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<td><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:20px;font-weight:bold;">PsyPost – Psychology News</span></td>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/new-study-uncovers-an-intriguing-liver-brain-connection/" 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;">New study uncovers an intriguing liver–brain connection</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 10th 2025, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1113/jp287573"><em>Journal of Physiology</em></a> reveals that ketone production in the liver plays a critical role in maintaining brain health, especially during physical activity. Researchers at the University of Missouri found that when liver cells were unable to produce ketones, rats showed impaired memory and reduced mitochondrial function in the brain. However, regular endurance exercise was able to reverse these negative effects, restoring cognitive performance and mitochondrial health. These findings offer new insights into how liver metabolism supports the brain.</p>
<p>Scientists have long known that exercise improves cognitive function and helps protect the brain from aging and disease. This benefit has been linked to increased neurogenesis, synaptic plasticity, and improvements in mitochondrial health.</p>
<p>One proposed contributor to these effects is ketone bodies—molecules produced by the liver during fasting or physical exertion, which can serve as an alternative energy source for the brain. The most abundant of these, beta-hydroxybutyrate, has been shown to reduce oxidative stress, enhance mitochondrial respiration, and promote synaptic plasticity. Despite this, the direct role of liver-derived ketones in mediating the cognitive effects of exercise has not been fully explored.</p>
<p>“The liver makes ketones as an alternative fuel source, especially during exercise. Since it is known that both exercise and ketones are good for brain health, we wanted to find out if exercise helps the brain by increasing ketones. This could lead to new ways to protect against brain diseases like Alzheimer’s disease,” explained Professor R. Scott Rector and postdoctoral researcher Taylor Kelty.</p>
<p>To address this gap, the researchers used a viral technique to reduce the expression of a key enzyme involved in ketone production—3-hydroxymethylglutaryl-CoA synthase 2 (HMGCS2)—in the livers of healthy, 6-month-old female rats. This enzyme catalyzes the first step in ketogenesis. By knocking it down, the researchers were able to investigate what happens to the brain when the liver can no longer produce ketones during exercise.</p>
<p>The rats were divided into several groups. Some were sedentary, while others performed either a single bout of treadmill running or a 4-week endurance training program. The team measured blood ketone levels, isolated mitochondria from the frontal cortex, conducted protein analyses of brain tissue, and tested the animals’ spatial memory using a Y-maze. Additional in vitro experiments were conducted on neuronal cells to assess mitochondrial respiration following genetic manipulation of ketone metabolism.</p>
<p>The results showed that both acute and chronic exercise elevated ketone levels in the bloodstream one hour and 48 hours after activity, respectively. However, in rats with liver-specific knockdown of HMGCS2, these increases were significantly blunted. This confirmed that HMGCS2 is necessary for producing the rise in circulating ketones that typically follows exercise.</p>
<p>When the researchers looked at the brain, they found that the absence of liver ketone production led to widespread dysfunction in the frontal cortex, particularly in mitochondrial processes. Proteomic analyses revealed increased markers of mitochondrial dysfunction, decreased activity in pathways related to oxidative phosphorylation and energy production, and reduced expression of proteins involved in synaptic plasticity. Mitochondria isolated from the brains of these rats showed impaired respiration, especially in the energy-producing complexes of the electron transport chain.</p>
<p>Cognitively, rats with HMGCS2 knockdown showed deficits in spatial memory. In the Y-maze test, they spent significantly less time exploring the novel arm of the maze, a sign of impaired memory performance. Notably, these impairments occurred even in the absence of neurodegenerative disease, suggesting that reduced liver ketone production alone can disrupt brain function.</p>
<p>“Our study found the body’s natural production of ketones is important for keeping the brain healthy. It helps maintain memory, learning abilities, and the health of the brain’s energy factories (mitochondria),” Scott and Kelty told PsyPost.</p>
<p>But one of the most striking findings came from the exercise-trained rats. Despite the deficiency in liver ketone production, those who underwent four weeks of endurance training showed normal cognitive performance and restored mitochondrial function in the brain. Their proteomic signatures also revealed elevated markers of synaptic plasticity, including pathways related to long-term potentiation and synaptogenesis. In other words, exercise compensated for the loss of liver ketones and reversed the associated brain impairments.</p>
<p>“We also found that exercise can still protect the brain, even when the liver’s ability to make ketones is suppressed, which may be relevant to those with liver disease that causes reduced ketone production,” the authors explained.</p>
<p>To test whether similar effects occurred at the cellular level, the researchers conducted experiments on PC12 cells—neuronal-like cells derived from rats. By knocking down an enzyme required for ketone oxidation in these cells, they observed reductions in mitochondrial respiration, mirroring the in vivo findings. These results support the idea that the brain relies not just on the presence of ketones, but also on the ability of neurons to use them for energy.</p>
<p>The study offers several novel insights. First, it demonstrates that liver ketone production during exercise is not just a metabolic side effect—it plays a key role in brain health. Second, it shows that even when ketone production is impaired, exercise can still rescue brain function, possibly through alternative pathways involving other exercise-induced molecules. Finally, it establishes a direct mechanistic link between liver metabolism and brain mitochondrial performance, suggesting that disruptions in liver function could contribute to cognitive decline.</p>
<p>“We originally thought that liver making ketones was a primary reason exercise helps the brain,” Scott and Kelty noted. “We expected that if ketone production was reduced during exercise, brain health would be compromised. However, it seems exercise activates backup pathways that enhance brain health even when ketone production is reduced.”</p>
<p>But there are some limitations to note. The study focused exclusively on female rats, and the results may not fully generalize to males or humans. The cognitive testing relied primarily on the Y-maze, which may be less sensitive to improvements in cognition than to deficits. Additionally, while the knockdown of HMGCS2 reduced ketone levels, it did not eliminate them entirely, leaving open the possibility that other sources of ketones or compensatory mechanisms were at play. Finally, the precise molecular signals by which exercise bypasses the need for liver ketone production remain unknown.</p>
