is not clear why, but we speculate that, in our study, participants may have assumed the machine was inherently better at the task, despite being explicitly told that it performed at the same level as a human. Lowering their own confidence might have been a strategic adjustment, making them more inclined to rely on the machine’s decisions in an attempt to maximize overall task performance.”</p>
<p>Beyond behavior, the researchers also found a link between confidence and physiological signals. By analyzing changes in pupil size before participants made their responses, the researchers discovered that pupil dilation predicted how confident a person would later report feeling. In general, greater dilation — specifically, a faster rate of change — was associated with higher confidence. This effect occurred even before the decision was made, suggesting that subtle changes in arousal or attentional state might be tied to how confident we feel.</p>
<p>Although the ability to predict confidence from pupil dilation was modest, it supports the idea that physiological cues might provide a way to monitor internal states like confidence in real-time — a useful tool in settings where people can’t explicitly report how they feel.</p>
<p>“Confidence judgments could be slightly predicted by pre-response eye pupil dynamics, indicating that arousal changes are linked to confidence computations,” Sanchez said.</p>
<p>The study also examined eye blinks, which can influence or accompany pupil changes. Blinks were more common in trials where participants were incorrect, felt less confident, or changed their answer — potentially reflecting increased cognitive effort or shifts in attention. This suggests that eye behavior in general could offer insight into internal decision-making processes.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niae018" target="_blank" rel="noopener">What the eyes, confidence, and partner’s identity can tell about change of mind</a>,” was authored by Rémi Sanchez, Anne-Catherine Tomei, Pascal Mamassian, Manuel Vidal, and Andrea Desantis.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/physical-attractiveness-far-outweighs-other-traits-in-online-dating-success/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Physical attractiveness far outweighs other traits in online dating success</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 24th 2025, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in <em><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2451958824002124" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Computers in Human Behavior Reports</a></em> has found that when it comes to online dating, physical appearance overwhelmingly determines who gets matched. Analyzing over 5,000 “swiping” decisions made by real dating app users, researchers discovered that improving a person’s attractiveness significantly increases their chances of being selected, far more than any other trait like intelligence, height, or occupation. Notably, men and women valued these traits in nearly identical ways, challenging long-held beliefs about gender differences in mate preferences.</p>
<p>The researchers wanted to address a long-standing challenge in dating research: how to measure what actually influences real-world dating success. Past studies often relied on self-report surveys, which ask people to list what they look for in a partner. But these answers don’t always match up with behavior. For example, while people might say they value intelligence or a good job, when it comes time to swipe, their choices may follow a different pattern. Adding to this problem, prior field studies that looked at real-world dating patterns were mostly correlational, making it hard to say whether certain traits caused more matches or were just associated with them.</p>
<p>“I’ve always been fascinated by how people decide whom they want to date and whom they don’t. The dating world has changed significantly in recent years, and I felt that much of the existing research no longer accurately reflects modern dating life and decision-making,” said study author Jessika Witmer of the University of Amsterdam.</p>
<p>To overcome these issues, the researchers used a method called conjoint analysis. This approach, commonly used in marketing, allows researchers to study how people make complex choices when multiple factors are at play. In this case, participants were shown realistic dating profiles that varied systematically in traits like physical attractiveness, intelligence, job, height, biography text, and how similar the person was to the viewer in terms of height, intelligence, and attractiveness. By observing which profiles were selected over others, the researchers could estimate how much each trait mattered, independently of the others.</p>
<p>The study included 445 heterosexual and bisexual dating app users in Germany, aged 18 to 35, evenly split between men and women. Participants were recruited through a mobile survey platform called Appinio. After answering some background questions about themselves, participants were shown 12 different swiping scenarios. Each scenario presented them with three dating profiles at once, and they could choose to match with one or skip them all. The profiles showed a face-and-torso photo, height, job, an IQ score, and a short biography. All these features were randomly mixed across profiles, allowing the researchers to disentangle their effects on selection decisions.</p>
