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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/disgust-toward-meat-may-be-a-relic-of-our-evolutionary-past/" 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;">Disgust toward meat may be a relic of our evolutionary past</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Jul 20th 2025, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>Humans reject foods for different reasons. Sometimes it’s because a food looks or smells unpleasant. Other times, it’s because the idea of eating it seems revolting. These two reactions—distaste and disgust—are often confused in everyday language but reflect distinct psychological processes. In a new study, researchers explored whether these emotional reactions vary depending on whether the rejected food is a plant or an animal product. The findings provide support for an evolutionary theory that humans developed disgust specifically to avoid the pathogens often found in meat.</p>
<p>The study, published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2025.108033" target="_blank">Appetite</a></em>, aimed to understand how and why people reject commonly eaten foods. Previous research suggested that animal foods are more likely to elicit disgust, while plant-based foods are typically rejected for their taste. This distinction could have evolutionary roots: taste may have helped humans avoid bitter plant toxins, while disgust may have evolved as a defense against pathogens in meat. By better understanding these emotional reactions, researchers hope to inform interventions that promote healthier and more sustainable diets.</p>
<p>“In an earlier study, we found that 74% of vegetarians (but also 15% of flexitarians and even a small share of omnivores) said they were put off by meat, which made me wonder: is this just about taste, or are deeper psychological processes at play? That led us to investigate whether meat is rejected with the same kind of disgust we feel toward truly revolting things like feces or human flesh,” said <a href="https://www.phc.ox.ac.uk/team/elisa-becker" target="_blank">Elisa Becker</a>, a postdoctoral researcher at University of Oxford, who conducted the study while at the University of Exeter.</p>
<p>To test their hypothesis, the researchers conducted two online surveys using a total sample of 309 participants from the United Kingdom. The primary group included 252 people who had previously shown an aversion to meat—most of whom were vegetarians. A smaller control group of 57 meat-eating participants served as a comparison and provided a baseline for disgust reactions. All participants rated a series of food images on multiple psychological and emotional criteria, including how willing they were to eat the food, how they felt about its taste and appearance, and whether it triggered thoughts of contamination, death, or moral offense.</p>
<p>The researchers showed participants images of different types of food across four categories: palatable but commonly disliked vegetables (such as Brussels sprouts and olives), culturally acceptable meat (chicken, beef, and pork), classic disgust-inducing substances (like dog meat and feces), and a neutral control food (bread). They asked participants to rate these foods across 12 dimensions. Five of these dimensions related to general taste and disgust criteria, while the remaining seven measured specific subtypes of disgust: core disgust (e.g., nausea), animal-reminder disgust (e.g., reminders of death), and moral disgust (e.g., offense at the idea of eating the food).</p>
<p>Only participants who indicated that they were unwilling to eat a particular food were included in the main analyses for that item. This allowed the researchers to directly compare the psychological profiles of rejected foods. By analyzing the response patterns across various questions, they created “rejection profiles” for each food and used several statistical techniques to examine how similar or different these profiles were from one another.</p>
<p>The results showed a clear divide in how participants responded to meat versus vegetables. When people rejected meat, their reactions were emotionally similar to how the control group responded to images of dog meat and human feces. </p>
<p>“The immense similarity between responses to meat and classic disgust items like feces and human meat was striking,” Becker told PsyPost. “We expected some overlap, but the response profiles were almost indistinguishable.”</p>
<p>These meat rejection responses were characterized by high ratings on measures related to disgust, especially ideational contamination (the idea that even a tiny amount could ruin a dish) and incorporation (the thought of the food being in the body). In contrast, rejected vegetables were mostly rated negatively for their taste, with relatively low ratings on disgust-related dimensions.</p>
<p>A statistical method called multidimensional scaling confirmed these patterns. This technique allowed the researchers to visualize the emotional distance between different food responses on a two-dimensional map. Rejected meats and prototypical disgust elicitors like feces clustered tightly together, while vegetables formed a separate cluster aligned with distaste. Bread appeared far from both groups, consistent with its role as a neutral control food.</p>
<p>To investigate further, the researchers looked into the subtypes of disgust experienced when meat was rejected. They found that core disgust—responses related to nausea and the thought of the food being in the mouth—was the dominant reaction across all meat stimuli. Moral disgust (e.g., finding the act of eating meat offensive) and animal-reminder disgust (e.g., being reminded of body parts or death) were present but less strongly endorsed. This pattern was also found in reactions to dog meat and human flesh, suggesting that meat rejection among vegetarians shares emotional qualities with some of the most deeply held food taboos.</p>
