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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/positivity-resonance-predicts-lasting-love-according-to-new-psychology-research/" 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;">Positivity resonance predicts lasting love, according to new psychology research</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Aug 15th 2025, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>An analysis of data from 148 long-term married couples suggests that couples who display greater positivity resonance tend to score higher on a measure of enduring love. Moment-to-moment fluctuations in positivity resonance were also associated with changes in love over time. The research was published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/pere.70008"><em>Personal Relationships</em></a>.</p>
<p>Positivity resonance refers to the shared experience of positive emotion between two (or more) individuals. It arises when people connect in a way that fosters warmth, trust, and a sense of shared humanity. This state is marked by nonverbal synchrony, such as matching facial expressions, coordinated body language, and harmonized tone of voice.</p>
<p>It can occur during everyday interactions—such as shared laughter, mutual eye contact, or a heartfelt conversation—and is thought to trigger the release of neurochemicals like oxytocin, which help reinforce social bonds. Over time, frequent experiences of positivity resonance may support emotional well-being and even physical health. Although often studied in romantic contexts, positivity resonance can occur in friendships, family interactions, and even brief encounters with strangers.</p>
<p>Study author Jocelyn Lai and her colleagues aimed to test whether positivity resonance between romantic partners is associated with markers of love. Specifically, they sought to determine whether couples who experience more frequent positivity resonance also report—or display—more love. The researchers also hypothesized that changes in positivity resonance over time would be linked to changes in momentary expressions of love.</p>
<p>The authors analyzed data from a longitudinal study of marital satisfaction and relationship quality. Participants were 148 middle-aged and older heterosexual couples recruited from the San Francisco Bay Area between 1989 and 1990. On average, husbands were 54 years old and wives were between 52 and 53. The couples had been married for an average of 30 years.</p>
<p>In the original study, couples visited a laboratory and engaged in a 15-minute conversation about a marital conflict. This occurred during two sessions spaced over time. Approximately 1.5 years after the first visit, they completed a questionnaire in which they selected adjectives that described their spouse. During the conversations, participants were video recorded and wore electrocardiography equipment to monitor their heart activity.</p>
<p>The researchers analyzed these videos to assess each couple’s level of positivity resonance. They focused on jointly experienced and expressed positive affect, physiological linkage in heart rate, and behavioral cues such as tone of voice and facial expressions. State love was estimated from nonverbal cues displayed in synchrony during short segments of the conversations. Trait love—a more stable form—was estimated using both the love-related adjective ratings and the overall frequency of synchronized nonverbal cues during the conversations.</p>
<p>The results indicated that couples who exhibited higher levels of positivity resonance tended to show greater trait love. In other words, couples who shared more positive emotional synchrony were also estimated to love each other more in a stable, enduring sense. Additionally, moments of increased positivity resonance within the conversations were associated with higher levels of state love, and vice versa.</p>
<p>“Results offer the first empirical footing for the theoretical claim that positivity resonance reflects state love and predicts trait love. As researchers continue to advance empirical work on positivity resonance, they now have a basis for presenting that evidence as also advancing the science of love,” the study authors concluded.</p>
<p>The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the relationship between love and positivity resonance. However, it should be noted that the same videos were used to estimate both love and positivity resonance, raising the question of whether they can be considered independent observations. It is possible that at least a part of the reported association stems from the fact that estimates of love and positivity resonance came from the same videos.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/pere.70008">Does Positivity Resonance Signify Love? Markers of Positivity Resonance in Long-Term Married Couples Relate to Trait and State Love,</a>” was authored by Jocelyn Lai, Marcela C. Otero, Kuan-Hua Chen, Jenna L. Wells, Robert W. Levenson, and Barbara L. Fredrickson.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/common-infections-during-pregnancy-unlikely-to-impact-childrens-intelligence-large-study-finds/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Common infections during pregnancy unlikely to impact children’s intelligence, large study finds</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Aug 15th 2025, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>New research published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004657" target="_blank" rel="noopener">PLOS Medicine</a></em> based on nationwide data from Denmark suggests that common maternal infections during pregnancy are unlikely to have a meaningful effect on children’s cognitive outcomes later in life. In one of the largest studies of its kind, researchers analyzed school grades and intelligence scores among more than 250,000 siblings and found no consistent differences based on whether their mothers had been prescribed antibiotics or hospitalized for infection during pregnancy.</p>
<p>While certain severe infections during pregnancy—such as rubella or toxoplasmosis—are known to pose risks to fetal brain development, the broader implications of more common infections, like urinary tract or respiratory infections, have remained unclear. Some previous studies have suggested these everyday illnesses might influence the child’s future cognitive performance. However, many of these earlier studies were unable to fully account for shared family factors that might bias the results, such as parental intelligence, socioeconomic status, or genetic predispositions.</p>
