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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/exposure-to-gun-violence-linked-to-depression-and-suicide-risk/" 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;">Exposure to gun violence linked to depression and suicide risk</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Jul 27th 2025, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>A nationwide survey of adult U.S. residents found that individuals frequently exposed to gun violence tend to have a heightened risk of depression and suicide. They are also more likely to use mental health services. The research was published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.117672"><em>Social Science & Medicine</em></a>.</p>
<p>Gun violence in the United States is a major public health and safety issue, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths each year. It includes homicides, suicides, accidental shootings, and mass shootings. The U.S. has one of the highest rates of gun-related deaths among developed nations.</p>
<p>Gun violence disproportionately affects certain demographic groups, particularly young men and Black individuals. Suicide accounts for over half of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. Mass shootings, while less frequent, receive extensive media attention and fuel public debate. The issue remains deeply polarizing, with strong opinions on both sides of the political spectrum regarding gun rights and public safety.</p>
<p>Study author Daniel C. Semenza and his colleagues sought to explore how the frequency, variety, and recency of exposure to gun violence are associated with depression, healthcare utilization, and suicide risk in the U.S. They hypothesized that repetitive and more recent exposure to gun violence would be associated with a greater risk of depression, increased suicide risk, and greater use of healthcare.</p>
<p>Survey participants included 8,009 non-institutionalized adults residing in the U.S. Data collection was carried out in 2024 in collaboration with Ipsos KnowledgePanel, a large probability-based online panel. The survey included assessments of depression symptoms (using the Patient Health Questionnaire–9) and suicidal ideation (via the Self-Injurious Thoughts and Behaviors Interview – Short Form – Self Report).</p>
<p>Participants were also asked whether they had ever attempted suicide and responded to several questions about their exposure to gun violence. Specifically, they were asked if they had ever: (1) known someone who died by firearm suicide, (2) been threatened with a firearm, (3) been shot by someone, (4) known a family member or friend who was shot, (5) witnessed a shooting, or (6) heard gunshots in their neighborhood. They also reported how often they had experienced each of these types of events as separate incidents and when they had last experienced them.</p>
<p>Results showed that both more frequent and more recent exposure to gun violence were associated with a heightened risk of depression, suicide, and increased utilization of mental health services. In other words, people who were more often or more recently exposed to gun violence were more likely to suffer from depression, experience suicidal ideation, and seek mental healthcare compared to those exposed less often or not at all. High cumulative exposure to gun violence over the course of a lifetime was also linked to an elevated risk of depression, suicidal ideation, and greater use of mental health services.</p>
<p>“Overall, the findings suggest that GVE [gun violence exposure], even when indirect, has long-lasting and severe mental health implications, underscoring the need for targeted public health interventions to address the gap between exposure and mental health care,” the study authors concluded.</p>
<p>The study sheds light on the inks between gun violence exposure and mental health. However, it should be noted that all the study data came from self-reports leaving room for reporting bias to have affected the results. Additionally, the design of the study does not allow any causal inferences to be derived from the findings.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.117672">Frequency, recency, and variety of gun violence exposure: Implications for mental health and suicide among US adults</a>,” was authored by Daniel C. Semenza, Allison E. Bond, Devon Ziminski, and Michael D. Anestis.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/cross-party-friendships-are-shockingly-rare-in-the-united-states-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;">Cross-party friendships are shockingly rare in the United States, 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 27th 2025, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>In the United States, friendships between people who hold different political views are surprisingly uncommon. But when they do exist, they may come with a trade-off: slightly lower friendship quality, but also more positive attitudes toward people with opposing political beliefs. That’s according to new research published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506251349880" target="_blank">Social Psychological and Personality Science</a></em>.</p>
<p>The new research was conducted by Angela J. Bahns, an associate professor of psychology at Wellesley College and director of the Prejudice Reduction and Friendship Diversity Lab. Bahns set out to explore how common politically diverse friendships are, how they function, and whether they might contribute to more tolerant political attitudes.</p>
<p>Political homophily—the tendency to associate with others who hold similar views—is a well-established phenomenon in social science. It’s common across romantic partnerships, family relationships, and friendships. People often assume their friends share their political views unless told otherwise, and discovering political differences can sometimes damage a relationship. But Bahns wanted to know whether some politically diverse friendships do persist, and what impact they might have.</p>