<p>The researchers hope future studies will investigate how these findings apply to conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, where both liver dysfunction and mitochondrial impairments have been observed. They also suggest that strategies aimed at increasing liver ketone production—or enhancing the brain’s ability to use ketones—could offer a new path for preventing or treating neurodegenerative disorders.</p>
<p>“Our findings suggest that taking care of the liver and understanding ketone metabolism could be a new way to help prevent or slow down brain diseases,” the authors noted. “This study highlights how important exercise is for brain health — especially for people who might have lower ketone production due to liver conditions like Steatotic Liver Disease.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1113/jp287573">Cognitive impairment caused by compromised hepatic ketogenesis is prevented by endurance exercise,</a>” was authored by Taylor J. Kelty, Nathan R. Kerr, Chih H. Chou, Grace E. Shryack, Christopher L. Taylor, Alexa A. Krause, Alexandra R. Knutson, Josh Bunten, Tom E. Childs, Grace M. Meers, Ryan J. Dashek, Patrycja Puchalska, Peter A. Crawford, John P. Thyfault, Frank W. Booth, and R. Scott Rector.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/parental-warmth-not-poverty-or-danger-predicts-positive-world-beliefs-in-adulthood/" 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;">Parental warmth—not poverty or danger—predicts positive world beliefs in adulthood</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 10th 2025, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>A new international study has found that parental warmth during childhood and adolescence predicts young adults’ beliefs that the world is good, safe, and enticing. Surprisingly, other childhood experiences—including harsh parenting, low socioeconomic status, and neighborhood danger—showed little connection to these so-called “primal world beliefs.” The findings were published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.14233" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Child Development</a></em>.</p>
<p>Primal world beliefs, or “primals,” refer to people’s core assumptions about the general nature of the world. These beliefs—such as whether the world is safe, abundant, or progressing—are thought to influence mental health, behavior, and well-being. Previous studies have shown that primals are stable over time and closely tied to life satisfaction and psychological adjustment. However, researchers have struggled to pinpoint what experiences shape these beliefs, especially during childhood.</p>
<p>The new study aimed to investigate whether early-life experiences—including economic hardship, dangerous neighborhoods, and various parenting practices—predict primal world beliefs in early adulthood. The researchers were particularly interested in testing widely held assumptions: that people who grow up poor or in unsafe environments will see the world as barren or dangerous, and that childhood adversity broadly shapes a pessimistic view of the world.</p>
<p>“Adults’ beliefs about the world are importantly related to their mental health, but we know little about how these beliefs develop. Our goal was to better understand how adults come to hold these beliefs that are so critical to their functioning in the world,” said study author Jennifer E. Lansford, the S. Malcolm Gillis Distinguished Research Professor of Public Policy and director of the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University and co-author of <em><a href="https://amzn.to/4mrCniv" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Child and Adolescent Development in Cultural Context</a></em>.</p>
<p>The research team analyzed data from a large longitudinal study called Parenting Across Cultures, which followed children and their families in eight countries over the span of 14 years. These countries—Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, the Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States—were selected for their diversity in religion, income, cultural values, and social conditions.</p>
<p>The sample included 1,215 participants (50% girls) who were initially assessed at around age 8 and then followed through age 22. At multiple points during childhood and adolescence, parents and children reported on a variety of experiences, including neighborhood safety, family income, and parenting practices such as warmth, harsh discipline, psychological control, and autonomy granting. At age 22, the original child participants completed a questionnaire measuring their primal world beliefs.</p>
<p>Five key primal beliefs were assessed: whether the world is Good, Safe, Enticing, Abundant, and Progressing. These were selected based on previous theoretical work that organized primals into overarching (e.g., Good), secondary (e.g., Safe and Enticing), and tertiary (e.g., Abundant and Progressing) levels. The researchers then tested whether earlier experiences predicted these beliefs in early adulthood.</p>
<p>The results revealed a striking pattern: among the many childhood factors studied, parental warmth stood out as the only significant predictor of several positive primal beliefs. Specifically, children who experienced more warmth from their parents—defined by expressions of affection, acceptance, and support—were more likely to believe as young adults that the world is Good, Safe, and Enticing.</p>
<p>“We found that parental warmth, which involves parents making their children feel loved and accepted, was related years later to young adults’ belief that the world is safe (rather than dangerous) and enticing (filled with beautiful and wonderful things, rather than dull),” Lansford told PsyPost. “The results speak to the importance of parental warmth, love, and acceptance. This is a hopeful message for parents because fostering warm and loving relationships with their children is something most parents can do that has the potential to pay important dividends for children’s future development.”</p>
<p>These associations remained significant after accounting for other factors, such as gender and culture. In contrast, neighborhood danger, socioeconomic status, harsh parenting, psychological control, and parental autonomy granting had little to no predictive value for primals in early adulthood. Even a decline in family income over time was unrelated to beliefs about whether the world is progressing.</p>
<p>“We were surprised that some experiences in childhood were not directly predictive of young adults’ beliefs about the world,” Lansford said. “For example, children who grew up in more dangerous neighborhoods did not necessarily grow up to believe that the world is dangerous.”</p>
<p>One additional finding was a gender difference: women were slightly less likely than men to hold the belief that the world is abundant, though this was not a focus of the study.</p>
<p>The researchers emphasized that their results challenge popular assumptions about how life experiences shape one’s worldview. Although many people—including developmental scientists—believe that hardship or privilege directly informs whether people see the world as dangerous or abundant, this study found little evidence for such a connection.</p>