<p>“Our study shows that when someone is ‘put off’ by meat it triggers the same gut-level disgust as the most revolting substances we can imagine,” Becker explained. “Disliked vegetables on the other hand do not trigger this response – they were rejected purely because of their taste or texture. This helps explain why some people have very strong negative feelings about meat.”</p>
<p>The study also included an open-ended section where participants could describe any additional feelings about the foods. These qualitative responses aligned with the quantitative findings. People who rejected meat often used language associated with contamination, moral harm, or decay. Even when other types of disgust were mentioned, core disgust themes were nearly always present.</p>
<p>While the study design provided strong evidence for different rejection mechanisms, it did have some limitations. The researchers relied on self-report measures, which can be influenced by how people interpret and respond to survey questions. Most participants in the meat-rejecting group were vegetarians, and the sample was predominantly female, which could affect generalizability. Additionally, because the study focused on subjective ratings rather than physiological or behavioral data, future research using other methods could help validate the findings.</p>
<p>Despite these limitations, the study highlights a meaningful distinction in how people relate to different types of food. By showing that disgust, not just dislike, drives many meat rejections, the researchers argue that disgust may have originally evolved as a specialized defense against contaminated meat. Over time, this reaction may have become more generalized, serving as a psychological alarm system for anything that poses a pathogen threat.</p>
<p>Looking ahead, the researchers hope to better understand how these food-related emotions develop. “I’d like to understand how these emotional responses to food develop over time,” Becker said. “Disgust doesn’t start developing in children until they’re about 3-5 years old, by which time most already eat meat. So when and how does meat disgust start? These questions are important if we want to support healthier and more sustainable diets.”</p>
<p>“The really cool thing about this is that disgust is a psychological alarm system that evolved to protect us from getting sick, from getting in touch with parasites or pathogens. These are health threats found especially in meat. It makes sense then, that humans can respond with disgust to anything that could be contaminated – feces, for example, but also any kind of meat! It makes less sense to be disgusted by a vegetable, and we’ve found support for this theory.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2025.108033" target="_blank">Disgust and distaste – Differential mechanisms for the rejection of plant- and animal-source foods</a>,” was authored by Elisa Becker and Natalia S. Lawrence.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/surprisingly-strong-link-found-between-a-womans-address-and-her-memory-decline/" 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;">Surprisingly strong link found between a woman’s address and her memory decline</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Jul 20th 2025, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study suggests that women who spend midlife in neighborhoods surrounded by high poverty may experience faster memory decline, especially in the ability to recall information. The research tracked over a thousand women across the United States and found that exposure to concentrated neighborhood poverty was linked to sharper drops in episodic memory over time. The decline was most pronounced among Black women. The findings were published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/alz.70139" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association</a></em>.</p>
<p>While earlier research has shown that people in lower-income neighborhoods face higher risks for various health conditions, including memory decline and dementia, most studies have examined each person’s immediate residential area in isolation. They often did not consider how poor neighborhoods might be clustered together or how neighborhood conditions change over time.</p>
<p>“Research has shown that people living in low-income neighborhoods are more likely to develop various physical and mental illnesses and tend to have shorter lifespans than people living in higher-income areas. However, people’s neighborhood exposures are not restricted to the immediate areas around their homes, as they tend to actively seek resources, such as food, from nearby neighborhoods to meet their daily needs,” said study author <a href="https://einsteinmed.edu/faculty/15867/jinshil-hyun" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jinshil Hyun</a>, an assistant professor in the Saul R. Korey Department of Neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine</p>
<p>“We hypothesized that individuals living in low-income neighborhoods might successfully access better resources elsewhere, unless their communities are surrounded entirely by other low-income neighborhoods. In such cases, their access would be severely restricted, potentially harming their health-related behaviors and health outcomes. We chose to investigate whether living in areas of more concentrated poverty affects cognitive health among midlife women.”</p>
<p>For their new study, the researchers considered both the person’s neighborhood and the surrounding areas to measure concentrated poverty. They also accounted for changes in address over time, allowing them to assess long-term exposure to neighborhood disadvantage. Rather than relying on general cognitive tests, the researchers focused on specific cognitive skills that often decline with age: processing speed, working memory, and episodic memory. The goal was to understand whether living in high-poverty “hot spots” during midlife would predict declines in these areas—and whether the effects differed across racial and ethnic groups.</p>