<p>“Lots of the research in psychology on cross-group friendships looks at race/ethnicity or religion as the dimension of difference,” Bahns told PsyPost. “Given that political groups have become an important part of identity for many people, I was curious to know whether there might be potential benefits of cross-political friendships in the same way that cross-race and cross-religious friendships are associated with more positive outgroup attitudes.” </p>
<p>“Also, in a previous study I found that people with positive diversity attitudes (who tend to be politically liberal) were even more likely to have friends who share their attitudes and values. This finding suggests that people who claim to value diversity may not value viewpoint diversity in the same way they value other forms of sociodemographic diversity.”</p>
<p>To examine this, Bahns conducted two separate studies. In the first, assistants approached 537 pairs of people in public spaces in New York City, Boston, and several colleges in the Northeast. The participants were asked to complete a brief paper survey on their political views, friendship dynamics, and their attitudes toward different political groups.</p>
<p>The second study took place online and recruited 434 adult friendship pairs through CloudResearch Connect, an online research platform. This second sample was politically balanced by design, with a greater share of Republican participants compared to the field study. Participants in both studies ranged in age from 18 to over 80 and completed similar sets of questions.</p>
<p>Across both studies, participants reported their political ideology, party affiliation, and beliefs about specific political issues such as immigration, climate change, gun control, and abortion. They also rated the quality of their friendship using questions about closeness, companionship, and reciprocity. Comfort with political disagreement—a personal trait reflecting how open someone is to discussing political differences—was measured using a validated six-item scale.</p>
<p>The studies also included questions about whether the friends had discussed various controversial political topics, and participants rated how warmly they felt toward members of their own political group and those from the opposite side. These ratings were used to assess prejudice toward political outgroups.</p>
<p>Overall, Bahns found strong evidence of political homophily. In both samples, most friendships were politically aligned. In the first study, only about 3% of pairs included one Democrat and one Republican. In the second study, that number rose to about 8%, still a small share. Even on specific political issues, differences between friends were usually modest. Only a quarter of all pairs had more than a 1.5-point average difference (on a 7-point scale) across their political issue ratings.</p>
<p>“Everyone knows our country is highly polarized when it comes to politics, but I was surprised at just how rare true bipartisan friendships were in these studies,” Bahns said.</p>
<p>Despite this general trend toward political similarity, the studies found that political attitude dissimilarity—when friends disagreed on political issues—was linked to more favorable views of political outgroups. In other words, people who had a friend with different political views tended to rate opposing groups more positively. This finding was consistent across both studies, though the effect was relatively small.</p>
<p>At the same time, greater political dissimilarity between friends was associated with slightly lower friendship quality. In both studies, people who disagreed more with their friends on political issues rated their friendships as a bit less close or satisfying. This suggests that political disagreement may introduce tension or discomfort into a relationship, even if it doesn’t end the friendship entirely.</p>
<p>“Friends that had at least some political attitude dissimilarity tended to have more positive attitudes toward political outgroups,” explained Bahns, but “political attitude dissimilarity was associated with lower friendship quality.”</p>
<p>The studies also looked at the role of “comfort with political disagreement.” People who were more open to discussing political differences tended to rate their friendships more positively, regardless of whether their friends held different views. This trait was modestly related to political orientation in one study but not in the other, and it appeared to play a small but meaningful role in how people managed political differences within their relationships.</p>
<p>Interestingly, the studies found that discussions about political issues were fairly common even among politically similar friends. Most participants reported talking with their friends about at least some controversial issues, such as abortion or LGBTQ+ rights. In these cases, comfort with disagreement predicted a greater likelihood of having such conversations.</p>
<p>The study, like all research, includes some caveats.</p>
<p>“The methods are cross-sectional, so while the study found an association between political attitude dissimilarity and political outgroup attitudes, we cannot say whether people with more positive outgroup attitudes are more open to having politically diverse friends or whether having politically diverse friends makes people’s outgroup attitudes more positive,” Bahns said.</p>
<p>“Another limitation is that the degree of political attitude dissimilarity in the samples is low. Because friendships among people who disagree strongly about politics are quite rare, these types of friendships are not well represented in these studies. Therefore we don’t know what the relationship between political attitude dissimilarity and outgroup attitudes would be at higher levels of attitude dissimilarity.”</p>