<p>Instead, the findings suggest that primals are not simple reflections of material conditions. The researchers argue that primals may function more like stable mental frameworks—akin to schemas or implicit beliefs—that help people interpret their experiences. This could mean that when people encounter events that contradict their existing primals, they tend to interpret or even ignore them in ways that preserve their prior beliefs.</p>
<p>This has implications for both well-being and behavior. People who see the world as safe or enticing may benefit from more openness and optimism, though this could also lead them to underestimate real dangers. The researchers note that many parents, especially those in high-risk environments, may intentionally instill a belief that the world is dangerous in an effort to keep their children safe. However, this belief is linked to worse mental health outcomes, including depression and lower life satisfaction.</p>
<p>The study has several strengths. It used a prospective longitudinal design, measuring experiences during childhood as they happened and assessing outcomes over a decade later. It also included a diverse international sample, allowing the researchers to examine both within-culture and between-culture patterns. Most of the variation in primals was found within countries, not between them, highlighting the importance of individual experiences over national or cultural averages.</p>
<p>However, there were also limitations. The sample was not nationally representative, so the findings may not apply to all populations. In addition, while the study measured parenting and environmental factors beginning at age 8, it is possible that some primal beliefs were already forming before this age. And as with all observational studies, causality cannot be established.</p>
<p>“Another limitation is that primals were self-reported by young adults (as they would have to be to assess individuals’ beliefs about the world), and some of the predictors also were self-reported,” Lansford noted. “Thus, it is possible that if children already believed that the world is Safe, for example, the primal could have affected their reports of neighborhood danger or parental warmth. The data are correlational so causal relations cannot be asserted, and the question of where and when developmentally the primal came from in the first place remains open.”</p>
<p>“An important future direction will be to study primal world beliefs during childhood and adolescence rather than adulthood. Right now, we have a much better understanding of adults’ beliefs about the world than children’s and adolescents’ beliefs about the world. Children and adolescents may describe the world differently from adults, and even if both children and adults describe the world as Good, their conceptualizations of what makes the world good are likely to differ.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.14233" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Predictors of Young Adults’ Primal World Beliefs in Eight Countries</a>,” was authored by Jennifer E. Lansford, Laura Gorla, W. Andrew Rothenberg, Marc H. Bornstein, Lei Chang, Jeremy D. W. Clifton, Kirby Deater-Deckard, Laura Di Giunta, Kenneth A. Dodge, Sevtap Gurdal, Daranee Junla, Paul Oburu, Concetta Pastorelli, Ann T. Skinner, Emma Sorbring, Laurence Steinberg, Liliana Maria Uribe Tirado, Saengduean Yotanyamaneewong, Liane Peña Alampay, Suha M. Al-Hassan, and Dario Bacchini.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/diets-high-in-fat-and-sugar-appear-to-harm-cognitive-function/" 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;">Diets high in fat and sugar appear to harm cognitive function</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 10th 2025, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in the <em><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41366-025-01776-8" target="_blank" rel="noopener">International Journal of Obesity</a></em> adds to growing evidence that unhealthy diets don’t just affect the body—they can also harm the brain. Researchers at the University of Sydney found that people who consumed more fatty and sugary foods performed worse on a virtual navigation task that depended on the brain’s memory system. The findings suggest that diets high in saturated fats and refined sugars may impair the hippocampus, a brain region essential for learning and remembering spatial routes.</p>
<p>The study was inspired by previous animal research showing that high-fat, high-sugar diets impair hippocampal function. In rats, these diets have been shown to quickly interfere with spatial memory, even before weight gain or other metabolic changes occur. While some human studies have linked similar diets to cognitive decline, few have directly tested the effects on spatial navigation—a skill that depends heavily on hippocampal function.</p>
<p>“Past research has shown that high fat high sugar diets can impact the brain, particularly a region called the hippocampus,” explained study author <a href="https://www.sydney.edu.au/science/about/our-people/academic-staff/minh-d-tran.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dominic Tran</a>, an Australian Research Council DECRA Research Fellow. “One thing the hippocampus is important for is spatial navigation—the ability to remember places and how to get there. I wanted a way to test spatial navigation that was as close to real life as possible. So rather than administer a memory task on a computer monitor. I used a virtual reality maze to assess spatial memory!”</p>
<p>In the immersive virtual reality task, participants were asked to navigate a maze-like environment, using visual landmarks to learn the location of a hidden target. The task required them to remember and return to that target location later—much like remembering how to get back to your parked car after shopping. By relying on this real-world navigation analogy, the researchers were able to assess participants’ ability to form a spatial map of their surroundings.</p>
<p>The participants were 120 university students in Sydney, but due to issues like motion sickness, incomplete data, and technical problems, only 55 completed the full experiment. The researchers also assessed each participant’s diet using a questionnaire that measured how often they consumed foods high in fat and sugar, such as fast food, desserts, and sugary drinks. They also measured body mass index and working memory to account for general cognitive ability and physical health.</p>
<p>During the training phase of the task, participants were asked to find a treasure chest hidden in a consistent location within the virtual maze. They did this six times, starting from the same place and using visual cues to guide them. Over time, most participants improved at finding the chest more quickly, indicating learning. But when researchers looked more closely, they found that participants who reported eating more high-fat and high-sugar foods didn’t improve as much over time. Their learning curve was flatter, meaning they didn’t get better at the task with practice.</p>
<p>This pattern became more pronounced in the final test phase. In this stage, the planks that formed the maze were removed, leaving only the surrounding landmarks as reference points. Participants had to rely entirely on spatial memory—remembering where the chest had been located in relation to these external cues. Those who reported consuming more unhealthy foods finished farther away from the correct location than those with healthier diets. This difference remained even after adjusting for body weight and working memory, suggesting a specific link between diet and spatial memory.</p>