<p>In total, the team analyzed 5,340 decisions. The clearest result was that physical attractiveness had a massive effect on whether someone got selected. Improving a person’s attractiveness rating by one standard deviation (roughly moving from average to noticeably above average) increased the odds of being chosen by about 20 percent.</p>
<p>In contrast, the same improvement in intelligence raised selection odds by just 2 percent. Biography attractiveness had a similarly small impact, and height and job had even smaller effects. While these traits did matter statistically, their influence was seven to twenty times smaller than that of physical appearance.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, men and women did not differ in how much weight they gave these traits. While some theories suggest that men prioritize looks more and women care more about intelligence or occupation, this study found that both genders showed nearly identical patterns in their matching decisions. Even height, which is often believed to affect men and women differently, had a small but positive effect for both groups. The researchers had expected some differences—such as women placing more value on job status—but found no support for those assumptions.</p>
<p>“Previous research has consistently found gender differences that align with evolutionary theory – for example, that men prioritize physical attractiveness, while women place more importance on a partner’s ability to provide, such as having a good job,” Witmer told PsyPost. “However, these findings were largely based on self-reports. When we created a more realistic dating scenario where people had to make actual choices, we found that gender differences almost disappeared and both men and women prioritized physical attractiveness over other attributes. This is not only interesting from an informational standpoint but also highlights the importance of using the right research methods.”</p>
<p>The researchers also examined how similarity between the viewer and the profile (known as homophily) affected match decisions. People were more likely to choose someone whose height, intelligence, or attractiveness was similar to their own self-reported traits. But even these similarity effects were minor, especially compared to the sheer power of visual appeal. The researchers noted that this form of similarity was based on people’s own ratings of themselves, which may not be entirely accurate but still captured the general tendency to prefer familiar traits.</p>
<p>These findings suggest that the earliest stages of online dating are dominated by physical appearance. This might not come as a surprise to anyone who has used a dating app, but the study offers a rare, precise quantification of how much more it matters than everything else. The results also provide a reality check for assumptions based on self-reports or evolutionary theories that emphasize major gender differences. When it comes to actual behavior—who people choose to match with—the patterns are much more alike than expected.</p>
<p>“People using online dating apps should take the time to choose high-quality pictures of themselves,” Witmer advised. “It might be helpful to ask friends which of your photos they find most attractive. However, it’s important to remember that (physical) attractiveness is highly subjective.”</p>
<p>Still, the study has some limitations. The profile photos used were created with AI tools and rated in a pretest, but they may not reflect the full range of human attractiveness or cultural variation. Also, the homophily measures were based on self-estimates, which could introduce some bias. And because each participant only viewed 12 sets of profiles, future research could expand this to more interactions or a longer time frame to observe whether patterns remain consistent.</p>
<p>“It’s important to note that our study was conducted on a quantitative level, meaning we cannot draw conclusions about, for example, what makes a good and attractive profile picture,” Witmer said. “Additionally, we focused on a limited set of attributes that influence matching decisions, but many other factors likely play a role and should be considered in future research.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbr.2024.100579" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The relative importance of looks, height, job, bio, intelligence, and homophily in online dating: A conjoint analysis</a>,” was authored by Jessika Witmer, Hannes Rosenbusch, and Erdem O. Meral.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/can-ibogaine-repair-nrain-damage-in-multiple-sclerosis-new-case-reports-spark-interest/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Can ibogaine repair brain damage in multiple sclerosis? New case reports spark interest</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 23rd 2025, 16:00</div>