<p>Bahns suggests that future research should explore how politically diverse friendships form and whether they are more likely to dissolve over time. It would also be useful to examine other close relationships, such as romantic partners or family members, to see whether similar patterns hold.</p>
<p>“I hope to use experimental methods to test the causal relationship between politically diverse friendship and outgroup attitudes,” Bahns said. “If we learn that having politically diverse friends can reduce prejudice toward political outgroups, I would like to design an intervention to make people more open to having politically diverse friends.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506251349880" target="_blank">Examining the Frequency and Characteristics of Politically Diverse Friendships</a>,” was published July 5, 2025.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/neuroscientists-uncover-how-sound-processing-shifts-during-sleep/" 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 uncover how sound processing shifts during sleep</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Jul 27th 2025, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>New research published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0368-25.2025" target="_blank">The Journal of Neuroscience</a></em> reveals that basic sound processing remains active in the brainstem during non-rapid eye movement sleep, but weakens in the auditory cortex as sleep deepens. The study sheds light on how the sleeping brain manages to preserve rest while staying responsive to important sounds.</p>
<p>Sleep is composed of different stages, each marked by specific patterns of brain activity. The non-rapid eye movement stages—N1, N2, and N3—progress from light to deep sleep. During N3, also known as slow-wave sleep, the brain exhibits large, slow waves and becomes less responsive to the outside world. </p>
<p>In contrast, rapid eye movement (REM) sleep involves more active brain waves and dreaming, but it was not the focus of the current study. Scientists have long known that certain brain responses to sound decrease during deeper sleep, but how these changes unfold across different levels of the auditory system has remained unclear.</p>
<p>To investigate this, researchers Hugo R. Jourde and <a href="https://www.coffeylab.ca/" target="_blank">Emily B. Coffey</a> recorded brain activity from healthy adults during sleep to examine how early auditory signals are processed at different depths of sleep. Their goal was to understand whether the weakening of auditory responses is a uniform process throughout the brain, or whether it affects higher and lower parts of the auditory system differently. </p>
<p>The researchers focused on a specific type of auditory response called the frequency-following response, or FFR. This response reflects how accurately neurons track the pitch of a sound and is known to originate in multiple parts of the brain, including the brainstem, thalamus, and auditory cortex. </p>
<p>“The frequency-following response is an interesting signal because it gives us fairly direct insights into how the brain represents pitch information, which is really important in human communication – as well as to create and appreciate music,” said Coffey, an associate professor of psychology at Concordia University.</p>
<p>“Neurons in the auditory system phase-lock their firing patterns to each wave in an acoustic signal, and their aggregated responses create an electrical field that we can measure at the scalp using electroencephalography. What’s particularly interesting is that individuals’ brains have quite different representations even of such a fundamental sound property. These representations are related to perception, and they change with experience and age. That means we’re actually hearing the world a bit differently from one another.”</p>
<p>“I first started using the FFR to look at how people differ in how they encode and perceive sound, and how this changes with musical training. Since then, our group has been looking at where, how, and why the FFR changes—either temporarily due to attention or more permanently due to training.”</p>
<p>To isolate where the FFR signals were coming from, the team used magnetoencephalography (MEG), a brain imaging method that captures magnetic signals from neuronal activity with high spatial resolution, along with electroencephalography (EEG), which records electrical activity from the scalp. By comparing these signals across different sleep stages, they could pinpoint how each brain region responded to sound as sleep deepened.</p>
<p>The study involved 14 young adults who underwent a 2.5-hour nap session while lying in a MEG scanner. All participants had normal hearing and regular sleep patterns. During the nap, they listened to a repeated speech sound—specifically, a synthesized syllable “da”—delivered at a quiet but clearly audible level. This particular sound is often used in auditory research because it reliably produces strong FFRs and mimics natural speech frequencies. The researchers presented the sound continuously at a rate of about five times per second while simultaneously recording brain activity.</p>
<p>The EEG recordings allowed the researchers to determine when each participant was awake or in a specific sleep stage. In addition, they tracked brief events in the brain’s sleep architecture, such as sleep spindles and slow oscillations. These phenomena are thought to help stabilize sleep and possibly gate incoming sensory information, but their exact role in auditory processing is still debated.</p>