<p>“Previous studies and anecdotal clinical stories have suggested an negative impact of common maternal infections on offspring cognitive outcomes. However, most previous studies have been small and have not been able to correct for the social biases associated with both the risk of maternal infection during pregnancy and the cognitive outcome of the offspring,” said study author Anders Husby, a resident physician and postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine at Rigshospitalet, and the Department of Congenital Disorders at Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen.</p>
<p>“Using data from <a href="https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2022-072779" target="_blank" rel="noopener">our previous study</a> on gestational age at birth and long-term cognitive outcome, we could investigate the association between common maternal infections during pregnancy and long-term cognitive outcome in a very large nationwide cohort composed of full-siblings. Using the full-sibling design, we could compare siblings where the same mother, who had or hadn’t an infection during pregnancy, and thereby minimize confounding from social factors.</p>
<p>The data for the research came from multiple national Danish registries. The researchers included information on filled antimicrobial prescriptions as a proxy for mild infections and inpatient hospitalizations to represent more severe cases. They then linked these exposure records to standardized school grades in language and mathematics at age 15–16, as well as intelligence test scores from mandatory military conscription assessments taken by adolescent boys.</p>
<p>The cohort included over 274,000 children born between 1996 and 2003, with nearly 81,000 having mothers who had filled at least one prescription for a systemic antimicrobial during pregnancy. A smaller subset—roughly 5,600 children—had mothers who were hospitalized for infections while pregnant. Intelligence scores were available for a sub-cohort of full brothers who had undergone testing for military service.</p>
<p>The results indicated little to no difference in academic or cognitive performance based on maternal infection exposure. For example, among children whose mothers filled one prescription for antibiotics during pregnancy, the average difference in language or math grades was virtually zero once shared family factors were accounted for. Similarly, the estimated IQ difference in adolescent males was only about 0.3 points on average—well within the margin of error.</p>
<p>In contrast, when the researchers looked at models that did not account for shared family factors, they found consistent and statistically significant associations between maternal infections and lower scores. This discrepancy highlights how results may be influenced by family-level confounding, and it underscores the value of sibling-based analyses in addressing such biases.</p>
<p>Even when examining different types of antibiotics or timing of exposure across pregnancy, the results did not point to any consistent effects. The most common antibiotics—such as beta-lactams—showed no meaningful associations with lower academic performance or IQ. Nor did the timing of exposure appear to matter: infections occurring during early gestation, late gestation, or any specific bi-weekly window were not linked to worse outcomes.</p>
<p>“We were open as to whether the exposure (i.e., common maternal infections) had negative or no effects on cognitive outcomes, so we were not surprised by the results,” Husby told PsyPost. “However, it is reassuring to see that our study with large certainty can rule out moderate-or-large negative effects on cognitive outcomes from common maternal infections.”</p>
<p>There were a few small exceptions. For example, there was a slight reduction in mathematics scores among children whose mothers had filled one or two antibiotic prescriptions. But these differences were minimal—about 1–2% of a standard deviation—and the researchers noted that confidence intervals ruled out anything larger than a 3% drop. These findings, they argue, are not likely to be meaningful at the individual or population level.</p>
<p>The study also explored whether more severe infections, indicated by hospitalization, might have a stronger effect. One notable finding was a slight dip in school grades among children whose mothers had been hospitalized for an infection during weeks 24–25 of pregnancy. But this effect disappeared when the analysis was limited to children born at full term, suggesting that the initial association may have been influenced by gestational age rather than the infection itself.</p>
<p>The researchers conducted several sensitivity analyses to test the robustness of their findings. These included restricting the sample to term births, adjusting for maternal smoking, and imputing scores for children who did not participate in school exams. Across these variations, the results remained consistent: there was no evidence of meaningful cognitive harm associated with common infections during pregnancy.</p>
<p>“Our study suggests that common maternal infections and the associated antimicrobial treatment during pregnancy are unlikely to meaningfully impair offspring cognitive outcomes, such as school grades or adolescent IQ,” Husby said. “This provides reassuring evidence supporting the safety of commonly prescribed antimicrobials during gestation, and suggest an minor role of common prenatal infections in cognitive deficits in offspring.”</p>
<p>The study does have limitations. One is that it lacked information on medications administered during hospital stays, which could potentially affect outcomes. However, hospitalization for infection was relatively rare, and the analysis of this group did not show signs of negative cognitive effects. Another limitation is that the researchers could not identify specific pathogens responsible for infections, nor could they account for maternal fever, which is often part of the body’s inflammatory response.</p>
<p>“We hope in future studies to could look a specific infections, which was not possible in the current study which only identified infections by antibiotics prescriptions and diagnostic codes for infectious disease hospitalization,” Husby said.</p>