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<p><p>In a recent case report published in <em><a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2025.1535782/full" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Frontiers in Immunology</a></em>, scientists in Canada described how an experimental treatment using a naturally derived substance called ibogaine appeared to improve symptoms and brain health in two individuals with multiple sclerosis. These initial findings, based on brain scans and patient reports, suggest that ibogaine could potentially offer a new approach for managing this challenging neurological condition.</p>
<p>Multiple sclerosis is a disease that affects the brain and spinal cord, which together form the central nervous system. In multiple sclerosis, the protective covering around nerve fibers, called myelin, is damaged. This damage disrupts communication between the brain and the rest of the body. The disease can lead to a wide range of symptoms, including fatigue, mobility problems, pain, vision issues, and difficulties with balance and coordination.</p>
<p>Currently available treatments for multiple sclerosis often focus on managing symptoms and slowing the progression of the disease. However, these treatments do not always stop the disease from getting worse, and they can have undesirable side effects.</p>
<p>Ibogaine is a psychoactive substance derived from the root bark of an African shrub. It has historically been used in traditional spiritual and healing practices. In more recent times, ibogaine has gained attention for its potential therapeutic uses, particularly in treating addiction.</p>
<p>Researchers are exploring ibogaine’s effects on the brain, and early studies suggest it may have several actions that could be beneficial for brain health. These actions include influencing brain chemicals that are important for nerve cell communication and flexibility, supporting the growth and survival of nerve cells, reducing brain inflammation, and improving the energy production within cells. Researchers believe these combined effects could potentially help the brain repair itself and restore function in conditions where nerve cells are damaged.</p>
<p>The new case report details the experiences of two patients with multiple sclerosis who received ibogaine treatment, which they had initially sought for other health problems.</p>
<p>Patient A was a 41-year-old man who had been diagnosed with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. This form of multiple sclerosis is characterized by periods when symptoms worsen, followed by periods of improvement. In addition to multiple sclerosis, Patient A also experienced post-traumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder, and had suffered a traumatic brain injury ten years prior.</p>
<p>Before receiving the experimental treatment, his multiple sclerosis symptoms included increasing difficulty with movement, coordination problems, some issues with bladder control, slowed thinking, short-term memory difficulties, and intense vertigo, a sensation of spinning. He was prescribed medication for multiple sclerosis a month before the treatment, but his neurological condition continued to decline. Brain scans taken before treatment revealed a significant lesion, an area of damage, in a specific region of his brain.</p>
<p>Patient A underwent an ibogaine treatment program at a specialized facility in Mexico. Before the treatment, he had a thorough medical evaluation, including heart and metabolic tests. During the treatment, he received a specific dose of ibogaine in capsules over a short period. To minimize potential heart-related risks associated with ibogaine, he was given magnesium before treatment and was monitored closely by medical staff for 24 hours afterwards. Following the initial treatment, he continued a very low daily dose of ibogaine.</p>
<p>Remarkably, just one day after the ibogaine treatment, Patient A reported that his multiple sclerosis symptoms had lessened. Two months later, his scores on a questionnaire measuring fatigue related to multiple sclerosis had significantly improved. His bladder control issues had completely resolved. He also showed noticeable improvement in his overall physical and mental well-being. Impressively, despite previous difficulty walking, he later reported participating in a 200-mile ultramarathon. Importantly, one year after treatment, he had not experienced a return of the vertigo symptoms that had troubled him before.</p>
<p>Brain scans were repeated three months after the treatment. These scans showed a substantial reduction in the size of the brain lesion, shrinking by 71%. Additionally, a measurement called the Apparent Diffusion Coefficient, which provides information about tissue health, decreased within the lesion area. A decrease in this value can suggest improved nerve fiber integrity, reduced inflammation, or the repair of myelin.</p>
<p>Further analysis of the brain scans indicated changes in the thickness of certain areas of the brain’s outer layer, the cortex, and in deeper brain structures. Some areas showed thinning of the cortex, while others showed thickening. These changes were observed in brain regions known to be involved in emotions, thinking, and movement.</p>