<p>The results highlight that “eating healthy is important for your physical health <em>and</em> brain health,” Tran told PsyPost.</p>
<p>The findings closely mirror results from rodent studies. In those studies, rats on high-fat, high-sugar diets struggle with tasks that rely on the hippocampus but perform normally on tasks involving other parts of the brain. That pattern appears to hold for humans as well: participants in this study had impaired spatial learning and memory, but their general working memory was unaffected. This supports the idea that unhealthy diets may selectively impair the hippocampus rather than broadly lowering cognitive performance.</p>
<p>One of the strengths of the study was its use of virtual reality, which allowed researchers to simulate real-world navigation more closely than traditional lab-based tasks. Participants had to learn routes from an eye-level perspective and move through a three-dimensional environment, which made the task more comparable to everyday navigation. However, this advantage came with a drawback: nearly 40 percent of participants experienced motion sickness or other issues that prevented them from completing the task.</p>
<p>“I think one of the biggest strengths of the study is in using virtual reality to truly assess people’s spatial navigation ability,” Tran said. “It’s a really sensitive tool that tells us about how the hippocampus is functioning. However, VR was a bit of a double-edged sword as a lot of people got motion sick during the task. I hope improvements in VR technology mean that we can use similar tasks with less cybersickness side effects.”</p>
<p>There are some other limitations to consider. The study relied on self-reported dietary data, which can be prone to bias. The sample size was also relatively small and mostly consisted of young, healthy university students, which may limit the generalizability of the findings. Larger studies with more diverse populations would help confirm whether these effects hold in broader groups, including those with more varied diets and higher levels of dietary risk.</p>
<p>Because the study was correlational, it can’t confirm a cause-and-effect relationship between diet and impaired spatial memory. It’s theoretically possible, though unlikely, that people with poorer spatial skills might be more drawn to high-fat, high-sugar foods. A more plausible explanation, based on extensive animal research, is that these diets impair hippocampal function. That possibility is supported by findings that hippocampal damage in animals leads to similar spatial memory deficits, and that switching from an unhealthy to a healthy diet can reverse those effects. The researchers say that future human studies using diet interventions could help test this causal direction more directly.</p>
<p>“I am really interested in testing if the memory impairments recover and uncovering the conditions around this recovery,” Tran said. “For example, how long does it take to recover and can we speed up recovery.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41366-025-01776-8" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Consumption of a diet high in fat and sugar is associated with worse spatial navigation ability in a virtual environment</a>,” was authored by Dominic M. D. Tran, Kit S. Double, Ian N. Johnston, R. Frederick Westbrook, and Irina M. Harris.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/little-known-psychedelic-drug-shows-promise-in-treating-low-motivation-in-depression/" 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;">Little-known psychedelic drug shows promise in treating low motivation in depression</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 9th 2025, 18:00</div>
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<p><p>New research published in the journal <em><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0028390825000401" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Neuropharmacology</a></em> has found that low doses of a psychedelic drug called DOPR significantly increased motivation in mice with low baseline motivation—without triggering signs of hallucinogenic activity. The findings suggest that microdoses of psychedelic compounds may enhance goal-directed behavior in states of low motivation, potentially offering a new avenue for treating symptoms such as amotivation in depression, while avoiding the intense subjective effects typically associated with psychedelics.</p>
<p>Amotivation—defined as a lack of drive to pursue rewards or goals—is a common and debilitating symptom in many psychiatric disorders, including major depressive disorder and schizophrenia. Existing treatments like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors often fail to address motivational deficits and take weeks or months to show therapeutic effects. Alternative treatments such as ketamine offer faster symptom relief, but they are not without side effects or limitations.</p>
<p>There has been growing interest in the idea that psychedelics such as psilocybin and LSD could offer rapid-acting relief from depression. However, these drugs typically induce strong hallucinogenic effects, which limits their widespread use and necessitates supervision by trained clinicians. This has led researchers to explore the potential of “microdosing”—the administration of psychedelic drugs at doses too low to produce noticeable psychedelic experiences—as a possible workaround.</p>
<p>In this study, the researchers investigated whether sub-hallucinogenic doses of a synthetic psychedelic called 2,5-Dimethoxy-4-propylamphetamine (DOPR) could enhance motivation in mice. DOPR is structurally related to other psychedelic compounds in the phenethylamine class and is known to activate the 5-HT2A serotonin receptor, which is implicated in the effects of classical psychedelics. The goal was to determine whether DOPR could increase effort-based behavior at doses that do not produce psychedelic-like activity.</p>
<p>To assess motivation, the team used a task called the progressive ratio breakpoint task (PRBT), a behavioral test that measures how much effort an animal is willing to exert to obtain a reward. Mice were trained to nosepoke for drops of a sweet liquid. The number of nosepokes required increased after every few rewards, and the highest number of responses completed before the mouse stopped trying was recorded as the “breakpoint.” This task is used in both animal and human research as a proxy for motivational drive.</p>
<p>The researchers tested 80 mice (half female) using a within-subject design. Each mouse received several different doses of DOPR (ranging from 0.0106 to 0.32 mg/kg) across multiple test sessions. For comparison, the researchers also administered amphetamine, a well-known stimulant that increases motivation. A separate group of mice was tested using the head twitch response (HTR), a behavior in rodents used to gauge whether a compound produces hallucinogenic-like effects.</p>
<p>The results were striking. Low-performing mice—those with the lowest baseline motivation—showed significantly increased breakpoint scores after receiving low doses of DOPR. The effect was most robust at doses of 0.0106, 0.106, and 0.32 mg/kg. Notably, high-performing mice did not show any change, indicating that the drug’s effects were specific to those starting in a low motivational state. This pattern mirrored the effects of amphetamine, which also increased motivation only in low-performing mice.</p>