<p>Still, the absence of dose-response patterns or consistent links between more severe exposure and worse outcomes suggests that any such factors may have minimal impact on cognition.</p>
<p>However, the authors also caution that while their findings apply to common infections and antibiotic use, they do not rule out the well-established effects of rare but serious prenatal infections. Serious diseases can still cause profound developmental disabilities, and preventive measures remain essential for managing those risks.</p>
<p>“Our findings are mainly applicable to common maternal infections identified by maternal antibiotic prescriptions and common hospitalizations for infections, as it was were we had most statistical power to indicate a difference. Furthermore, it is well-documented that certain rare prenatal infection (e.g. rubella, malaria, and toxoplasmosis) can lead to severe cognitive deficits in the fetus.”</p>
<p>In addition to reassuring expectant parents, the study carries broader methodological implications. The researchers noted that earlier studies had hinted at negative outcomes associated with prenatal infection, but these associations often disappeared when sibling comparisons were used. This suggests that family-level confounding may play a larger role than previously thought in shaping observed outcomes.</p>
<p>“Initially, it looked as if infections might be linked to lower school grades and IQ,” Husby explained. “But when we compared within sibling-groups (where one sibling was exposed to maternal infection in the womb and others wasn’t), those differences disappeared. That is a powerful reminder of how critical it is to use study designs that can robustly address the impact of social biases.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004657" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Maternal infections during pregnancy and offspring cognitive outcome: A nationwide full-sibling cohort study</a>,” was authored by Anders Husby, Kim D. Jakobsen, Jan Wohlfahrt, and Mads Melbye.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/scientists-uncover-brains-reset-button-for-splitting-memories-into-distinct-events/" 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 uncover brain’s “reset button” for splitting memories into distinct events</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Aug 15th 2025, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>New findings published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2025.05.013" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Neuron</a></em> suggest that the locus coeruleus—a tiny region buried deep in the brainstem—may play a key role in helping the brain separate one memory from the next. This cluster of neurons, long known for its role in arousal and attention, appears to become especially active when meaningful changes occur, such as a shift in context or environment. That activity seems to serve as a kind of neural punctuation mark, telling the brain where one event ends and another begins.</p>
<p>The study, led by researchers at UCLA and Columbia University, used a combination of functional brain imaging and pupil tracking to monitor moment-by-moment changes in brain activity as people encoded and later recalled sequences of information. The results indicate that bursts of activity in the locus coeruleus tend to signal important transitions and promote the creation of distinct memory representations—possibly by “resetting” memory circuits in the hippocampus.</p>
<p>“Life unfolds continuously, but to make sense of it, our brains naturally break it up into meaningful events. We do not remember the past as one long stream. Instead, we recall it as distinct chapters that shape our personal stories and understanding of the world. We wanted to determine how our brains accomplish this remarkable feat,” said study author <a href="https://clewettlab.psych.ucla.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">David Clewett</a>, an assistant professor at UCLA.</p>
<p>Earlier research has pointed to the hippocampus as a critical player in episodic memory. This brain region is thought to support both the integration of events that occur close together in time and the separation of those that differ in context. Yet scientists have questioned what signals the hippocampus to shift between these two modes. The team behind the new study proposed that the locus coeruleus might be the trigger.</p>
<p>This small nucleus, which releases the neurotransmitter norepinephrine, is known to help the brain respond to novelty and unexpected changes. It also has strong connections to memory-related regions such as the dentate gyrus—a subregion of the hippocampus involved in distinguishing between similar experiences. The authors theorized that phasic bursts of locus coeruleus activity might act as a “reset” signal that prompts the hippocampus to update its memory representations when significant changes are detected.</p>
<p>The researchers recruited 36 healthy young adults to participate in a memory task while undergoing brain scanning. After data exclusions due to technical issues or participant attrition, 32 individuals were included in the final analysis. Of these, 28 had valid eye-tracking data.</p>
<p>While lying in an MRI scanner, participants viewed series of neutral object images. Before each image, they heard a tone in either their left or right ear, which indicated which hand they should use to make a size judgment about the object. The tones were used not just for task instructions, but also to manipulate perceived context. Each sequence was organized into four blocks of eight images. Within each block, the same tone repeated in the same ear, creating a sense of continuity. At transition points, the tone changed in both pitch and ear—producing a perceptual event boundary.</p>
<p>After each sequence, participants completed memory tests outside the scanner that asked them to judge the order and temporal distance between pairs of items. The researchers also collected high-resolution brain scans to locate the locus coeruleus in each participant, and they used neuromelanin-sensitive imaging to estimate long-term activity levels in the region. Additionally, eye-tracking data were used to measure changes in pupil size, a known proxy for arousal and locus coeruleus activation.</p>