<p>“The <a href="https://www.swanstudy.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN)</a> provided the opportunity to examine this question using data collected over (up to 14 years of data) in women at over midlife women from 5 sites in the United States,” Hyun explained.</p>
<p>The study followed 1,391 women from Ann Arbor, Boston, Chicago, Alameda and Contra Costa County, Los Angeles, Jersey City, and Pittsburgh. Participants ranged in age from 49 to 60 at the study’s cognitive starting point. The researchers followed them for up to 13.5 years and conducted repeated assessments of their memory and thinking abilities. They also gathered information on a range of factors known to influence brain health, including education, menopause status, financial hardship, physical activity, smoking, alcohol use, and cardiovascular health.</p>
<p>To measure neighborhood poverty, the researchers used U.S. Census data to calculate poverty rates in each participant’s home census tract and the surrounding tracts. They categorized neighborhoods into three levels: low, moderate, and high concentrated poverty. High-concentration areas were defined as those with unusually high poverty rates that were geographically clustered. These designations took into account how often participants moved and how their neighborhood conditions changed over time.</p>
<p>The main finding was that women living in high concentrated poverty areas experienced a faster decline in episodic memory, which includes both immediate and delayed recall of information. Episodic memory is the ability to remember specific events or pieces of information from one’s own experience. Unlike processing speed, which naturally tends to decline in midlife, episodic memory often remains more stable. A sharper-than-expected decline in this type of memory during midlife can be an early warning sign of cognitive problems later in life, including dementia.</p>
<p>Women living in high-poverty neighborhoods saw a 7% decline in immediate and delayed episodic memory over a 10-year span. The decline in delayed recall was even steeper—about 10%—for Black women living in those same neighborhoods. In contrast, women living in lower poverty areas either did not experience this level of decline or saw only mild reductions. This pattern remained consistent even when accounting for differences in education, smoking, alcohol use, menopause status, and physical activity.</p>
<p>Processing speed and working memory were also affected by neighborhood poverty but in different ways. Women in poorer neighborhoods had lower average scores on these tests at the start of the study. However, the rate at which these abilities declined over time did not differ significantly across neighborhood types. This suggests that neighborhood poverty may shape baseline brain health but does not necessarily speed up age-related decline in all cognitive areas equally.</p>
<p>“Experiencing cognitive decline is a natural part of aging, and different aspects of cognition decline at different rates,” Hyun told PsyPost. “For example, processing speed typically starts to slow down in early adulthood, while memory usually remains stable until later in life. However, our study revealed that women living in areas of concentrated poverty experienced accelerated memory decline even during midlife (approximately 7% per decade). Those living in higher income areas did not show significant memory decline. This suggests that living in highly concentrated low-income neighborhoods may be related to increased rates of cognitive aging, potentially increasing the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.”</p>
<p>To test whether other factors could explain the link between neighborhood poverty and memory decline, the researchers considered cardiovascular health risks and physical activity levels. Both are known to influence cognitive function. However, these factors did not fully explain the memory differences observed in this study. This indicates that other pathways—possibly involving chronic stress, environmental toxins, or reduced access to stimulating environments—may be contributing to the decline.</p>
<p>“I was not surprised that living in high-poverty neighborhoods was associated with faster cognitive decline, but the magnitude of this effect was unexpectedly large,” Hyun said. “While residents of affluent neighborhoods showed no significant memory decline, residents of areas with concentrated poverty experienced a 7% decline per decade. Greater memory decline in midlife could serve as an early indicator of future Alzheimer’s risk. Alzheimer’s disease currently has no cure, and effective treatment options are limited. Therefore, addressing neighborhood and individual risk factors of Alzheimer’s disease as early as in midlife would be crucial.”</p>
<p>The researchers also looked at whether the effects of neighborhood poverty varied by race and ethnicity. They found that Black women living in high-poverty areas experienced the most rapid decline in delayed episodic memory. This may reflect the compounding effects of systemic disadvantage, such as racial discrimination and economic segregation, which can create chronic stress and limit access to health-promoting resources.</p>
<p>As with all research, the study has some limitations. For instance, the sample was drawn from urban areas, and the results may not apply to women living in rural settings. The study also did not account for neighborhood conditions earlier in life, which may have lasting effects on brain health. In addition, the study focused on where participants lived, not where they worked or spent their daily routines. These places may also influence cognitive health.</p>