<p>Patient B was a 44-year-old woman who had been diagnosed with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis in 2018. This form of multiple sclerosis typically follows an initial relapsing-remitting course and is marked by a steady worsening of symptoms over time. Patient B also had complex post-traumatic stress disorder from childhood trauma and had recently experienced a divorce. When she arrived for treatment, her symptoms included severe muscle stiffness, muscle wasting in her limbs, difficulties with bladder and bowel control, and infrequent but intense episodes of vertigo. She needed a wheelchair for most activities, though she could transfer herself with support. Due to exercise intolerance, she could only tolerate very short physiotherapy sessions.</p>
<p>Patient B had been using various medications, including cannabis, to manage her multiple sclerosis symptoms. She had also tried ketamine infusions for chronic pain, but stopped treatment a year prior. Similar to Patient A, Patient B underwent a thorough medical evaluation and received ibogaine treatment at the same facility. She received a lower dose of ibogaine than Patient A due to an increase in muscle stiffness she experienced at the start of treatment. She also continued a very low daily dose of ibogaine after the initial treatment.</p>
<p>Following treatment, Patient B reported a decrease in muscle stiffness. Her score on a scale measuring walking ability improved from being confined to a wheelchair to being able to walk a few steps with support. This improvement was sustained two months later. She was also able to increase her physiotherapy sessions from 10 minutes to a full hour and reported ongoing gradual improvement two years later. Questionnaires revealed improvements in her chronic pain, fatigue, bladder control, and bowel control. She also showed improvements in her physical and mental well-being scores.</p>
<p>Brain scans were repeated ten months after Patient B’s treatment. Similar to Patient A, the brain scans showed changes in cortical thickness and in deeper brain structures. Some areas of the cortex showed thinning, while others showed thickening. The Apparent Diffusion Coefficient measurements also changed in various brain regions, with both increases and decreases observed. These changes were found in areas associated with movement, sensation, emotions, and thinking. Clustering analysis of cortical thickness changes revealed coordinated patterns of change in brain networks related to motor function, thinking, and emotion regulation.</p>
<p>These case reports offer initial encouraging evidence that ibogaine treatment may be associated with both clinical improvements and changes in brain structure and function in individuals with multiple sclerosis. The observed reduction in lesion size and changes in Apparent Diffusion Coefficient in Patient A suggest the possibility of myelin repair and reduced inflammation.</p>
<p>The patterns of cortical and subcortical changes in both patients point to ibogaine’s potential to promote brain plasticity, the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. These findings raise the possibility that ibogaine could help to modulate brain circuits involved in multiple sclerosis symptoms, potentially improving motor function, reducing pain, and enhancing emotional well-being.</p>
<p>But it is important to understand that case reports like these have inherent limitations. They describe the experiences of only two individuals and cannot definitively prove that ibogaine caused the observed improvements. It is possible that other factors contributed to the positive outcomes, or that the improvements were coincidental. Case reports are primarily useful for generating hypotheses and highlighting potential areas for further investigation, rather than establishing cause-and-effect relationships or providing definitive conclusions about treatment effectiveness.</p>
<p>Ibogaine can also have some significant side effects. One of the main concerns is its effect on the heart, as it can disrupt the normal rhythm and potentially cause serious problems. People taking ibogaine may also experience nausea, vomiting, and difficulties with muscle coordination. Additionally, because ibogaine is a psychoactive substance, it can cause intense and sometimes challenging psychological experiences.</p>
<p>To determine whether ibogaine is a safe and effective treatment for multiple sclerosis, substantial additional research is needed. Future research should include well-designed, controlled clinical trials with larger groups of participants. These studies should compare the outcomes of individuals receiving ibogaine to those receiving a placebo or standard treatments. Such research would help to confirm these initial findings, clarify the potential benefits and risks of ibogaine treatment for multiple sclerosis, and explore the mechanisms by which ibogaine may exert its effects on the brain in this condition.</p>