<p>To assess whether these same doses of DOPR produced psychedelic-like activity, the team measured head twitch responses in a separate experiment. This behavior, commonly used in rodent studies, is highly predictive of whether a drug will produce hallucinogenic effects in humans. The researchers found that DOPR only induced significant HTR at doses of 0.1 mg/kg and above. The lowest dose tested, 0.01 mg/kg—one of the doses that enhanced motivation—did not produce a detectable increase in HTR. This suggests that the motivational benefits seen at low doses occurred without activating the full range of psychedelic effects.</p>
<p>To better understand how DOPR works at a molecular level, the researchers conducted additional pharmacological tests. These showed that DOPR acts as a potent agonist at the 5-HT2A receptor, similar to other psychedelic drugs, but with limited activity at other serotonin receptor subtypes such as 5-HT1A. This receptor selectivity may make DOPR particularly useful for isolating the therapeutic aspects of psychedelics from their more disruptive hallucinogenic effects.</p>
<p>Importantly, this study offers preclinical evidence that microdoses of psychedelics can produce targeted behavioral benefits—specifically in subjects experiencing a low motivational state—without the side effects typically associated with higher doses. This supports the possibility that psychedelics might be able to treat depression-related amotivation through mechanisms that are separate from the altered states of consciousness they usually induce.</p>
<p>But the researchers note several limitations. While the progressive ratio breakpoint task is widely used to measure motivation, the study did not use a full model of depression, such as social defeat stress or chronic inflammation. The division of animals into high- and low-performing groups based on a median split is also not a perfect stand-in for clinical populations. Future work will need to confirm these effects in more robust models of psychiatric illness and explore whether DOPR or related compounds can also affect other depression-related symptoms such as cognitive dysfunction or reward sensitivity.</p>
<p>Additionally, while the study found that DOPR increases motivation at low doses, the precise contribution of different serotonin receptors remains uncertain. DOPR also activates the 5-HT2C receptor, which has been implicated in appetite and motivation. However, previous studies suggest that selective activation of 5-HT2C actually reduces motivation, making it unlikely that this receptor is responsible for the observed effects.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropharm.2025.110334" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Low (micro)doses of 2,5-dimethoxy-4-propylamphetamine (DOPR) increase effortful motivation in low-performing mice</a>,” was authored by Michael Noback, Johnny A. Kenton, Adam K. Klein, Zoe A. Hughes, Andrew C. Kruegel, Yasmin Schmid, Adam L. Halberstadt, and Jared W. Young.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/ai-driven-brain-training-reduces-impulsiveness-in-kids-with-adhd-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;">AI-driven brain training reduces impulsiveness in kids with ADHD, study finds</a>
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<p><p>A recent study of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) found that an AI-driven digital cognitive program led to greater reductions in impulsiveness and inattentiveness scores compared to a control treatment. The results suggest that these improvements were achieved by enhancing the children’s neurophysiological efficiency. The findings were published in npj Mental Health Research.</p>
<p>Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by persistent patterns of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. It typically begins in childhood and can persist into adolescence and adulthood. ADHD can negatively affect academic performance, work productivity, and social relationships.</p>
<p>The disorder is most often diagnosed during childhood, particularly when a child enters school. In that context, ADHD symptoms often come into conflict with classroom rules and expectations. It is one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders, affecting approximately 2–7% of children worldwide.</p>
<p>Treatment for ADHD may involve medication, psychotherapy, or a combination of both. However, psychotherapy is often expensive and not widely accessible, while medication primarily manages symptoms without addressing underlying emotional or cognitive issues.</p>
<p>Study author Danylyna Shpakivska Bilan and her colleagues sought to evaluate the efficacy of Sincrolab’s digital cognitive treatment (KAD_SCL_01) in improving inhibitory control in children diagnosed with the combined subtype of ADHD (ADHD-C), which includes both inattentive and hyperactive-impulsive symptoms.</p>
<p>Sincrolab DCT (KAD_SCL_01) is an AI-powered digital cognitive therapy platform designed to enhance cognitive function in children with ADHD. It delivers personalized training through interactive games on mobile devices, dynamically adapting to each child’s performance to target specific cognitive deficits.</p>
<p>The study included 56 children diagnosed with ADHD-C, although only 41 completed the full 12-week intervention and were included in the final analysis. Participants were recruited from healthcare facilities, schools, and community associations in Madrid, Spain, and ranged in age from 8 to 11 years.</p>
<p>Children were randomly assigned to one of two groups. One group received the Sincrolab DCT (KAD_SCL_01) treatment, while the control group played three entertainment games—Knightmare Tower, Bloons Super Monkey, and Super Stacker 2—all freely available on the Kongregate gaming platform. Both groups used mobile devices at home for the duration of the 12-week program.</p>
<p>Before and after the intervention, participants completed a battery of neuropsychological assessments and underwent magnetoencephalography (MEG), a non-invasive imaging technique that measures magnetic fields produced by brain activity. MEG allows researchers to track neural function with high temporal resolution.</p>
<p>The results showed that children in the Sincrolab group experienced reductions in impulsiveness and inattentiveness, while those in the control group did not show significant changes. The authors report that these behavioral improvements were associated with normalized MEG spectral profiles, suggesting neural maturation.</p>
<p>“Improvements in inhibitory control, linked to normalized spectral profiles, suggest AI-driven digital cognitive therapy can reduce impulsiveness in ADHD children by enhancing neurophysiological efficiency. This emphasizes personalized, technology-driven ADHD treatment, using neurophysiological markers for assessing efficacy,” the study authors concluded.</p>