<p>Finally, while the study found links between living in areas of concentrated poverty and memory decline, it could not confirm exactly how this relationship works. Future research is needed to identify which neighborhood features—such as access to parks, quality of schools, exposure to air pollution, or social cohesion—might influence cognitive aging. Real-time location tracking and environmental data could help researchers understand how different places shape health over time.</p>
<p>“Our next step is to better understand how people move through and use their surrounding areas in daily life,” Hyun said. “In a different study, the Einstein Aging Study, we are collecting GPS data from individuals to see whether their ability to travel to different neighborhoods is limited by where they live. By identifying these patterns, we can suggest targeted solutions that address both community-level factors (like improving neighborhood conditions) and personal-level strategies to support healthier lifestyles. Ultimately, our goal is to reduce the risk of cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease for everyone.”</p>
<p>The study was funded by the National Institute on Aging, the Alzheimer’s Association, the Sylvia and Leonard Marx Foundation, and the Czap Foundation.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/alz.70139" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Exposure to neighborhood concentrated poverty is associated with faster decline in episodic memory among midlife women</a>,” was authored by Jinshil Hyun, Mary Schiff, Charles B. Hall, Bradley M. Appelhans, Emma Barinas-Mitchell, Rebecca C. Thurston, Carrie A. Karvonen-Gutierrez, Monique M. Hedderson, Imke Janssen, and Carol A. Derby.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/scientists-reveal-a-widespread-but-previously-unidentified-psychological-phenomenon/" 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;">Scientists reveal a widespread but previously unidentified psychological phenomenon</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Jul 20th 2025, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>Many people will continue with a longer, less efficient path to a goal rather than backtrack and take a shortcut — even when the backtracking would save time and effort. A new series of studies published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976251331053" target="_blank">Psychological Science</a></em> reveals that this behavior, called “doubling-back aversion,” emerges in both physical and mental tasks, and is driven not by mistaken cost estimates but by how people think about their past and future effort.</p>
<p>Psychologists have long studied why people stick with inefficient paths. The status quo bias describes the tendency to prefer current arrangements, while the sunk-cost fallacy highlights how people keep investing in failing efforts to justify past choices. But these don’t quite explain situations where people are choosing among equally new options — except that one feels like it erases what’s already been done. </p>
<p>Two researchers at UC Berkeley — <a href="https://kristinecho.com/" target="_blank">Kristine Y. Cho</a>, a PhD student, and <a href="http://claytoncritcher.squarespace.com/;jsessionid=2861647ADF2B5CEC15922A1BB1E7D991.v5-web004" target="_blank">Clayton R. Critcher</a>, the Joe Shoong Professor of Business — sought to investigate whether people really do avoid doubling back, even when it’s objectively better, and to identify why.</p>
<p>“We both had a strong intuition that we kept circling back to as we developed our research,” Cho explained. “The idea was this: Imagine you’re walking from your house to a friend’s place. You leave your front door, turn left, and head down the block. But then you realize that you would get there faster if you had gone right instead.” </p>
<p>“At this point, you’re still close enough to home that retracing your steps, passing your front door, and taking the better route would actually save time. But would most people actually turn around and walk past where they started? We didn’t think so. That reluctance to reverse course, even when it’s clearly better, seemed to pop up a lot in real life. So we set out to investigate it.”</p>
<p>Across four experiments involving more than 2,500 adults from the United States, researchers tested whether people avoided more efficient strategies if they involved retracing their steps or restarting a task. The studies used both virtual navigation and cognitive tasks to examine the phenomenon in different contexts.</p>
<p>In the first study, college students used a virtual reality interface to move from one location to another. After walking a short distance, they encountered a map offering two paths to the destination. One path was shorter but required them to double back — literally reversing the steps they had just taken. Even though the shorter route would get them there faster, many avoided it when it required backtracking.</p>
<p>Subsequent studies replaced physical movement with mental effort. In one task, participants had to generate 40 words starting with the letter “G.” After listing 10, they were given a choice: continue with “G” words or switch to “T” words — a task expected to be easier. The tasks were objectively equivalent except for one difference: in one version, the new task was described as “starting over” and discarding previous work, while in the other version, it was described as “continuing the task under new instructions.” Both versions involved writing 30 more words, but only the “start over” version framed the switch as undoing progress.</p>
<p>In a third experiment, the researchers split doubling back into two components: deleting past work and having to complete the entire task from the beginning again. They manipulated how each component was framed and assessed how participants responded. The final study added a more detailed set of questions to examine how participants viewed their past and future efforts depending on their decision to switch tasks or stay the course.</p>