<p>The behavioral results showed that participants had more difficulty remembering the order of items that spanned an event boundary than items that occurred within the same context. This suggests that boundaries introduced by tone switches effectively segmented the experience into separate memories. At the same time, participants were slower to respond to objects that followed a boundary, which may indicate increased attention to contextual change.</p>
<p>Importantly, bursts of activation in the locus coeruleus during these boundaries were linked to reduced memory for the temporal order of item pairs—an indicator that the brain was separating rather than integrating those events. This trial-by-trial relationship between locus coeruleus activity and memory separation did not appear during stable stretches of the sequence.</p>
<p>“We were surprised that transitions between events, known as ‘event boundaries,’ didn’t always activate the locus coeruleus (LC), a core hub of the brain’s arousal system,” Clewett told PsyPost. “Even so, this pattern revealed something important: when the LC <em>did</em> respond, memories became separated. This suggests that only certain cues or level of engagement may be important for structuring new memories.”</p>
<p>To examine the effects on memory circuits more directly, the researchers looked at activation patterns in hippocampal subfields. They found that items separated by an event boundary were associated with reduced pattern similarity in the left dentate gyrus—indicating that the hippocampus encoded them as more distinct events. This pattern separation effect was more pronounced when locus coeruleus activation at the boundary was stronger. By contrast, another hippocampal subregion, CA2/3, showed the opposite trend, with increased pattern similarity during boundaries, although the meaning of this effect remains less clear.</p>
<p>The link between pupil dilation and brain activity also aligned with the hypothesis. Tones marking boundaries elicited larger changes in pupil size compared to repeated tones, and those dilations tracked with locus coeruleus activation.</p>
<p>Specific components of the pupil response predicted memory performance and attention to boundaries. Participants who showed stronger early pupil responses to boundary tones also had worse temporal order memory across those boundaries, supporting the idea that enhanced local processing comes at the expense of integrating events over time.</p>
<p>Beyond these phasic effects, the researchers explored what might happen when the locus coeruleus is in a heightened state of chronic activation. Using neuromelanin imaging, they found that individuals with higher structural signal intensity in the locus coeruleus—thought to reflect sustained norepinephrine output—showed weaker pupil responses to boundaries. This suggests that under conditions of hyperarousal, the system becomes less sensitive to meaningful changes, potentially impairing the segmentation process that supports memory organization.</p>
<p>Functional MRI analyses reinforced this idea. Participants with greater low-frequency fluctuations in locus coeruleus activity, a proposed marker of background activation, showed reduced responses to boundaries both in terms of pupil dilation and phasic neural activation. In other words, when the “alarm system” of the brain is always on, it may fail to ring when it matters most.</p>
<p>“Our key takeaways were that arousal processes, the brain’s alertness system, help us detect important changes and use those moments to organize information into distinct memories,” Clewett explained. “However, individuals who experience chronically elevated stress may fail to register these changes, making it harder to perceive and remember discrete events. This insight opens the door to new interventions that could target hyperarousal in conditions like PTSD or Alzheimer’s disease to help improve how memories are formed and remembered.”</p>
<p>The study offers compelling evidence for the role of the locus coeruleus in segmenting memory, but the findings are correlational. The researchers cannot definitively conclude that locus coeruleus activity causes the observed memory effects. They also note the technical challenges of imaging such a small and deeply located brain structure, although they took several steps to ensure accuracy.</p>
<p>“One of the biggest caveats is that the LC is tiny and difficult to image in humans,” Clewett noted. “While we cross-validated LC activation using both pupillometry and structural imaging, fMRI signals from this region are still noisy and should be interpreted with caution. Additionally, the limited spatial resolution of our fMRI scans makes it challenging to fully segment the hippocampus into its distinct subregions.”</p>
<p>“Future work could use techniques with higher spatial and temporal resolution to image these brain regions. It would also be helpful to manipulate arousal states more directly to determine the causal influence of the LC on memory structuring.”</p>
<p>Another open question concerns the relationship between stress, tonic locus coeruleus activation, and memory. The current findings suggest that chronic hyperarousal can blunt memory segmentation, but further research is needed to explore how interventions that regulate arousal—such as mindfulness, breathing exercises, or pharmacological treatments—might restore normal memory function in people experiencing stress-related disorders.</p>
<p>“Ultimately, our goal is to design behavioral or neuromodulatory interventions that help ‘quiet’ elevated LC activity and reduce hyperarousal in conditions like Alzheimer’s disease and PTSD,” Clewett said. “We are also interested in exploring whether these approaches can complement memory-based therapies aimed at improving how people perceive and remember events.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2025.05.013" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Locus coeruleus activation ‘resets’ hippocampal event representations and separates adjacent memories</a>,” was authored by David Clewett, Ringo Huang, and Lila Davachi</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/lumberjack-amputates-ears-and-penis-during-psychotic-episode-linked-to-cannabis-and-kratom-use/" 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;">Lumberjack amputates ears and penis during psychotic episode linked to cannabis and kratom use</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Aug 14th 2025, 16:00</div>