<p>The key finding was that the strength of the FFR stayed stable in subcortical regions—the cochlear nucleus, inferior colliculus, and medial geniculate body—even during deep sleep (stage N3). This suggests that the brainstem and thalamus continue to process pitch information throughout non-REM sleep. In contrast, FFR strength in the auditory cortex decreased as sleep became deeper. The drop in signal strength was most pronounced during N3 sleep and appeared to grow progressively with sleep depth.</p>
<p>This pattern was confirmed using both the global EEG signal and the localized MEG signal from the right auditory cortex. Interestingly, the latency of the cortical FFR also increased slightly in deeper sleep, indicating slower processing of sound in the cortex. However, the timing of subcortical signals did not appear to change.</p>
<p>To better understand why cortical sound processing was reduced, the researchers examined how much the thalamus and cortex communicated during sleep. They measured a form of functional connectivity called imaginary coherence, which reflects the degree to which two regions synchronize their activity. During N3 sleep, connectivity between the auditory thalamus and auditory cortex decreased, especially during the middle portion of the FFR signal. This reduced coordination between regions may be a factor in the weakened cortical responses observed in deeper sleep.</p>
<p>“This study shows that our brains process sounds differently depending on how deeply you’re sleeping, and surprisingly, different parts of your auditory system behave in opposite ways,” Coffey told PsyPost. “Your brainstem keeps working normally, but your cortex seems to ‘turn down the volume’—cortical connectivity between thalamus and cortex becomes weaker, and the amplitude of the FFR measured at the cortex diminishes.”</p>
<p>“In sleep, our brain is actively balancing two competing needs: staying alert enough to wake up for truly important sounds (like a baby crying or a smoke alarm), while staying asleep to accomplish the necessary roles of sleep such as restoring the body and brain and memory consolidation. This seems to be part of that mechanism. The study found considerable variation between people in how strongly sleep attenuates their representation of sounds, which also might explain why people differ in their sensitivity to nighttime noises. It also hints that because sound does still continue to be processed to some level, maintaining a quiet sleeping environment is probably a good idea for good sleep quality.”</p>
<p>One unexpected result was that sleep spindles—bursts of activity that originate in the thalamus and travel to the cortex—did not seem to interfere with sound encoding. Earlier studies had proposed that these events might act like a “gate,” preventing sensory information from reaching the cortex. The team expected to see a dip in FFR strength when sounds occurred during spindles, but no such effect emerged.</p>
<p>“The pattern of results shows a clear distinction between thalamus and cortex,” Coffey explained. “It could have been possible to have a gradual decrease in amplitude as you go up the auditory hierarchy, or conversely, the pitch representation might have been preserved up to and including the cortex, with sleep only affecting higher-level, later auditory processing like those involved in extracting meaning from language and music streams.”</p>
<p>“Despite the apparent thalamocortical disconnection, it did not seem to be the case that neural events known as thalamocortical sleep spindles were responsible for preventing sound representations from reaching the cortex. Instead, it was the overall sleep depth that made a difference.”</p>
<p>“This was surprising because previous work had suggested spindles themselves were directly involved in blocking sound to cortex, and it would have made sense since spindles involve very peculiar, strong firing patterns in thalamic neurons, which is quite different from how they normally work,” Coffey said. “We found, however, that sound presented during spindles—as compared with periods during a similar sleep stage in which no spindles occurred—produced similar brain responses, meaning that the auditory pathways up to cortex are still working even during these intense neural events.”</p>
<p>But there are some limitations to consider. Because the study was based on nap recordings rather than full overnight sleep, the researchers were unable to examine REM sleep in detail. REM typically occurs later in the night and was rarely observed in the nap sessions. In addition, while the study design allowed for precise measurements of pitch tracking, it did not address other aspects of auditory processing such as speech comprehension or sound localization.</p>
<p>“This is a descriptive study on neurophysiology,” Coffey noted. “It describes what happens but doesn’t answer whether this reduction in sound processing serves a specific biological purpose or is just a side effect of other neural processes that happen in sleep—the interpretations about how this might be a mechanism to protect the sleep state remain speculative. There are, of course, many limitations, as no single study design can look at everything, meaning that much is left to be done, including replication in a larger sample.”</p>
<p>Despite these limitations, the findings highlight a distinct split in how different parts of the brain process sound during sleep. The brainstem continues to track pitch with high fidelity even in deep sleep, while the cortex gradually tunes out. The study adds to a growing body of work showing that the sleeping brain is not uniformly inactive but instead regulates information flow in selective ways.</p>
<p>The researchers hope to build on this work by exploring how sounds can be used to influence brain activity during sleep.</p>
<p>“We’re interested both in how sleep affects sound processing and how sound affects the other types of cognitive processes that go on during sleep,” Coffey said. “Specifically, we’re interested in how sound can be used as a means of modulating memory consolidation.”</p>