<p>Across all four studies, people consistently avoided options that involved doubling back, even when those options saved time. In the virtual reality study, only 31% of participants chose the shorter path when it required retracing their steps, compared to nearly 57% when it did not. In the word-generation tasks, framing the switch as “starting over” reduced the likelihood of switching from 75% to just 25%.</p>
<p>“The sheer size of the effect caught us off guard,” Cho told PsyPost. “For instance, take Study 2 in our paper. In that study, we told participants that they would have to list 40 words starting with the letter ‘G.’ But after they listed 10 words starting with ‘G’, we gave them the option to switch to listing words starting with the letter ‘T’. Because more words in the English language start with ‘T’ than ‘G’, switching essentially made the task easier. And when the choice was framed simply as a choice to switch letters for the remainder of the task, 75% of participants did indeed choose to switch to the easier task.” </p>
<p>“But when the choice was framed as ‘doubling back,’ that is, discarding their progress and starting over on a new task with 30 new ‘T’ words, only 25% switched. The contrast was so stark that my first reaction was to suspect a coding error, that maybe we had accidentally reversed the responses. But after carefully checking the data multiple times, we confirmed it was correct. The effect wasn’t just real, it was strikingly strong.”</p>
<p>Importantly, this aversion was not explained by a belief that the backtracking route would take longer. Participants generally understood that switching would save time. But they still chose to stay the course when switching was described as discarding previous work or restarting the task.</p>
<p>The researchers found that doubling-back aversion was driven by how people mentally interpreted their efforts. When switching tasks was framed as undoing work, participants felt that their earlier effort had been wasted. This made the remaining work feel less like a path to success and more like an uphill slog. The effect was stronger when participants believed they had to start from scratch rather than continue with a portion of the work.</p>
<p>The aversion was strongest when both components of doubling back were present — undoing past work and starting over with a full task. But each factor independently contributed to the effect. In other words, people were less likely to switch to a faster strategy even if only one part of doubling back was invoked.</p>
<p>The researchers also tested whether participants’ decisions were shaped by how much time they thought each path would take. Although people generally did think switching would be quicker, these perceptions didn’t fully explain their choices. Instead, people were more influenced by subjective impressions about what switching meant for their progress and future effort.</p>
<p>“Our research shows that people often avoid backtracking, even when changing course would clearly get them to their goal faster,” Cho explained. “This hesitation stems from a discomfort with ‘wasting’ past effort, but in reality, refusing to double back often leads to even more wasted time and energy. Our key takeaway is this: Progress isn’t always about pushing forward. Sometimes, the smartest move is to step back, reassess, and choose the better path, even if it means undoing what’s already been done.”</p>
<p>While the experiments captured doubling-back aversion in controlled settings, real-life decisions are often messier. Future research might explore how this bias plays out in more complex or emotionally charged scenarios — such as changing careers, relationships, or long-term projects.</p>
<p>“We examined doubling back aversion in the context of tasks that take just a few minutes to complete,” Cho noted. “But we expect that if anything, for more complex and longer tasks, doubling back aversion might be even stronger as people might become even more averse to viewing their longer past efforts as a waste.”</p>
<p>The studies also did not test ways to reduce doubling-back aversion. However, the researchers suggested that encouraging people to focus on future gains rather than past losses could help. For example, reframing a switch as a time-saving opportunity rather than a “restart” may reduce resistance.</p>
<p>This focus on how people mentally frame past effort and future potential has also shaped the researchers’ broader work. As Cho explained: “In our work on doubling-back aversion, we explored how people resist switching tactics midway, even when doing so would help them reach their goals more efficiently. More recently, we’ve been examining a related form of hesitation. This time, it’s not in switching paths, but in committing to one at all.” </p>
<p>“While it might seem that having enticing options (e.g., a great apartment one could rent, a fun event one could sign up for) would make commitment easier, we’ve found that it’s often the loss of a great option that finally pushes people to choose. People often hold out for something even better, but the disappearance of a pretty good option inspires some pessimism that encourages people to grab onto what is as good as they can get for now.”</p>
<p>“A theme that this suggests is that people are too past focused, worrying about feeling that they have made good use of their time and efforts,” Cho added. “But people need to recognize that the past is fixed, and it is only the future we can control. We need to be willing to accept that we may have made some mistakes along the way, but that is never too late to change course, especially when doing so will get us to where we want to go more quickly.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976251331053" target="_blank">Doubling-Back Aversion: A Reluctance to Make Progress by Undoing It</a>,” was published May 9, 2025.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/dopamines-stronghold-is-the-striatum-not-the-cortex-brain-imaging-study-suggests/" 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;">Dopamine’s stronghold is the striatum, not the cortex, brain imaging study suggests</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Jul 19th 2025, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in <em><a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4418/15/11/1436" target="_blank">Diagnostics</a></em> provides evidence that the striatum, rather than the cerebral cortex, receives the highest concentration of dopamine input in the brain. Advanced confocal imaging in mice revealed that dopamine signals are densely packed in the striatum but appear faint and sparse in the cortex—even when both areas are examined using the same imaging settings. These findings could improve our understanding of movement disorders like Parkinson’s disease and psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia.</p>