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<p><p>A new case report published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1479863" target="_blank">Frontiers in Psychiatry</a></em> describes the harrowing experience of a 31-year-old man in the Czech Republic who amputated both ears and his penis during a psychotic episode. The incident occurred after he consumed a combination of psychoactive substances, including cannabis and kratom. The man survived, underwent reconstructive surgery, and later remained abstinent while continuing psychiatric treatment. His case highlights how psychoactive drug use may contribute to rare but extreme self-harm behaviors during psychosis.</p>
<p>Psychosis refers to a mental state in which an individual loses contact with reality. This can involve hallucinations—perceiving things that are not there—or delusions, which are strongly held false beliefs. During psychotic episodes, people may misinterpret their surroundings, feel paranoid, or experience disorganized thinking. Psychosis can occur as part of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder but can also be brought on by substance use, brain injury, or extreme stress.</p>
<p>The patient was a physically healthy man working as a lumberjack. He was admitted to the hospital after severely injuring himself in freezing outdoor temperatures. He had amputated both ears and his penis, inflicted deep cuts on his arms, and sustained frostbite on his feet. Medical personnel found him agitated and paranoid, but he was alert and responsive. Emergency surgery stabilized his condition.</p>
<p>Toxicological tests detected cannabinoids, mitragynine, and 7-hydroxymitragynine—substances found in kratom, a plant increasingly used as a stimulant or pain reliever. The man had a history of drug use dating back to adolescence, including regular cannabis consumption and occasional use of alcohol, methamphetamine, and hallucinogens such as psilocybin mushrooms. He also reported frequent substance combinations, sometimes leading to memory blackouts.</p>
<p>Notably, he had a previous episode in 2018 involving aggression and self-harm after using multiple substances. At that time, psychotic symptoms disappeared once the intoxication resolved, and he was discharged without a long-term psychiatric diagnosis. However, he did not pursue ongoing psychiatric or substance use treatment.</p>
<p>After the 2024 incident, psychological testing suggested below-average intellectual function, poor emotional control, and impaired social judgment. Clinicians found no signs of a chronic psychotic disorder like schizophrenia but diagnosed him with substance-induced psychosis. He lacked insight into his mental state and showed little emotional reaction to the severity of his injuries.</p>
<p>Over the course of his hospital stay, antipsychotic and sedative medications helped stabilize his condition. While he initially refused addiction treatment, he later became engaged with psychiatric care. His desire for reconstructive penile surgery became a motivating factor in his recovery. Five months after the incident, he underwent successful reconstruction and remained abstinent from drugs and alcohol. He also continued outpatient psychiatric follow-ups and appeared free of psychotic symptoms.</p>
<p>Case reports provide detailed accounts of unusual or informative clinical scenarios. While they are helpful for identifying possible links between substance use and mental health crises, they do not prove causation. A single case cannot tell us how often such outcomes occur or whether similar cases would follow the same trajectory. There may also be missing details, such as unconfirmed drug doses or incomplete psychiatric histories.</p>
<p>Despite these limitations, case reports are often the first signal that a particular substance or behavior may be linked to rare or extreme health outcomes. In this case, the unusual combination of self-mutilation, substance use, and psychosis raises concerns about how cannabis and kratom may interact to influence mental health.</p>
<p>Both cannabis and kratom are widely used psychoactive substances, but each carries potential risks, particularly for individuals with mental health vulnerabilities.</p>
<p>Cannabis has long been associated with the onset of psychotic symptoms in some individuals. High doses of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), its main psychoactive compound, can alter dopamine signaling in the brain, which plays a key role in reward and perception. Some people may develop paranoia, hallucinations, or delusions, especially if they have a genetic predisposition or underlying mental health issues. While most cannabis-induced psychosis is short-lived, it may signal a greater risk for later development of schizophrenia-like disorders.</p>
<p>Kratom is a plant native to Southeast Asia that has gained popularity in the U.S. as an herbal supplement for pain, anxiety, or opioid withdrawal. Its primary alkaloids, mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine, affect opioid and other brain receptors, producing stimulant effects at low doses and sedative, opioid-like effects at higher doses. In rare cases, kratom use has been linked to psychiatric symptoms, including hallucinations, mania, or psychosis. Because its metabolites are not detected in standard toxicology screens, its role in mental health crises may be underrecognized.</p>
<p>In the reported case, both cannabis and kratom were detected, but the exact contributions of each substance to the patient’s psychosis remain unclear. Still, their combined effects may have lowered the patient’s threshold for psychosis, particularly in the context of past substance-induced episodes and ongoing psychological vulnerabilities.</p>
<p>While self-amputation of body parts is an extreme and rare consequence of psychosis, this case is not unique. Other reports have documented similar injuries in the context of drug-induced or primary psychotic disorders. What makes this case notable is the involvement of kratom—a substance often marketed as safe and natural—and the severe physical and psychological consequences that followed.</p>
<p>The patient’s story also suggests that motivation, particularly a concrete goal like reconstructive surgery or regaining a driver’s license, can support engagement in treatment and recovery. Despite refusing formal addiction services, he remained abstinent and continued psychiatric care during follow-up.</p>