<p>The study contributes to the scientific knowledge about the effectiveness of AI-driven digital cognitive programs for mitigating ADHD symptoms. However, it should be noted that the study was conducted on a very small group of children. Additionally, children selected for participation were those not taking ADHD medication and without any other significant psychiatric disorders. Results on larger or different groups might differ.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s44184-024-00111-9">Decreased impulsiveness and MEG normalization after AI-digital therapy in ADHD children: a RCT,</a>” was authored by Danylyna Shpakivska Bilan, Irene Alice Chicchi Giglioli , Pablo Cuesta, Elena Cañadas, Ignacio de Ramón, Fernando Maestú, Jose Alda, Josep Antoni Ramos-Quiroga, Jorge A. Herrera, Alfonso Amado, and Javier Quintero.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/neuroscientists-use-brain-implants-and-ai-to-map-language-processing-in-real-time/" 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;">Neuroscientists use brain implants and AI to map language processing in real time</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 9th 2025, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>New research published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-58620-w" target="_blank">Nature Communications</a></em> offers a detailed look at how the human brain supports natural conversation. By combining intracranial brain recordings with advanced language models, researchers found that speaking and listening engage widespread brain areas, especially in the frontal and temporal lobes. These brain signals not only corresponded to the words being spoken or heard, but also tracked the shifts between speaking and listening. The findings suggest that everyday conversation involves a tightly coordinated network that handles both the content of speech and the act of turn-taking.</p>
<p>Conversation is a dynamic, real-time activity, requiring the brain to continuously switch between understanding and producing language. Most past research has studied these abilities in isolation using artificial tasks—such as reading lists of words or repeating scripted sentences. These simplified experiments offer valuable insights but fall short of capturing the back-and-forth, free-flowing nature of real conversation. To move beyond this limitation, the authors of the new study used a unique approach. They recorded brain activity from people who were having spontaneous conversations, and then analyzed those signals using powerful natural language processing models.</p>
<p>“It’s fascinating to delve into the neural basis of natural conversation, especially now,” said study author <a href="https://researchers.mgh.harvard.edu/profile/17921865/Jing-Cai" target="_blank">Jing Cai</a>, an instructor in the Neurosurgery Department at Massachusetts General Hospital.</p>
<p>“Studying the neural support for the potentially unlimited ways we produce and comprehend speech in natural conversation has long been a challenge. However, the recent advancements in natural language processing models have made it possible to directly investigate this neural activity. This feels like the right moment to leverage these powerful computational tools to unlock the neural secrets of how we communicate so fluidly.”</p>
<p>The researchers studied 14 people undergoing clinical treatment for epilepsy. As part of their medical care, these individuals had electrodes implanted in their brains to monitor seizures. With consent, researchers took advantage of this rare opportunity to record brain activity during natural conversation. Participants engaged in unscripted dialogues with an experimenter, talking about everyday topics like movies or personal experiences. These conversations lasted up to 90 minutes and included more than 86,000 words across all participants.</p>
<p>To analyze how the brain encoded these conversations, the researchers used a pre-trained artificial intelligence language model known as GPT-2, a type of natural language processing (NLP) model. NLP is a branch of artificial intelligence that focuses on enabling computers to understand and process human language. GPT-2 transforms each word into a high-dimensional vector based on its context within a sentence. These word embeddings capture complex features of language structure and meaning without relying on explicit linguistic rules. By comparing these embeddings to the brain activity recorded during speech production and comprehension, the team could assess which areas of the brain were tracking language in real time.</p>
<p>The results showed that both speaking and listening activated a widespread network of brain regions. Activity was especially prominent in the frontal and temporal lobes, including areas classically associated with language processing. The neural signals were not just a general response to speech but aligned closely with the specific sequence and context of the words being used. This was true regardless of whether a person was speaking or listening.</p>
<p>“One particularly striking aspect of our results was the alignment we observed between the patterns of activity in the human brain and the representations learned by the deep learning NLP models,” Cai told PsyPost. “The extent to which these artificial systems captured nuances of language processing that were reflected in neural activity during live conversation was quite surprising. This opens up exciting possibilities for future research to leverage these artificial systems as tools to further decode the brain’s intrinsic dynamics during communication.”</p>
<p>To confirm that the brain signals reflected meaningful language processing—and not just sound or motor activity—the researchers ran two control conditions. In one, participants listened to and repeated scripted sentences. In another, they spoke and heard pseudowords that mimicked English in rhythm and sound but had no real meaning. In both cases, the correspondence between brain activity and language model embeddings dropped sharply. This indicated that the observed neural patterns were specific to real, meaningful communication.</p>
<p>The study also explored how the brain handles the transitions between speaking and listening—an essential part of any conversation. Using precise timing data, the researchers identified when participants switched roles. They found distinct patterns of brain activity during these transitions. Some areas increased in activity before the person started speaking, while others changed when they began listening. Interestingly, many of these same areas also tracked the specific language content of the conversation, suggesting that the brain integrates information about both what is said and who is saying it.</p>
<p>Across all participants, 13% of electrode sites showed significant changes in brain activity during transitions from listening to speaking, and 12% during the opposite shift. These patterns varied across frequency bands and brain regions, and the differences were more pronounced at lower frequencies during the shift into listening. These signals overlapped with those involved in processing word meaning, suggesting that the brain uses shared circuits to manage both content and conversational flow.</p>
<p>The researchers also looked at how different types of brain activity correlated with different layers of the language model. Lower layers of the model represent individual words, while higher layers capture more complex, sentence-level meaning. The researchers found that brain activity during conversation aligned most strongly with higher layers of the model. This suggests that the brain is not simply reacting to individual words, but is also tracking the broader structure and meaning of what’s being said.</p>
<p>These findings held up across various models and participants. Whether the researchers used GPT-2, BERT, or other models with different sizes and training methods, they consistently found that brain activity reflected linguistic information. The percentage of neural sites showing correlations also rose with model complexity, strengthening the case that these models capture meaningful features of human language processing.</p>