<p>Dopamine is a chemical messenger that helps regulate movement, motivation, and thinking. In Parkinson’s disease, the death of dopamine-producing neurons in the midbrain leads to tremors, stiffness, and slower movement. Antipsychotic medications used to treat schizophrenia work by blocking dopamine receptors in the brain. Although scientists have long studied dopamine activity across different brain regions, research on its role in the cortex has often produced mixed and conflicting results.</p>
<p>Study author Fu-Ming Zhou said the research was driven by a need to create a clearer and more complete picture of where dopamine actually acts in the brain. Earlier research often focused on the cortex because of its role in higher-level thinking and decision-making.</p>
<p>But many of those studies examined cortical tissue in isolation and used imaging techniques that were adjusted to detect dopamine in that specific area. This kind of targeted approach can give a misleading impression of how dopamine is distributed across the brain—especially when results aren’t compared directly to regions like the striatum, where dopamine is much more concentrated.</p>
<p>“Human cognition is highly developed and dependent on the function of the cerebral cortex,” said Zhou, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine. “Human cognition can go awry as manifested in symptoms of schizophrenic patients. Schizophrenic symptoms can be significantly alleviated by antipsychotic drugs. The key pharmacological mechanism for these drugs is antagonism or inhibition of dopamine D2 type receptors. Because of the central role of the cerebral cortex in human cognition, it is often thought that the cortical dopamine system is the key target for antipsychotic drugs.”</p>
<p>Zhou sought to avoid the limitations of previous research by creating full-slice, high-resolution images of the mouse brain that included both the striatum and cortex in the same image. This allowed them to measure dopamine levels in each region under exactly the same conditions and reveal their relative densities without technical bias.</p>
<p>The researcher used advanced laser-scanning confocal microscopy to capture detailed images of sagittal brain sections from two-month-old male mice. These sections included the midbrain, striatum, thalamus, motor and sensory cortices, and other key regions. </p>
<p>To visualize the brain’s architecture, Zhou used genetically engineered mice in which subsets of neurons were fluorescently labeled: pyramidal neurons glowed yellow, and certain inhibitory neurons glowed green. The researcher also immunostained the tissue for tyrosine hydroxylase, an enzyme that marks dopamine-producing axons, and used a red fluorescent dye to visualize these structures.</p>
<p>A key strength of the study was that all brain regions in each slice were photographed using the same microscope settings. This avoided the common problem of artificially boosting weak signals in low-innervation areas like the cortex or saturating intense signals in dopamine-rich regions like the striatum. The resulting images gave a side-by-side comparison of dopamine activity throughout the brain, providing a global view of the nigro-forebrain dopamine system.</p>
<p>The results showed an overwhelming concentration of dopamine innervation in the striatum. Red fluorescence indicating tyrosine hydroxylase was intensely bright in this area, marking dense networks of dopamine axons. In contrast, signal levels in the cerebral cortex were faint and sparse, almost disappearing in some regions. This pattern was clear in both raw images and zoomed-in views, which also revealed bundled corticofugal axons—the long pathways that carry signals from the cortex to other brain regions—passing through the striatum.</p>
<p>Quantitative neurochemical studies in both rodents and humans have found that dopamine tissue content is about 70 times higher in the striatum than in the frontal cortex. The current imaging data reinforce that estimate, offering a visual confirmation of these measurements. Zhou emphasized that because the same imaging parameters were used for the whole brain slice, the difference in signal intensity reflects true differences in dopamine concentration—not artifacts of the staining or microscopy process.</p>
<p>One practical implication of these findings is that isolated studies of cortical dopamine activity could be misleading if they fail to consider the striatum’s dominant role. Past research on cortical dopamine has yielded mixed results—some studies reported that dopamine excites cortical neurons, while others found it inhibits them. These inconsistent effects may be due in part to the very low levels of dopamine in the cortex, which could make its influence on neuronal activity too small to detect reliably.</p>
<p>The study also has broader relevance for understanding the effects of drugs that target dopamine systems. “Our robust data show clearly that the dopamine system in the striatum is the main brain dopamine system and therefore is the main target of antipsychotic drugs, anti-Parkinson’s drugs, Ritalin (used to treat ADHD) and cocaine,” Zhou told PsyPost. “So our results are clinically very important.” </p>