<p>The case report, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1479863" target="_blank">Cannabis and kratom-induced self-amputation of ears and penis</a>,” was authored by Marek Broul, Xenia Rudenko, Adam Bajus, Jiří Král, Dan Mwemena Kyenge, Zdenka Staňková, and Jakub Albrecht.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/children-begin-weighing-confidence-in-others-opinions-by-age-8-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;">Children begin weighing confidence in others’ opinions by age 8, study suggests</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Aug 14th 2025, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>Children tend to form new beliefs by evaluating the confidence of others who disagree with each other, according to a study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.70027" target="_blank">Developmental Science</a></em>. By around age 8, children not only rely on confident individuals when those individuals disagree, but also appear capable of integrating conflicting information into a novel middle-ground conclusion when both sources seem equally sure of themselves.</p>
<p>This ability to consider and combine competing perspectives based on how strongly they are expressed may represent an important shift in how children learn from others, indicating a move from simply copying information to actively interpreting it.</p>
<p>Social disagreement is common—even in situations that seem straightforward, such as recalling something that was just seen. For children, who tend to rely heavily on others to learn about the world, these moments can pose a challenge. Prior research has shown that children often prefer to trust people who seem confident or knowledgeable. But most past studies forced children to choose between two options, leaving out the possibility that the truth might lie somewhere in between.</p>
<p>The researchers behind the new study were interested in whether children can form new ideas that are not directly offered by either person when confronted with conflicting testimony. In particular, they wanted to know whether children could strategically use differences in confidence to weigh opinions and reach their own conclusions—similar to how adults tend to combine uncertain information to make judgments.</p>
<p>“I’ve always wondered where new ideas come from,” said study author <a href="https://www.algomadevminds.ca/" target="_blank">Carolyn Baer</a>, an assistant professor of psychology at Trent University. “Can we create genuinely new ideas? Or are new ideas just new combinations of old ideas? At the same time, I’m interested in how we make sense of ambiguous or conflicting input. Is disagreement necessarily a bad thing, or can we leverage it to generate better decisions?”</p>
<p>The study included 92 children between the ages of 5 and 10 years. These children were recruited from zoos, museums, and schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. They completed a 15-minute computer task in which they played the role of a detective helping to identify a mischievous “monster criminal.”</p>
<p>Each child saw a lineup of four monsters, each with slightly different visual features such as the number of spots on their stomach. Two “witness monsters” provided testimony about who committed the misdeed. These witnesses either agreed or disagreed, and their statements were delivered with either high or low confidence, expressed through tone, speed, and word choice.</p>
<p>The researchers designed three key conditions:</p>
<ul>
<li>In the <em>Same Answer</em> condition, both witnesses pointed to the same suspect.</li>
<li>In the <em>Different Answer, Same Confidence</em> condition, the witnesses disagreed but were equally confident.</li>
<li>In the <em>Different Answer, Different Confidence</em> condition, the witnesses disagreed and one was noticeably more confident than the other.</li>
</ul>
<p>Children were given the option to select any of the four suspects, including one who had not been endorsed by either witness. This middle option was considered a way to test whether children could integrate both perspectives rather than simply choosing one.</p>
<p>Children’s decisions tended to reflect a strategic use of confidence cues. In situations where one witness was more confident than the other, children across all ages in the study were more likely to choose the option endorsed by the more confident individual. This suggests that even the youngest children were sensitive to confidence as a signal of credibility.</p>
<p>But the most notable pattern emerged when both witnesses were equally confident yet offered conflicting answers. In this case, older children—particularly those 8 years and above—were significantly more likely to choose the middle option, indicating that they were combining the two views to reach a new belief that neither person had explicitly offered.</p>
<p>Younger children (ages 5 to 7), by contrast, did not show a strong preference for the midpoint in this condition and appeared to choose randomly or favor one of the provided answers.</p>
<p>When both witnesses agreed, children across all age groups typically selected the agreed-upon suspect, which aligns with earlier studies showing that children tend to follow consensus when there’s no conflict.</p>
<p>The researchers also noted that children were not simply choosing options at random. The pattern of their choices—favoring the midpoint only when it made sense to do so—indicated a more rational decision-making process. The results point to a developmental shift around age 8, when children begin to reliably generate novel conclusions from conflicting information sources based on how confident those sources seem.</p>
<p>“Children are tuned in to how confident others appear, and they use that confidence to help understand what to believe,” Baer told PsyPost. “Children generally trust answers that are presented confidently rather than answers presented hesitantly. But, kids are also very savvy: If two people disagree with equal confidence, children start looking for alternatives in the middle of the two answers. We see this as an essential step in children’s critical thinking – not just as passive learners, but as active creators of knowledge.”</p>
<p>Importantly, the study also reveals that children do not default to averaging opinions unless it seems justified by the situation. When one witness was clearly more confident, children did not simply split the difference—they leaned toward the view that seemed more reliable. This adds weight to the idea that their reasoning is context-sensitive rather than driven by fixed rules or habits.</p>