<p>“By either disrupting or enhancing processes via acoustic stimulation that is precisely timed to specific neural events (i.e., closed-loop auditory stimulation), or by associating new information with auditory cues and playing them during sleep (i.e., targeted memory reactivation), we can learn a lot about how memory works and perhaps even restore sleep’s memory processes in people who have poor sleep and memory. But first, it’s necessary to understand how sleep and sound interact bidirectionally. This paper is part of that fundamental work.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0368-25.2025" target="_blank">Sleep state influences early sound encoding at cortical but not subcortical levels</a>,” was published July 7, 2025.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/tooth-loss-linked-to-faster-cognitive-decline-in-hispanic-older-adults/" 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;">Tooth loss linked to faster cognitive decline in Hispanic older adults</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Jul 26th 2025, 16:00</div>
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<p><p>Older Hispanic adults who have lost all their natural teeth may face faster declines in cognitive function compared to those who still have their teeth, according to a new study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/01640275251315850" target="_blank">Research on Aging</a></em>. The findings also suggest that while both Hispanic and Black adults tend to begin with lower cognitive scores in late life, their rates of decline may be slower—unless tooth loss is a factor.</p>
<p>The researchers conducted the study to better understand how tooth loss, a condition known as edentulism, might influence age-related cognitive decline, particularly across different racial and ethnic groups. Prior research has shown that people of color in the United States are more likely to have poorer oral health, and that they often experience disparities in cognitive aging. </p>
<p>To investigate these questions, the research team analyzed data from the Health and Retirement Study, a long-running, nationally representative survey of adults aged 51 and older in the United States. The data included nearly 190,000 observations from over 23,000 people collected between 2006 and 2020. Roughly two-thirds of the participants identified as non-Hispanic White, about one-fifth were non-Hispanic Black, and 14% were Hispanic. Just over 13% of the total sample were edentulous at the start of the study.</p>
<p>Each participant completed multiple assessments over the years to track their cognitive performance. These assessments measured short-term memory, attention, and mental processing using a 27-point scale. Higher scores indicated better cognitive functioning. The researchers also gathered information on whether participants had lost all their teeth, as well as other factors like education, income, health status, and lifestyle behaviors such as smoking and physical activity.</p>
<p>At the beginning of the study, non-Hispanic White participants had the highest average cognitive scores, while Hispanic and Black participants scored lower on average. Specifically, Black and Hispanic individuals started with scores roughly two to four points lower than White individuals. People without teeth also had lower baseline scores compared to those who still had their natural teeth.</p>
<p>Over time, cognitive scores tended to decline with age across the sample. But the rate of this decline varied by race and ethnicity. On average, non-Hispanic White participants experienced more rapid declines in cognitive function than Black and Hispanic participants. This pattern may reflect what researchers call a “floor effect,” meaning those who start at lower levels have less room to decline.</p>
<p>When the researchers focused on tooth loss, they found that edentulism was linked to faster cognitive decline across all groups. However, this effect was most apparent among Hispanic participants. For this group, having no natural teeth weakened the protective pattern of slower cognitive decline. </p>
<p>Hispanic participants without teeth declined about 0.03 points faster per year compared to their dentate Hispanic peers. This may sound small, but over a decade or more, the effect could be meaningful. Notably, edentulism did not appear to significantly speed up cognitive decline for Black participants in the same way.</p>
<p>The researchers propose several reasons why tooth loss might accelerate cognitive aging. People without teeth often have trouble chewing, which can reduce blood flow to parts of the brain involved in memory and thinking. Tooth loss can also be a sign of long-term gum disease, which increases inflammation throughout the body—a factor linked to brain aging. Another possibility is that people with no teeth may avoid certain healthy foods, leading to poor nutrition, which can also affect cognitive health.</p>
<p>These oral health challenges are not distributed evenly across the population. Previous studies have shown that Black and Hispanic Americans are more likely to suffer from complete tooth loss due to unequal access to dental care, lower income, and other social disadvantages. In the current study, Hispanic participants had the lowest rates of edentulism, but they also had the lowest levels of education and household wealth, on average.</p>
<p>Interestingly, while edentulism accelerated cognitive decline among Hispanics, it did not have the same effect in Black participants. The authors suggest a few possible explanations. Black participants in the study were more likely to be married or partnered, which may offer social support that buffers the impact of tooth loss. It’s also possible that lifelong exposure to poor oral health among Black adults may reduce the added burden of complete tooth loss, though this idea would need further study.</p>