<p>The study focused on mice, but Zhou notes that dopamine systems are highly conserved across mammals. This means that the patterns seen in mice likely apply to humans as well. Although the images did not cover the absolute entirety of the brain, the sagittal sections included all major dopamine-related structures, providing what the researcher describes as a reasonably complete view of the system.</p>
<p>Zhou said there were no major surprises in the results, as he had suspected this pattern for years. Still, the ability to capture such a detailed and context-rich image of the dopamine system in one view is rare and valuable for both research and teaching. The clarity of the images and the rigor of the approach help resolve longstanding confusion in the literature about where dopamine is most active in the brain.</p>
<p>Looking ahead, Zhou’s goal is to continue mapping the anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology of the striatal dopamine system. By building a more reliable and comprehensive understanding of how dopamine functions in this area, he hopes to support the development of better treatments for brain diseases such as Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4418/15/11/1436" target="_blank">Whole-Brain Confocal Imaging Provides an Accurate Global View of the Nigral Dopamine System</a>,” was published June 5, 2025.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/neuroscience-brain-injuries-linked-to-criminal-behavior-highlight-importance-of-white-matter-tract-damage/" 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;">Brain injuries linked to criminal behavior highlight importance of white matter tract damage</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Jul 19th 2025, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in <em><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-025-03076-z" target="_blank">Molecular Psychiatry</a></em> sheds light on a question that is increasingly debated in courtrooms: Can brain injuries cause someone to commit a crime? Researchers found that damage to a specific white matter tract in the brain—the right uncinate fasciculus—was more commonly seen in people who developed criminal behavior after a brain lesion, especially those who engaged in violent acts. The results support a link between injury to this tract and the emergence of antisocial or aggressive behavior.</p>
<p>The researchers were motivated by a growing trend in which brain imaging is used as evidence in criminal trials. In high-profile cases, such as the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting and the 2023 Lewiston, Maine shooting, defense teams and medical experts pointed to brain damage as a possible factor contributing to violent actions. While these claims are often controversial and difficult to interpret, they reflect a broader need to understand whether brain lesions—especially those affecting white matter pathways—can play a meaningful role in criminal behavior.</p>
<p>Previous research has shown that people with antisocial traits or criminal histories sometimes have abnormalities in certain brain areas, including white matter tracts like the uncinate fasciculus. But these findings have mostly been correlational, making it unclear whether the brain differences caused the behavior, were a result of it, or were entirely unrelated. </p>
<p>To address this, the authors of the new study focused on a rare group of individuals who had no criminal history but developed criminal behavior following a focal brain injury. By studying this kind of “acquired criminality,” they aimed to explore whether injury to specific brain pathways could play a causal role.</p>
<p>“As a Behavioral Neurologist, I often evaluate patients who have changes in social behavior with the onset of a degenerative disease or after a stroke,” said study author <a href="https://connects.catalyst.harvard.edu/Profiles/display/Person/190136" target="_blank">Isaiah Kletenik</a>, an assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, associate neurologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and researcher at the Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics.</p>
<p>“In rare cases, patients who had previously been law-abiding may even start committing crimes. These clinical cases raised important questions about the brain basis of moral decision-making and led me to pursue network-based neuroimaging analysis of cases of lesion-associated criminality at the Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.”</p>
<p>The researchers began by identifying 17 individuals from the medical literature who had experienced a focal brain lesion followed by the onset of criminal behavior. These cases were carefully selected to ensure that the behavior started after the injury, and in some instances, the behavior stopped when the lesion was treated—such as when a brain tumor was removed. They compared these cases to a large control group of 706 individuals who also had focal brain lesions but developed other neuropsychiatric symptoms, not criminality. All lesion locations were mapped onto standardized brain templates.</p>
<p>The study used three different approaches to examine whether specific white matter tracts were affected in people who became criminal after their injury. First, the researchers tested whether the lesions overlapped with the right uncinate fasciculus, a tract known to connect areas involved in emotion and social behavior. Second, they expanded the analysis to include 68 white matter tracts from a well-established brain atlas, looking for any that were disproportionately damaged in the criminality group. Third, they conducted a connectome-wide analysis to map structural connections between each lesion and the rest of the brain, identifying which connections were most disrupted in the criminal group.</p>