<p>One of the key limitations of the study is its reliance on a relatively narrow demographic sample, with most participants drawn from upper-middle-class communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. This raises questions about how generalizable the findings may be to children from different backgrounds or cultures.</p>
<p>Another limitation involves the artificial nature of the task. While the monster-themed detective game was designed to be engaging and clear, real-life disagreements often involve more complex information, emotional stakes, or social dynamics. The researchers acknowledge that children’s willingness to integrate information in a controlled setting may not fully reflect how they navigate conflicts in everyday life.</p>
<p>“It’s worth noting that our study always had a reasonable middle ground (6 dots is clearly in the middle of 4 and 8),” Baer noted. “There are lots of disagreements that people have where a middle ground might be a lot more complex! The actual ‘equation’ children’s minds use to figure out the best answer is probably a lot more complicated than what we asked of them in this study. There are times when we know someone has a history of being overconfident, for example, where kids would need to adjust how much trust they put in that person’s confidence.”</p>
<p>Future studies could explore how children weigh other indicators of credibility beyond confidence, such as expertise or past accuracy. The researchers also suggest examining whether different types of “middle ground” ideas—such as additive versus average solutions—are easier for children to grasp.</p>
<p>“We’re aiming to understand how children, and people more broadly, navigate disagreement,” Baer explained. “One next step is to look at how children balance the social aspects of disagreement with the goal to find the best answer. Do we prioritize harmony or truth? Could prompting people to consider social consequences make them more open to compromise?”</p>
<p>“Another is to look at what kinds of middle grounds might be easier to grasp. Perhaps middle grounds that ‘average’ two ideas are really tough, but middle grounds that ‘add’ two ideas are more intuitive. We can think here about orange as an ‘average’ of red and yellow, versus a half red and half yellow object being the ‘addition’ of the two. If we can learn more about what makes middle grounds more appealing for children, then we can learn how to frame disagreements to encourage kids (and adults!) to look for better compromises.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.70027" target="_blank">Children Use the Relative Confidence of People With Conflicting Perspectives to Form Their Own Beliefs</a>,” was authored by Carolyn Baer, Jan M. Engelmann, and Celeste Kidd.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/long-term-study-finds-widening-gap-in-social-isolation-between-sexual-minority-and-heterosexual-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;">Long-term study finds widening gap in social isolation between sexual minority and heterosexual adults</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Aug 14th 2025, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>A new longitudinal study sheds light on how social isolation tends to evolve from early adulthood into midlife—and how this trajectory may differ by sexual orientation. The research, published in the <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00221465251340020" target="_blank">Journal of Health and Social Behavior</a></em>, indicates that people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or mostly heterosexual tend to report higher levels of social isolation than those who identify as completely heterosexual. These differences appear early in adulthood and, in some cases, grow larger over time.</p>
<p>The findings point to a persistent and widening gap in social connectedness that could contribute to health disparities later in life. The study is among the first to track patterns of social isolation across more than two decades, with a focus on both differences between and within sexual minority groups.</p>
<p>Although many studies have documented disparities in mental and physical health by sexual orientation, far fewer have explored how social well-being varies across these groups. Social isolation—defined as the absence of meaningful contact or ties to others—is increasingly recognized as a key predictor of poor health outcomes, including earlier death. Yet little is known about how isolation unfolds over time for people who identify as sexual minorities.</p>
<p>The authors of the new study sought to address this gap by following a large and diverse cohort of U.S. adults over time. They applied theories of minority stress, minority resilience, and life course development to investigate how social isolation trajectories differ by sexual orientation and gender. The research also aimed to clarify how a group often overlooked in past studies—people who identify as “mostly heterosexual”—fit into broader patterns of social isolation.</p>
<p>“I was motivated by the growing awareness that social isolation is a serious public health concern—especially during the pandemic—yet we know little about how it affects people with different sexual identities over time. I wanted to understand whether sexual minority individuals experience more isolation as they move through adulthood. This study helps fill that knowledge gap using long-term national data,” said Zhiyong Lin, an assistant professor of sociology and demography at the University of Texas at San Antonio.</p>
<p>The researchers used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, a nationally representative sample of people who were first surveyed in the 1990s during adolescence and followed into adulthood. This analysis focused on participants who provided data across three waves: ages 18–26, 24–32, and 32–42. The final sample included over 13,800 individuals, accounting for more than 30,000 person-year observations.</p>
<p>Social isolation was measured across four domains: intimate relationship status, friendship ties, religious attendance, and volunteering. Participants were considered isolated in a domain if they met criteria such as being unpartnered, falling into the bottom quartile of friendship frequency, attending religious services less than once a month, or not volunteering in the past year. These scores were combined into a standardized index ranging from 0 to 4.</p>