<p>“Our findings showed the incredible complexity of something we do effortlessly every day: having a conversation,” Cai explained. “It reveals that when we speak and listen, vast and interconnected areas of our brain are actively involved in processing not just the words themselves, but also their specific meaning within the flow of the conversation and the role of who is speaking and who is listening. This research shows that even seemingly simple back-and-forth exchanges engage a dynamic and sophisticated neural orchestration, demonstrating the remarkable power of the human brain in enabling us to connect and communicate through language.”</p>
<p>But the study did have some limitations. The participants were patients with epilepsy, and electrode placement varied based on their clinical needs. This could affect how generalizable the findings are to the broader population. In addition, the models used were based on written text, not spoken language, meaning that prosody and tone were not captured. The researchers argue that this is just the beginning. Future work could explore how acoustic features influence neural responses, or even attempt to decode the meanings of thoughts from brain activity alone.</p>
<p>“Our work primarily serves as a demonstration of these differences rather than a deep dive into their fundamental mechanisms,” Cai said. “We need future investigations to identify the specific linguistic and cognitive elements. Further, we are relying on text-based NLP models, which means that we haven’t fully captured the richness of spoken language, as acoustic cues were not integrated into our analysis.”</p>
<p>“The next step involves semantic decoding. This means moving beyond simply identifying which brain regions are active during conversation and decoding the meaning of the words and concepts being processed. Ultimately, the combination of studies to reveal neural mechanism and decoding results could provide profound insights into the neural representation of language.”</p>
<p>“This is truly an exciting moment for neuroscience research in language,” Cai added. “The combination of intracranial recording techniques and the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence modeling offers remarkable opportunities to unravel the brain’s mechanisms for communication, and to develop useful tools to restore communicative abilities for those with impaired speech.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-58620-w" target="_blank">Natural language processing models reveal neural dynamics of human conversation</a>,” was authored by Jing Cai, Alex E. Hadjinicolaou, Angelique C. Paulk, Daniel J. Soper, Tian Xia, Alexander F. Wang, John D. Rolston, R. Mark Richardson, Ziv M. Williams, and Sydney S. Cash.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/new-study-sheds-light-on-how-personality-power-and-identity-shape-relationship-satisfaction/" 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;">New study sheds light on how personality, power, and identity shape relationship satisfaction</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">May 9th 2025, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in the <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2025.104597" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Journal of Research in Personality</a></em> sheds light on how power dynamics and personality traits intersect to shape romantic relationship satisfaction—and how these patterns can vary dramatically across different social identities. The researchers found that how people perceive their partner’s power in the relationship is more closely related to how satisfied they are than how much power they believe they themselves have. The study also showed that the influence of personality on satisfaction depends not just on power dynamics, but on factors such as gender identity, sexual orientation, and relationship type.</p>
<p>The researchers wanted to revisit long-standing questions about power in romantic relationships, but with a broader lens. Much of the previous work in this area has focused on heterosexual, mixed-gender couples, which limits understanding of how power functions in diverse partnerships. The goal was to explore how personality traits—especially the Big Five and gender expression—interact with perceived power in relationships, and whether those dynamics vary across different social groups.</p>
<p>“This paper was inspired by two main ideas. First, we wanted to explore different variables that theories of power argue are sources of power. Second, we aimed to include sexual and gender diverse people in different relationship configurations, which past research often ignored,” explained study author Eleanor Junkins, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.</p>
<p>“Theories about power in romantic relationships focused on resources like higher income, social advantages like being a man, individual characteristics including personality, and socioemotional variables like dependency (how dependent on the relationship you are). These theories arose from a focus on traditional marriages between one man and one woman, which was reflective of the times. The role of individual differences was less emphasized.”</p>
<p>“Our goal was to empirically examine for whom and how personality and relationship power interacted with one another,” Junkins said. “For example, does the association between personality and relationship satisfaction depend on one’s level of power. Would you be happier in your relationship with more or less power if you are an agreeable person?”</p>
<p>“We also examined whether these associations changed based on people’s resources (higher socioeconomic status, older, more educated) or their identities (gender, marginalized group, and same-gender or different-gender relationship).”</p>
<p>“The goal of these two sets of analyses in the paper was to bring in those theoretical ideas of sources of power and determine whether for these features (resources and identities), the interaction between personality and power was stronger or weaker for different groups,” Junkins continued. “The main effects of the identities and resources will be presented in a future paper.”</p>
<p>“In other words, we will later discuss if someone’s gender is nonbinary versus a man does higher or lower power relate to greater satisfaction? And does the association between one’s socioeconomic status and relationship satisfaction depend on one’s levels of power? Both of these research papers are meant to update theories on what leads to power and update who is included in the conversation.”</p>
<p>For their study, the researchers conducted a secondary analysis using data from the POWER study, a large online survey of 1,750 adults. The sample was designed to be diverse in terms of gender identity, sexual orientation, and relationship structure, including both monogamous and non-monogamous partnerships. Participants completed several well-established questionnaires assessing personality, gender expression, relationship power, and satisfaction.</p>
<p>Personality traits were measured using the Big Five Inventory, which captures levels of traits such as extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Gender expression was assessed through self-ratings of masculinity and femininity as independent dimensions. To measure power in relationships, participants completed a scale that separately assessed how much influence they felt they had, and how much power they believed their partner had. Relationship satisfaction was measured using two different scales.</p>