<p>All three methods pointed to the same primary result: the right uncinate fasciculus was the white matter tract most strongly associated with lesion-induced criminality. In fact, 71% of the lesions in the criminality group intersected this tract, compared to only 14% in the control group. When the researchers focused only on individuals who had committed violent crimes, the association with the right uncinate fasciculus remained strong and was even more distinct.</p>
<p>“The right lateralization of our findings is quite interesting and adds to a growing literature on the role of the right hemisphere in social cognition,” Kletenik told PsyPost.</p>
<p>In addition to the right uncinate, other white matter tracts were also implicated, including the forceps minor, parts of the cingulum, and corticostriatal tracts. These pathways connect various regions of the frontal lobe with limbic and subcortical structures that are important for decision-making, impulse control, and emotional regulation. Still, the right uncinate fasciculus stood out as the most consistently associated with criminal behavior across all analytical approaches.</p>
<p>The uncinate fasciculus links the amygdala and anterior temporal lobe with the orbitofrontal cortex. These brain regions are involved in processing emotions, evaluating rewards and consequences, and making social decisions. When this pathway is damaged, people may struggle to regulate emotions, interpret social cues, or control impulses. Prior research has shown that alterations in the uncinate fasciculus are common in people with psychopathy and conduct disorder. The new findings strengthen the argument that damage to this specific connection can lead to behaviors that violate social norms or laws.</p>
<p>The results have implications for how courts might evaluate claims that brain damage contributed to a crime. If a person with no history of criminal behavior suddenly commits a violent act after suffering a stroke or tumor that affects the right uncinate fasciculus, the location of the lesion could be one piece of evidence suggesting that the injury played a role. Still, the decision to accept such evidence must weigh many other factors, including the type of behavior, the nature of the lesion, and the person’s overall mental and neurological status.</p>
<p>“Brain imaging data is increasingly being introduced into the courtroom to determine factors that could be mitigating or exculpatory to a defendant but there is limited scientific research to guide interpretation of this neuroimaging data, resulting in a reliance on expert opinions that can often conflict with one another,” Kletenik explained. “While rare, some cases of brain injury can cause new onset criminal behavior and can help answer questions about which locations of injury are more likely to impact behavior.” </p>
<p>“We found that injury to the region of a specific brain pathway called the uncinate fasciculus on the right side of the brain was most consistently associated with lesion-induced criminality. This pathway connects regions of the brain involved in decision-making and emotion processing. Our results suggest that if an individual has a new brain injury to specific brain pathways, especially to the right uncinate fasciculus, and has new onset criminal behavior, there is an increased likelihood that the injury plays a causal role in the behavior.”</p>
<p>Despite its insights, the study has some limitations. The number of lesion-induced criminality cases available in the medical literature is small, which limits statistical power and generalizability. The included cases varied in the type and cause of injury, the time between injury and behavior, and the specific crimes committed. Some cases lacked detailed behavioral or personality assessments. There may also be publication bias, as cases linking brain injury to criminality might be more likely to be reported.</p>
<p>Importantly, the researchers emphasized that damage to the right uncinate fasciculus is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause criminal behavior. Not all individuals who developed criminality had lesions intersecting this tract, and some control cases—people with other neuropsychiatric symptoms—also had damage to the uncinate without becoming criminal. </p>
<p>In fact, other disorders such as mania, confabulation, or Capgras delusion were also linked to this tract, though not as strongly. This suggests that while the right uncinate may play a key role in the risk for criminal behavior, other factors likely influence whether that risk turns into action.</p>
<p>“While most subjects with lesion-induced criminality showed some degree of intersection with the uncincate, this is not specific to criminality,” Kletenik explained. “The fact is, other lesion induced syndromes also intersect the uncinate, and it is highly likely that many people have abnormalities in similar locations but do not commit crimes. Even if an individual has a recent injury to the right uncinate, it does not follow that they will commit crimes. Specific locations of brain injury likely predispose someone to certain behaviors, but there are many additional genetic, developmental, social, cultural and environmental factors that are likely important in determining whether the behavior is expressed.”</p>
<p>“Furthermore, causality in science is not defined in the same way as culpability in the eyes of the law. Still, our findings provide useful data that can help inform this discussion and contributes to our growing knowledge about how social behavior is mediated by the brain.”</p>
<p>“We collaborated with philosopher Dr. Patricia Churchland who is a pioneer in the field of neurophilosophy to consider the ethical implications of our findings,” Kletenik added.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-025-03076-z" target="_blank">White matter disconnection in acquired criminality</a>,” was authored by Isaiah Kletenik, Christopher M. Filley, Alexander L. Cohen, William Drew, Patricia S. Churchland, R. Ryan Darby, and Michael D. Fox.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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