<p>Another important finding was that regular dental visits were linked to better cognitive outcomes. People who saw a dentist in the past two years scored higher on cognitive tests than those who had not. This finding points to the potential benefits of preventive dental care—not just for oral health but possibly for brain health as well.</p>
<p>The study has some limitations. It relied on self-reported data about tooth loss, which may not be as accurate as clinical assessments. The researchers also used a brief cognitive screening tool rather than a full battery of cognitive tests. While the large, nationally representative sample is a strength, the study only included three racial and ethnic groups, which limits how broadly the findings can be applied. Finally, because the study is observational, it cannot prove that tooth loss causes cognitive decline—it can only show that the two are linked.</p>
<p>Even with these caveats, the study adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that oral health and brain health are deeply connected. It also raises important questions about how health disparities in one domain—such as dentistry—can spill over into others. The findings suggest that improving access to dental care, especially for underserved communities, could be one way to help reduce inequalities in cognitive aging.</p>
<p>Future research should explore the biological and social mechanisms that explain why tooth loss affects some groups more than others. It may also be worthwhile to examine whether restoring missing teeth with dentures or implants can slow down cognitive decline. In the meantime, the authors recommend that healthcare providers include oral health as part of regular screenings for older adults, especially those at greater risk of tooth loss and cognitive impairment.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/01640275251315850" target="_blank">Trajectory of Cognitive Decline Across Different Racial/Ethnic Groups: The Role of Edentulism</a>,” was authored by Ruotong Liu, Xiang Qi, Huabin Luo, and Bei Wu.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/cortisol-and-testosterone-may-influence-how-teens-navigate-trust-in-social-situations/" 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;">Cortisol and testosterone may influence how teens navigate trust in social situations</a>
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<p><p>A new study has found that adolescents tend to trust their friends more than strangers, and this difference in trust is associated with variations in hormone levels, impulsivity, and social reasoning. The research highlights how biological and cognitive factors may relate to how adolescents navigate social relationships. The findings were published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2025.107483" target="_blank">Psychoneuroendocrinology</a></em>.</p>
<p>Cortisol is a hormone released by the adrenal glands in response to stress. It follows a daily rhythm and helps regulate metabolism, immune function, and emotional responses. Higher or lower levels of cortisol can reflect how the body handles stress. Testosterone is a sex hormone associated with puberty, motivation for social dominance, and behavior regulation. While typically thought of as a male hormone, testosterone is present in both sexes and can affect behavior across a variety of contexts.</p>
<p>Both hormones increase during adolescence and are thought to influence how young people respond to social situations, including how they assess risk, interact with peers, and decide whether to trust others. But until now, few studies have looked at how these biological changes intersect with cognitive traits like impulsivity and theory of mind—the ability to understand others’ perspectives—to shape social behavior during early adolescence.</p>
<p>The research team, led by Rui Su and colleagues at Beijing Normal University, sought to understand how hormonal, cognitive, and social factors work together to influence trust in adolescents. Trust plays a key role in forming and maintaining social relationships, and adolescence is a time of heightened sensitivity to peer influence. Prior studies have shown that adolescents tend to trust friends more than strangers, but little was known about the biological and cognitive processes that support these decisions.</p>
<p>The researchers hypothesized that cortisol and testosterone would influence trust behavior both directly and indirectly, through their effects on impulsivity and theory of mind. They also believed that the degree of trust adolescents place in friends versus strangers would be shaped by these same variables.</p>
<p>The study included 142 typically developing adolescents, aged 10 to 14, from urban schools in Beijing. About 45% of the participants were girls. The study was conducted over two days. On the first day, participants collected saliva samples at home under parental supervision to measure cortisol levels. On the second day, the adolescents completed several tasks at school, including a trust game, a cartoon-based task to assess theory of mind, and a gambling task designed to measure impulsivity. Additional saliva samples were collected at school to assess testosterone levels.</p>
<p>In the trust game, each participant played the role of an investor who decided how many tokens to give to a friend or a stranger. The tokens given to the other player would triple in value, and the recipient could choose to return half or keep the full amount. The amount of tokens invested represented the level of trust, while the participants’ expectations of receiving a return were also recorded.</p>
<p>The theory of mind task asked participants to infer the intentions or feelings of characters in short cartoon stories. The impulsivity task required them to inflate virtual balloons to earn points, with the risk of losing everything if the balloon popped. More balloon explosions and risky pumps indicated higher impulsivity.</p>