<p>Sexual orientation was assessed using self-identification at each wave. Respondents were grouped into three categories: completely heterosexual, mostly heterosexual, and lesbian/gay/bisexual. The study controlled for parental education, race and ethnicity, and gender.</p>
<p>The researchers applied growth curve modeling to examine how isolation scores changed over time and how those changes varied by sexual orientation. They also conducted separate analyses by gender and explored each isolation domain individually.</p>
<p>Across all models, sexual minority individuals reported higher levels of social isolation than their heterosexual counterparts. At age 29—the average in the sample—both mostly heterosexual and lesbian/gay/bisexual adults reported significantly higher isolation scores. These gaps tended to widen over time, particularly among mostly heterosexual individuals.</p>
<p>Notably, the trajectory for mostly heterosexual adults indicated a faster rate of increase in isolation from early adulthood to early midlife. While they initially resembled heterosexual adults in their isolation levels, they ended up closer to lesbian/gay/bisexual adults by their early 40s.</p>
<p>When broken down by gender, the trends became more nuanced. Among women, lesbian and bisexual participants consistently reported higher isolation than heterosexual women. Mostly heterosexual women also showed elevated isolation, and while their rate of increase over time was not significantly steeper, the gap remained persistent.</p>
<p>Among men, gay and bisexual participants reported the highest isolation levels by early midlife. Interestingly, mostly heterosexual men did not begin with higher isolation, but their scores increased more steeply over time—surpassing those of heterosexual men by their mid-20s.</p>
<p>The findings also revealed which aspects of social isolation were most affected by sexual orientation. Across the board, sexual minority participants were more likely to report being unpartnered and less likely to attend religious services. However, no significant differences emerged in volunteering activity or frequency of friendship ties.</p>
<p>“Our study shows that people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or mostly heterosexual (primarily attracted to the other sex but with some same-sex attraction) tend to experience more social isolation than their heterosexual peers as they move from early adulthood into midlife,” Lin told PsyPost. “This gap actually widens over time, especially for sexual minority men. These findings highlight the need for more inclusive support systems and policies that help all people stay connected throughout adulthood.”</p>
<p>While past research has often grouped all non-heterosexual individuals together, this study suggests that mostly heterosexual people have distinct experiences. Although they tend to face less overt discrimination than those who identify as gay or bisexual, they may also lack access to the supportive networks that other sexual minority individuals create. As a result, they may be especially vulnerable to social withdrawal as they age.</p>
<p>“One surprising finding was that people who identify as ‘mostly heterosexual’—a group often overlooked in research—also showed high and increasing levels of social isolation over time,” Lin said. “While their isolation levels were lower than those of lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals in young adulthood, by early midlife, they were nearly the same. This suggests that mostly heterosexual individuals may face unique social challenges, possibly because they don’t fully fit into either heterosexual or LGBTQ+ communities.”</p>
<p>The researchers frame social isolation as a key mechanism through which health disparities may emerge later in life. As isolation increases, individuals may have fewer sources of emotional support, caregiving, or informal help. This can become especially significant as people enter midlife and begin to experience health challenges.</p>
<p>While some theories of minority resilience suggest that chosen families or community involvement may buffer against stress, the findings did not show signs that these strengths fully closed the gap. The isolation trajectories for sexual minority groups remained consistently higher, indicating that resilience may mitigate—but not erase—the effects of marginalization.</p>
<p>Although the study offers robust longitudinal data, it also has some limitations. The researchers used a binary measure of gender, which does not capture the experiences of nonbinary or transgender individuals. The categorization of sexual identity may also miss newer identity labels that have become more common in recent years.</p>
<p>The authors also note that their measure of social isolation, while multidimensional, may not capture all relevant aspects of social connectedness—such as the emotional quality of relationships or the role of online communities.</p>
<p>“One caveat is that social isolation can look different across people’s lives and communities—we measured it through indicators like romantic partnership, friendship, religious attendance, and volunteering,” Lin noted. “So someone might score as more isolated even if they feel well supported in other ways. Also, our study follows a single generation born in the 1970s and early 1980s, so patterns may differ for younger generations growing up in a more accepting society.”</p>
<p>Going forward, Lin plans “to study how social isolation in midlife affects health and aging outcomes later in life, especially among sexual minority populations. I’m also interested in how policy and community support can reduce isolation and promote healthy aging for diverse groups.”</p>
<p>“We hope the findings of this study encourage more attention to social connection as a vital part of health. By identifying who is most at risk and when, we can better design interventions that promote inclusion and well-being across the life course.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00221465251340020" target="_blank">Sexual Orientation and Social Isolation from Early Adulthood to Early Midlife</a>,” was authored by Zhiyong Lin, Kara Joyner, and Wendy D. Manning.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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