<p>The report, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2025.1535782" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Significant lesion reduction and neural structural changes following ibogaine treatments for multiple sclerosis</a>,” was authored by David Qixiang Chen, José Adalberto Inzunza Domínguez, Juan Manuel Valle Uzeta, Abhiram P. Pushparaj, and Jonathan E. Dickinson.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/painful-thoughts-disrupt-the-feeling-of-owning-ones-body-virtual-reality-study-finds/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Painful thoughts disrupt the feeling of owning one’s body, virtual reality study finds</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 23rd 2025, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1399218/full" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Frontiers in Psychology</a> shows that imagining your body in pain—even if it’s just a virtual one—can make you feel less connected to it. Researchers found that when people were told to think of a virtual body as their own and imagine it experiencing abdominal pain, their sense of ownership over that body weakened. These findings may help explain why some individuals, especially those with experiences of depersonalization, struggle to feel connected to their own physical selves.</p>
<p>The study explored a psychological phenomenon known as body ownership—the fundamental sense that your body is yours. This feeling is not only essential for self-awareness but also helps you react to danger and interact with your environment. In people with conditions like depersonalization, this sense can break down. The researchers wanted to understand whether imagining a negative physical state—like pain—could interfere with this basic bodily awareness. They used a virtual reality setup to simulate ownership over a digital body and tested how participants responded to it under different mental interpretations.</p>
<p>To understand the study, it helps to know a bit about the concept of body ownership and how scientists simulate it. In experiments like the rubber hand illusion or the full-body illusion, people are tricked into feeling that an object—such as a fake hand or a virtual avatar—is actually part of their body. This usually involves synchronized visual and touch stimulation. For example, when someone sees a virtual back being stroked at the same time as their own back is touched in the same way, their brain can start to treat that virtual body as their own.</p>
<p>Previous research has shown that this illusion relies on both sensory signals and the mind’s expectations. If an object doesn’t resemble a body, the illusion is less likely to happen. Similarly, if a person is told the virtual body belongs to someone else, the feeling of ownership fades. In this study, the researchers wanted to go one step further by asking whether imagining the virtual body in a painful state—like having a stomachache—would disrupt the illusion, even if the person still believed it was their own.</p>
<p>The researchers recruited 32 male participants, ultimately including 27 in their final analysis after excluding some due to technical issues. All participants were healthy and wore a virtual reality headset that allowed them to see a 3D avatar from behind. During the experiment, participants experienced synchronized and unsynchronized stroking of their backs while watching a virtual body being stroked in the same way. Sometimes, they were instructed to think of the avatar as just a body. Other times, they were told to imagine it as their own body, either in a neutral state or while experiencing abdominal pain.</p>
<p>After the synchronized stroking, a fear-inducing animation—a knife appearing near the virtual back—was used to trigger a physical response. The researchers measured skin conductance, a signal that reflects the body’s automatic reaction to emotional stimuli. They also asked participants to fill out a questionnaire about how strongly they felt the virtual body was their own.</p>
<p>The results were striking. When participants were told to imagine the virtual body in pain, their physical reactions to the fear stimulus were significantly weaker than when they imagined the body as being in a neutral state. This suggested that they didn’t feel as connected to the virtual body in the pain condition. The questionnaire responses, which are more subjective, didn’t show the same effect—possibly because participants were influenced by the instructions to treat the body as their own, regardless of how they actually felt.</p>
<p>This contrast between objective physical reactions and subjective reports hints at the complexity of body ownership. While people might say they felt the virtual body was theirs, their nervous systems seemed to disagree when that body was imagined to be suffering. This difference was especially evident in the skin conductance responses, which are harder to fake or influence consciously.</p>
<p>The study also explored whether people with higher tendencies toward depersonalization were less likely to feel body ownership in the neutral condition. Earlier research had found such a relationship, and this study partly confirmed it. The correlation only held up when participants experienced the neutral condition before the pain condition. When they had already imagined the body in pain, that experience seemed to carry over and interfere with their ability to feel connected to the body in later trials.</p>