<p>Adolescents invested more in friends than in strangers and believed their friends were more likely to reciprocate. These findings supported prior research showing that adolescents adjust their trust behavior based on social closeness.</p>
<p>Impulsivity was linked to a greater willingness to trust others in general, regardless of social distance. Adolescents who scored higher on impulsivity invested more tokens on average in both friends and strangers. However, this pattern did not extend to the difference between how much they trusted friends versus strangers. That distinction—called strategic trust—was instead related to theory of mind. Adolescents with stronger theory of mind were better at adjusting their trust depending on whether they were interacting with a friend or a stranger.</p>
<p>Cortisol was found to have a complex relationship with trust. Lower basal cortisol levels were linked to higher impulsivity, which in turn was associated with greater general trust. At the same time, lower cortisol levels were directly associated with reduced general trust, suggesting that cortisol affects trust through both impulsive and reflective pathways. These findings support the idea that adolescents with lower cortisol may be more impulsive and more inclined to trust based on gut feelings, but may also have less overall willingness to invest in social relationships.</p>
<p>Testosterone, on the other hand, was positively linked with theory of mind and with strategic trust. Adolescents with higher testosterone levels were better at adjusting their trust levels depending on who they were interacting with. This effect was most apparent among boys. For them, testosterone increased theory of mind, which in turn predicted more strategic trust—investing more in friends and less in strangers.</p>
<p>The researchers also explored how cortisol and testosterone worked together. They found that when testosterone levels were low or moderate, cortisol had an indirect effect on trust through impulsivity. But when testosterone levels were high, this relationship disappeared. This pattern supports the idea that the two hormone systems interact in opposing ways, with testosterone potentially reducing the impact of cortisol on behavior.</p>
<p>The study sheds light on how adolescent trust decisions are shaped by stress and sex hormones, impulsivity, and social reasoning. But there are some limitations. The findings were based on a single point in time, so the researchers could not track how hormone levels or trust behaviors changed as adolescents aged. A longitudinal study would be needed to capture developmental changes.</p>
<p>The sample size also was not large enough to support more complex statistical models that might reveal additional relationships among the variables. Including brain imaging in future studies could also help explain how these hormone-related differences are reflected in brain activity during trust decisions.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the findings suggest that adolescents appear to rely more on impulsivity when making general trust decisions and more on theory of mind when making strategic ones. Cortisol affects trust both directly and through impulsivity, while testosterone supports more selective trust through its link to theory of mind, especially among boys. The interaction between these two hormone systems may help adolescents balance the desire to build relationships with the need to protect themselves from social risk.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2025.107483" target="_blank">Testosterone and cortisol jointly mediate and modulate trust behavior in early adolescence</a>,” was authored by Rui Su, Xuting Jiang, Xiang Ma, Huagen Wang, and Chao Liu.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/socially-anxious-people-are-better-at-detecting-subtle-signs-of-anger/" 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;">Socially anxious people are better at detecting subtle signs of anger</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Jul 26th 2025, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2025.104750" target="_blank">Behaviour Research and Therapy</a></em> suggests that people with high social anxiety are more accurate at recognizing subtle angry expressions compared to people with low social anxiety. The researchers found that individuals who scored high on social anxiety tests showed stronger brain responses when viewing low-intensity dynamic angry faces. These responses occurred during later stages of processing, which may reflect increased cognitive effort to interpret socially ambiguous cues.</p>
<p>Social anxiety is a condition marked by intense fear of being judged or negatively evaluated by others. People with social anxiety often worry excessively about embarrassing themselves in social situations and may avoid activities like public speaking, meeting new people, or even making eye contact. These fears go beyond shyness and can interfere with daily life. One feature of social anxiety is a heightened sensitivity to social threats, especially in the form of disapproval, rejection, or criticism.</p>
<p>Facial expressions, particularly those signaling anger, play an important role in how people navigate social interactions. For individuals with social anxiety, angry faces can be especially unsettling, even when the expressions are ambiguous or subtle. This tendency to interpret neutral or low-intensity expressions as threatening may contribute to the anxiety and avoidance behaviors often seen in social anxiety.</p>
<p>Most previous studies examining how people with social anxiety process facial expressions have used static images. While these images offer control and consistency, they do not reflect the way emotions are expressed in everyday life. Real expressions unfold over time and carry movement cues that can change how they are perceived. Dynamic expressions are thought to provide more realistic social information.</p>
