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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/spiritual-struggles-and-mental-health-new-study-explores-the-role-of-belief-in-miracles/" 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;">Spiritual struggles and mental health: New study explores the role of belief in miracles</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Sep 6th 2025, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>An analysis of data from the Study on Stress, Spirituality, and Health found that American Indians were nearly twice as likely to believe in miraculous healing compared to South Asians or White nurses. This belief was associated with lower levels of depressive symptoms among White nurses, but not among American Indian or South Asian participants. The study was published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13674676.2025.2474163"><em>Mental Health, Religion & Culture</em></a>.</p>
<p>Belief in miracles refers to the conviction that extraordinary events can occur through divine power or forces beyond natural explanation. Such beliefs are found across many religions and cultures, where miracles are often interpreted as signs of divine presence or intervention. For some individuals, belief in miracles provides comfort during times of suffering and uncertainty. It can reinforce faith by affirming that a higher power is active in the world.</p>
<p>This belief often influences how people interpret illness, recovery, or unexpected positive changes. Psychologically, it may foster hope, resilience, and motivation during adversity. Socially, shared belief in miracles can strengthen communal bonds and reinforce cultural or religious identity.</p>
<p>Critics argue that such beliefs may encourage passivity, as individuals might wait for supernatural intervention instead of taking personal action. Others see belief in miracles as potentially at odds with scientific reasoning, although many people maintain both scientific and spiritual worldviews. In healthcare, belief in miracles can shape how patients and families approach treatment, sometimes leading to tension with medical recommendations.</p>
<p>Study author Laura Upenieks and her colleagues sought to examine the relationship between belief in miracles and depressive symptoms in three racial and ethnic groups: South Asians, White nurses, and American Indians. They hypothesized that stronger belief in miracles would be associated with lower depressive symptoms across all three groups. They also expected that higher levels of religious or spiritual (R/S) struggles would be associated with greater depressive symptoms.</p>
<p>To test these ideas, the researchers analyzed data from the National Consortium on Psychosocial Stress, Spirituality, and Health (SSSH), an initiative launched in 2015 to advance research on religious and spiritual influences on health in diverse U.S. populations. The analysis included participants from three cohort studies affiliated with the consortium: the Strong Heart Study (focused on American Indians), the MASALA Study (focused on South Asians), and the Nurses’ Health Study II (focused on predominantly White female nurses).</p>
<p>The MASALA sample included 1,150 participants with at least three grandparents born in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, or Sri Lanka. The nurse cohort consisted of 2,598 women from 14 U.S. states. The Strong Heart Study included 521 American Indian participants from North and South Dakota.</p>
<p>Participants completed surveys assessing their belief in God and in miraculous healing. Specifically, they were asked: “When you think about [God] in relationship to people who are suffering from life-threatening illness, which of the following is closest to your own view?” Response options included: (1) “I believe that [God] intervenes to cure people who are sick by performing miracles or other special types of physical healing,” and (2) “I believe that [God] provides companionship, strength, and comfort, but does not typically intervene to perform a miracle.”</p>
<p>They also completed measures of R/S struggles—using items from the Negative Religious Coping Subscale, including statements such as “I felt confused about my religious or spiritual beliefs”—and depressive symptoms, assessed using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D).</p>
<p>Results showed that belief in miraculous healing was most common among American Indians, with nearly 47% endorsing this view, compared to 26% of South Asians and 23% of White nurses. However, belief in miracles was not significantly related to depressive symptoms in the American Indian or South Asian groups. Among White nurses, in contrast, belief in miracles was associated with lower depressive symptoms.</p>
<p>Across all three cohorts, individuals who reported more intense religious or spiritual struggles also reported higher levels of depressive symptoms. Notably, this association was stronger among those who did not believe in miracles. In other words, belief in divine healing appeared to buffer the psychological impact of spiritual struggles.</p>
<p>The study contributes to a growing body of research on how religious beliefs intersect with emotional well-being. However, the authors caution that the study’s design does not allow for causal conclusions. All data were self-reported, which introduces the possibility of reporting bias. Additionally, participants were asked to choose between only two simplified views of God’s role in suffering and illness, which may not capture the full complexity of individual beliefs.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13674676.2025.2474163">Belief in miracles, religious/spiritual struggles, and depressive symptoms: exploring variation among American Indian, South Asian, and White cohorts in the study on stress, spirituality, and health</a>,” was authored by Laura Upenieks, Blake Victor Kent, Alka M. Kanaya, A. Heather Eliassen, Shelley A. Cole, and Alexandra E. Shields.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/why-people-with-adhd-may-get-bored-more-easily-according-to-new-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;">Why people with ADHD may get bored more easily, according to new research</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Sep 6th 2025, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study confirms that young adults with symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder tend to experience higher levels of boredom, and provides evidence that this tendency may be partly explained by difficulties with attention control and working memory. The findings, published in the <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/10870547251356723" target="_blank">Journal of Attention Disorders</a></em>, help clarify the cognitive processes that may underlie boredom proneness in people with ADHD traits.</p>