<p>This suggests that the negative interpretation of the body may have a lingering effect. People might start distancing themselves from their virtual body—even in later scenarios where no pain is involved—because of earlier associations. This could mirror real-life experiences in individuals who habitually see their bodies as sources of discomfort or danger, such as those with chronic depersonalization.</p>
<p>“Using the full-body illusion in virtual reality—where people begin to feel a virtual body as their own— we investigated how interpreting the virtual body as one’s own body, while in a negative physical state, affects this illusion. This research can possibly relate to depersonalization, a condition where people struggle to feel their body as their own,” explained Kazuki Yamamoto, an author of the study.</p>
<p>However, the researchers acknowledge some limitations. It’s not clear whether the reduced sense of ownership came specifically from the negative interpretation or from the mismatch between the real body (not in pain) and the imagined one (in pain). It’s possible that the brain resisted owning the virtual body simply because it didn’t match the participants’ actual physical state.</p>
<p>Another possible issue is the cognitive load. Imagining abdominal pain might require more mental effort than imagining a neutral state, drawing attention away from the synchronized sensory input that normally helps create the illusion. There’s also a chance that the fear-inducing knife animation influenced participants’ feelings about the virtual body in ways the researchers couldn’t fully measure.</p>
<p>Finally, the study used a third-person view, meaning participants saw the avatar from behind. Prior research suggests this setup produces weaker illusions than first-person views, where the virtual body aligns more closely with the viewer’s own perspective. Whether the same results would occur in a first-person setup remains an open question.</p>
<p>“While we observed this inhibitory effect, further research is needed to determine whether it was specifically due to the negative interpretation or to differences between actual and virtual body states,” explained co-author Takashi Nakao.</p>
<p>Still, the findings offer a valuable insight: when people imagine their body in a negative state, their brain may pull away from fully “owning” it—even if that body is only virtual. This sheds light on how mental interpretations and emotional states shape our connection to our own body, which could help in understanding conditions like depersonalization.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1399218" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The manipulation of top-down interpretation as one’s symptomatic body reduces the sense of body ownership</a>,” was authored by Kazuki Yamamoto and Takashi Nakao.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/study-finds-microdosing-lsd-is-not-effective-in-reducing-adhd-symptoms/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Study finds microdosing LSD is not effective in reducing ADHD symptoms</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 23rd 2025, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>A new clinical trial has found that taking low doses of LSD twice a week does not reduce symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in adults more than a placebo. While both the LSD and placebo groups showed improvements over six weeks, there was no meaningful difference between the two. These results challenge popular claims about the benefits of microdosing psychedelics and emphasize the importance of placebo-controlled studies when evaluating treatments that are often promoted through anecdotal evidence. The research was published in <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2831639" target="_blank" rel="noopener">JAMA Psychiatry</a>.</p>
<p>Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, more commonly known as ADHD, affects nearly three percent of adults worldwide. The condition involves persistent difficulties with attention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity, often leading to significant struggles in work, relationships, and daily functioning. Standard treatments typically include stimulant medications like amphetamines or methylphenidate, which can be effective but don’t work for everyone. About one in three patients don’t get enough relief, and many stop taking the medications due to side effects or concerns about long-term use.</p>
<p>In recent years, the idea of microdosing psychedelics—taking very small amounts of substances like LSD or psilocybin—has gained popularity. Some users claim that microdosing improves focus, emotional balance, and creativity, and many report using it to self-treat conditions such as depression, anxiety, and ADHD. Microdoses are usually about one-tenth of a recreational dose, small enough that they don’t cause noticeable changes in perception. But despite the enthusiasm online and in the media, there has been little clinical research testing whether microdosing actually works as a treatment.</p>