<p>The researchers used advanced statistical modeling to estimate how personality traits and gender expression related to relationship satisfaction at different levels of perceived power. They also examined whether these patterns differed across groups defined by social identity factors like gender and sexual orientation, as well as resource factors like age, education, and income.</p>
<p>One key finding was that people’s perceptions of their partner’s power in the relationship had a stronger link to their own satisfaction than their perceptions of their own power. The more powerful someone thought their partner was, the less satisfied they tended to be. In contrast, feeling powerful oneself had a weaker connection to satisfaction.</p>
<p>“How someone perceives their own relationship power doesn’t strongly relate to how they perceive their partner’s relationship power,” Junkins told PsyPost. “This is shown by a weak correlation between self-report relationship power and perceived partner relationship power. Perceptions of one’s partner’s power was more strongly correlated with relationship satisfaction than perception of one’s own power.</p>
<p>When looking at correlations between personality and relationship power, the results were relatively modest. For example, self-reported power was positively associated with extraversion and conscientiousness, and negatively associated with neuroticism, openness, and agreeableness. Interestingly, agreeableness—often assumed to be a positive trait in relationships—was actually negatively associated with one’s sense of power. This could reflect that agreeable individuals may be more accommodating, leading them to perceive themselves as having less influence in decision-making.</p>
<p>The researchers also looked beyond simple correlations to explore whether relationship power moderated the link between personality traits and satisfaction. That is, they wanted to know whether the impact of a personality trait on satisfaction changed depending on how much power a person or their partner was perceived to have. Using non-linear modeling techniques, they found some evidence for moderation—especially with the traits of agreeableness and neuroticism.</p>
<p>For instance, individuals high in agreeableness tended to be more satisfied at both low and high ends of the perceived partner power spectrum, with a dip in the middle. This suggests that agreeable people may adapt well to both dominant and submissive dynamics, but are less comfortable in more ambiguous power situations.</p>
<p>Neuroticism, a trait linked to emotional instability, was generally associated with lower satisfaction, especially when perceived partner power was high. This might indicate that highly neurotic individuals feel especially vulnerable or distressed when they believe their partner holds more control in the relationship.</p>
<p>“The way in which personality traits relate to higher or lower relationship satisfaction may relate to one’s levels of power,” Junkins said.</p>
<p>Instead of treating all participants as part of a single undifferentiated group, the researchers grouped people based on combinations of gender identity, sexual orientation, relationship type, and assigned sex at birth. They also included resource-based groupings like age, education, and income. They found that identity-based groupings explained much more variation in relationship satisfaction than resource-based ones. This means that who someone is—in terms of their social identity—matters more than what they have, at least when it comes to how power and personality interact in their romantic life.</p>
<p>Across these identity groups, the influence of personality traits like femininity, openness, and neuroticism on relationship satisfaction varied depending on how much power people perceived themselves or their partner to have. For example, in some groups, higher perceived partner power was associated with more satisfaction when paired with higher levels of femininity. But in other groups, different patterns emerged, with traits like openness becoming more relevant.</p>
<p>“The way personality and power relate to relationship satisfaction varied more by who you and your partner are (gender, sexual and/or gender minority, partnership type) than on the objective resources one has (education, socioeconomic status, age, leader role at work),” Junkins explained. “However, these findings are based on one sample of 1,700 people and by no means are these conclusive findings for what we may expect at a national and definitely not international level.”</p>
<p>The study’s strength lies in its methodological sophistication and diverse sample. By separately analyzing perceived power and self-reported power, and by considering a wide range of social identities and structural resources, the researchers were able to uncover patterns that would have been hidden in more traditional analyses. They used two statistical approaches: Local Structural Equation Modeling to identify non-linear patterns, and a multilevel approach to understand how effects varied across identity groups.</p>
<p>However, the study does have limitations. The data were cross-sectional, so no conclusions can be drawn about causality. It’s unclear whether personality influences perceived power or the other way around. Most participants were from the United States and were predominantly White, so the results may not generalize to all populations. Some subgroups, especially in the intersectional analyses, had small sample sizes, which increases uncertainty around those estimates.</p>
<p>“Past uses of the analysis (MAIHDA) used samples larger than 10,000 so our sample was considerably smaller at 1,700 people,” Junkins noted. “Relatedly, the model is meant to capture deviations, or departures, from the sample average. In a non-representative sample, like ours, the average does not represent the average person in the United States or any population in particular. Our sample was a convenience sample that over-represented queer people. The benefit of the analysis was that we obtained intersectional group specific estimates that could be compared to future research that uses the same variables to cluster their data.”</p>
<p>“My long-term goals are to better incorporate real people’s lived experience into personality and relationships research. I also want to continue in the vein of understanding the range of expected associations for people of different identities or intersections of identities rather than presenting one average that tends to represent no one.”</p>
<p>The results suggest that future research on romantic relationships should continue to explore how traits and dynamics operate differently across social groups—and that focusing only on the “typical” relationship risks leaving many people’s experiences out of the picture.</p>
<p>“These types of methods show lots of promise for addressing contextual influences on psychological associations,” Junkins said.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2025.104597" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Registered Report Stage II: Does personality vary by relationship power? An investigation of satisfaction in diverse romantic partnerships</a>,” was authored by Eleanor J. Junkins, D.A. Briley, Brian G. Ogolsky, and Jaime Derringer.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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