<p>Boredom is often thought of as a trivial or passing annoyance, but research suggests it can be linked to a range of serious outcomes, including depression, anxiety, self-harm, poor academic performance, and increased workplace accidents. While most people experience boredom occasionally, some individuals seem to be more prone to it across many situations. This more persistent tendency, sometimes called trait boredom or boredom proneness, varies from person to person and is often measured using questionnaires designed to capture how frequently people feel bored in everyday life.</p>
<p>People with ADHD frequently report higher levels of boredom than their peers, but until now, few studies have explored why. The new study set out to investigate whether difficulties with attention control and working memory might help explain the relationship between ADHD symptoms and boredom proneness. </p>
<p>One of the motivations behind the study came from a personal anecdote shared by lead author Sarah Orban, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at the University of Tampa. During her dissertation defense, she was asked whether the children with ADHD in her study were simply bored during a math video task. This question stayed with her and eventually led to the present research.</p>
<p>“My dissertation examined whether children with ADHD display different levels of attention depending on environmental context,” Orban told PsyPost. “For the study, children with and without ADHD watched two 10-minute videos: an action-packed clip from Star Wars: Episode I (the podracing scene) and an instructional video of a teacher explaining long division.” </p>
<p>“I found that children with ADHD showed significantly worse attention than controls during the math video but not during the Star Wars clip. In fact, a video from this experiment occasionally resurfaces and circulates on the internet. Here’s a link if you’d like to see it: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=167se17RNHw" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=167se17RNHw</a>.</p>
<p>“During my defense, one faculty member asked, ‘Aren’t the kids just bored because they’re watching a boring math video?’ That simple question sparked my curiosity about why people with ADHD often report feeling more bored than their peers in the same situations.”</p>
<p>To investigate, Orban and her colleagues recruited 115 undergraduate students from a southeastern U.S. university. After screening for eligibility, the final sample included 88 participants—31 who met criteria for high ADHD traits and 57 who did not. The participants completed a series of standardized self-report measures assessing current and past ADHD symptoms, as well as a validated 8-item scale measuring trait boredom. They also completed six computerized tasks designed to measure attention control and working memory.</p>
<p>The ADHD trait group was identified based on self-reported symptoms using three widely used tools: the Barkley Adult ADHD Rating Scale, the Adult ADHD Self-Report Screening Scale for DSM-5, and the Wender Utah Rating Scale for childhood symptoms. To qualify for the ADHD trait group, participants needed to exceed symptom thresholds on both current and childhood ADHD measures. This method ensured that only individuals with a consistent pattern of ADHD symptoms over time were included.</p>
<p>As expected, the ADHD trait group reported significantly higher levels of boredom proneness. The difference between groups was large in magnitude, suggesting that boredom may be a common and impactful experience for people with ADHD symptoms. In addition, participants with ADHD traits performed worse on several attention control and working memory tasks, reinforcing previous findings that these executive functions are frequently impaired in people with ADHD.</p>
<p>“The key finding from our research is that young adults with elevated ADHD symptoms, which we called ‘ADHD traits’ because participants were not formally diagnosed but scored highly on self-report measures, showed much higher levels of boredom proneness compared to peers without these traits,” Orban told PsyPost. “The difference was striking as individuals with ADHD traits scored nearly two standard deviations higher in boredom proneness than the control group.”</p>
<p>“Based on prior research, I expected to see a group difference, but the effect in my study was much larger than what is typically reported in similar studies. While it’s possible that our relatively small sample size may have inflated the effect size, the findings still provide strong evidence that individuals with ADHD traits are significantly more prone to boredom than those without these traits.”</p>
<p>To better understand the relationship between ADHD symptoms, boredom, and cognitive performance, the researchers used statistical mediation analyses. These analyses tested whether attention control and working memory could partially explain why individuals with ADHD traits are more prone to boredom. </p>
<p>The tasks used in the study were selected to tap into different aspects of executive function. Attention control was assessed using three tasks that measured the ability to resist distractions, sustain focus over time, and resolve conflicting information. One task, for example, required participants to respond to visual cues after unpredictable delays, which simulated the kinds of sustained attention required in real-world monitoring tasks. Working memory was measured using three “complex span” tasks that required participants to hold information in memory while simultaneously completing other mental operations, such as solving math problems or judging the symmetry of shapes.</p>
<p>The researchers found that the strongest associations between boredom proneness and attention performance emerged in tasks that involved sustained attention and interference control. For example, participants who performed worse on the sustained attention task tended to report higher levels of boredom.</p>