<p>To test these claims, researchers from University Hospital Basel in Switzerland and Maastricht University in the Netherlands conducted a six-week, placebo-controlled trial. They recruited 53 adults diagnosed with moderate to severe ADHD and randomly assigned them to receive either a low dose of LSD or a placebo. The study was double-blind, meaning neither the participants nor the researchers knew who was receiving which treatment.</p>
<p>“We were contracted by the company Mindmed to perform this work which was within our line of work on psychedelics,” explained study author Matthias Liechti, the head of the Clinical Pharmacology Division of the University Hospital Basel.</p>
<p>Participants were given their assigned substance twice a week under supervision. The dose of LSD—20 micrograms—is considered to be at the higher end of the microdosing range and was chosen to increase the chance of detecting any therapeutic benefit. Throughout the study, participants completed various assessments measuring ADHD symptoms, including both self-reported and observer-rated scales. Researchers also collected information about side effects, vital signs, and subjective drug experiences.</p>
<p>By the end of the six weeks, both the LSD and placebo groups had shown significant reductions in ADHD symptoms. On the primary measure, symptoms improved by an average of 7.1 points in the LSD group and 8.9 points in the placebo group. This difference was not statistically meaningful. Across all other symptom ratings and time points, the two groups continued to show nearly identical improvements.</p>
<p>Participants in both groups also experienced similar benefits when they believed they were receiving the active drug. Interestingly, after the final dose, 80% of participants—whether they had taken LSD or placebo—guessed they had received LSD. Those who believed they had taken LSD tended to report greater symptom improvement, regardless of what they had actually received. This suggests that expectations may have played a large role in how participants experienced the treatment.</p>
<p>“In a well-designed study, low dose LSD (microdosing) is not more effective than placebo in patients with ADHD,” Liechti told PsyPost. “We observed marked therapeutic improvements in many patients and were surprised to see at the end of the study that they were equally frequent in the placebo group. Both LSD and placebo are effective over time but placebo and expectancy effects are the reason for this, not the LSD effect. This highlights the need for a well-blinded placebo control group.”</p>
<p>As expected, participants who took LSD did experience more noticeable short-term drug effects, such as changes in perception and feelings of altered consciousness. These effects were mild but significantly stronger than those reported by the placebo group. Still, the LSD dose used in the study was well tolerated overall. The most common side effects were headache, nausea, fatigue, insomnia, and mild visual changes. Two participants dropped out of the LSD group due to uncomfortable effects. There were no serious medical events or psychiatric complications.</p>
<p>Although the study did not find LSD to be effective for treating ADHD, it does offer some important insights. First, it shows that low doses of LSD can produce measurable but tolerable psychological effects in a clinical setting. It also demonstrates that strong placebo responses are possible in psychedelic studies, even when the dose is too low to cause intense hallucinations. This supports concerns that anecdotal reports of success with microdosing may be driven more by belief than biology.</p>
<p>The researchers also noted that the study was one of the few in psychedelic research to achieve successful blinding. In most psychedelic trials, the noticeable effects of high doses make it easy for participants to guess whether they’re receiving the active substance. In this case, the use of a low dose meant that even placebo recipients often believed they had received LSD, reducing the influence of expectation bias to some extent.</p>
<p>Although some past studies have suggested that higher doses of LSD may help with anxiety or depression, this trial does not provide evidence that low doses help with ADHD. Further research is needed to explore other psychedelics and different dosing schedules.</p>
<p>“The study used a relatively high dose of 20 micrograms, but a lower dose of 10 micrograms—or a dosing schedule of every day or every other day—might produce different results,” Liechti said. “It is not likely though. High-doses of LSD have consistently been shown to be effective in anxiety and depressive disorders. Thus, such high doses may also be effective in the treatment of mood in ADHD patients.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2025.0044" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Safety and Efficacy of Repeated Low-Dose LSD for ADHD Treatment in Adults: A Randomized Clinical Trial</a>,” was authored by Lorenz Mueller, Joyce Santos de Jesus, Yasmin Schmid, Felix Müller, Anna Becker, Aaron Klaiber, Isabelle Straumann, Dino Luethi, Eline C. H. M. Haijen, Petra P. M. Hurks, Kim P. C. Kuypers, and Matthias E. Liechti.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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