<p>The research team, led by Jing Yuan from Hebei University in China, wanted to understand how people with high and low levels of social anxiety respond to dynamic angry facial expressions. They were especially interested in how the brain reacts to expressions of different intensity, from very subtle signs of anger to more obvious ones. To investigate this, they recorded participants’ brain activity while they viewed facial expressions and made judgments about them.</p>
<p>The researchers recruited 48 undergraduate students from Hebei University. All participants were between the ages of 17 and 23 and had no history of mental illness. They were grouped into either a high social anxiety group or a low social anxiety group based on their scores on the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale. The final sample included 23 students in the high anxiety group and 22 in the low anxiety group.</p>
<p>Participants viewed short video clips showing faces that gradually changed from a neutral expression to a mildly or moderately angry one. The expressions were presented at six intensity levels: 15%, 21%, 27%, 33%, 39%, and 45%. These percentages reflect the degree of visible anger in the facial expression. Participants were asked to press a key to indicate whether they thought the expression was angry or neutral. The researchers measured how accurate they were and how quickly they responded.</p>
<p>At the same time, the researchers recorded brain activity using electroencephalography, or EEG. EEG detects electrical signals in the brain using sensors placed on the scalp. The team focused on event-related potentials (ERPs), which are brain responses that occur at specific times after a stimulus appears. Different ERP components occur at different times and reflect different types of mental processing.</p>
<p>The researchers looked at four ERP components:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>P1</strong>, which occurs about 100 milliseconds after a stimulus and reflects early attention.</li>
<li><strong>P2</strong>, which occurs a little later and reflects deeper engagement with the stimulus.</li>
<li><strong>P3</strong>, which occurs around 300 milliseconds and is thought to reflect conscious evaluation and decision-making.</li>
<li><strong>LPP</strong>, or late positive potential, which lasts for several hundred milliseconds and is linked to emotional and cognitive elaboration.</li>
</ul>
<p>By comparing these components between the high and low anxiety groups, the researchers could see how brain responses differed during the recognition of dynamic angry expressions.</p>
<p>Behaviorally, the high social anxiety group was more accurate at recognizing angry expressions than the low social anxiety group, especially at the lower intensity levels. In both groups, people were faster and more accurate at recognizing high-intensity anger compared to low-intensity anger. But the individuals with higher anxiety showed a particular advantage in detecting subtle signs of anger.</p>
<p>When the researchers looked at the brain data, they found no significant differences between the two groups in the early ERP components, P1 and P2. This suggests that both groups paid similar early attention to the facial expressions, regardless of intensity.</p>
<p>However, the groups did differ in the later components. The high social anxiety group showed greater P3 and LPP amplitudes than the low anxiety group when viewing expressions at the lower intensity levels (15%, 21%, 27%, and 33%). These differences were not seen at the higher intensity levels (39% and 45%).</p>
<p>Larger P3 and LPP responses in the high anxiety group suggest that these individuals engaged in more cognitive processing when faced with ambiguous emotional signals. This increased brain activity may reflect a tendency to interpret subtle expressions of anger as more threatening, or a need to scrutinize the expression more thoroughly.</p>
<p>The results support the idea that people with social anxiety are more sensitive to social threat cues, even when those cues are subtle. But rather than detecting threat earlier, as some studies with static images have suggested, this study found that differences appeared during later stages of processing. The findings suggest that socially anxious individuals may spend more effort trying to interpret unclear emotional signals, especially when they suspect the possibility of disapproval or rejection.</p>
<p>As with all research, there are limitations to consider. First, the participants were college students who scored high on a social anxiety scale but were not diagnosed with a clinical anxiety disorder. Results might differ in a clinical population. Second, the sample was predominantly female, which could influence emotion recognition patterns. Women tend to be better at interpreting facial expressions, so future research should include more balanced gender representation.</p>
<p>Despite these limitations, the study highlights the importance of using realistic, dynamic expressions in research on social anxiety. Many interventions aimed at reducing social anxiety rely on training people to shift their attention away from threatening cues. Incorporating dynamic facial expressions into these training programs could improve their effectiveness by more closely mimicking real-world social interactions.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2025.104750" target="_blank">Recognition of dynamic angry expressions in socially anxious individuals: An ERP study</a>,” was authored by Jing Yuan, Yuchen Zhang, Chenwei Zhao, Zejun Liu, and Xiaoping Yin.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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