<p>Participants who struggled to keep track of sequences of letters, spatial locations, or arrows during the complex span tasks were also more likely to report high boredom proneness. These findings point toward a role for the central executive component of working memory—the part responsible for attention regulation and mental updating—in shaping how people experience and respond to tasks that require effort.</p>
<p>“We conducted a preliminary analysis to explore whether aspects of executive attention, which we refer to as ‘attention control’ and ‘working memory’ in our study, could help explain this link between ADHD traits and boredom,” Orban explained. “The results suggested that attention control and working memory play important roles, indicating that part of the reason individuals with ADHD traits experience more boredom is due to challenges in regulating and sustaining their attention as well as using their working memory.”</p>
<p>“To put this into perspective, imagine a motivated student taking a challenging Organic Chemistry course. Even if they are genuinely interested in the material, the complexity of the class may make it difficult to stay focused. Instead of recognizing their own struggles with attention, the student might simply label the class as ‘boring.’ For individuals with ADHD, who often experience persistent attention difficulties, situations like this are a regular part of daily life, making boredom a frequent and pervasive experience.”</p>
<p>While the results offer important insights, there are some limitations. The study relied on self-report measures for ADHD symptoms and boredom, which can be influenced by shared method bias or social desirability. Another limitation is the modest sample size, which limited the statistical power to detect smaller effects.</p>
<p>“We worked with a relatively small sample of about 88 participants, which is why our analyses exploring the mechanisms of boredom should be considered preliminary,” Orban noted. “To be confident about those findings, we’d need at least twice as many participants, if not more. Because of time and funding constraints, we weren’t able to collect a larger sample. So while our results offer an exciting first glimpse into why people with ADHD traits might be more prone to boredom, they should be seen as a starting point rather than a final answer. </p>
<p>“In addition, our sample was composed of college students, most of who were female and the ADHD group did not have formal diagnosis. Therefore, the results might not generalize to other groups of people or to those with diagnosed ADHD using gold standard methods.”</p>
<p>Despite these limitations, the study opens the door to new possibilities for intervention. If boredom in individuals with ADHD is linked to specific cognitive weaknesses, then strategies that strengthen attention control or support working memory might help reduce boredom and improve functioning in academic or occupational settings. For example, breaking tasks into shorter, more manageable chunks, introducing meaningful rewards, or using techniques to boost engagement could help reduce the cognitive load and maintain attention.</p>
<p>“I have several ongoing projects focused on understanding boredom in ADHD,” Orban said. “In one study, I’m actively inducing boredom in participants to see how people with ADHD respond compared to those without ADHD. I’m also running a larger, long-term study with college students who have a formal ADHD diagnosis to examine how boredom is related to their academic performance. Ultimately, my goal is to use this research to develop interventions that help individuals with ADHD manage boredom and stay engaged in their daily lives.”</p>
<p>“This research was made possible thanks to the support of my close colleague, Dr. Jennifer Blessing, and three talented undergraduate students, who have since graduated. I’m grateful for their contributions, as the project could not have been completed without their hard work and collaboration.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/10870547251356723" target="_blank">Why Are Individuals With ADHD More Prone to Boredom? Examining Attention Control and Working Memory as Mediators of Boredom in Young Adults With ADHD Traits</a>,” was authored by Sarah A. Orban, Jennifer S. Blessing, Madelyn K. Sandone, Benjamin Conness, and Jenna Santer.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/shockingly-strong-link-found-between-loneliness-and-physical-pain/" 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;">Shockingly strong link found between loneliness and physical pain</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Sep 6th 2025, 07:00</div>
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<p><p>A new global study suggests that loneliness is strongly associated with physical pain, and this link appears to be largely explained by psychological distress. Published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-15151-0" target="_blank">Scientific Reports</a></em>, the findings highlight the potential health burden of loneliness across the adult lifespan and raise questions about how cultural and social factors may shape this experience.</p>
<p>Loneliness has been linked in previous research to a range of health issues, from depression and anxiety to cardiovascular disease and early mortality. Yet it remains unclear how loneliness relates to physical pain in particular, and whether this connection differs by age, sex, or cultural context. </p>
<p>Some scientists have proposed that loneliness may act as a kind of psychological pain, signaling unmet social needs. Others have argued that loneliness may trigger physical pain indirectly, through stress, disrupted sleep, or immune system changes.</p>
<p>Despite these theories, few studies have examined the relationship between loneliness and physical pain on a global scale. There has also been limited research on how psychological distress and physical health problems might explain—or statistically account for—the association between loneliness and pain. The current study was designed to address these gaps using a large, cross-cultural dataset.</p>
<p>“We observed a growing concern worldwide about loneliness as a public health issue and wondered how it might contribute to physical pain,” said study author <a href="https://www.luciamacchia.com/" target="_blank">Lucía Macchia</a>, a lecturer in psychology at City St George’s, University of London.</p>
<p>“The existing literature highlighted the link between loneliness and poor mental health, but few studies examined how loneliness relates to physical pain across diverse cultural contexts. This led us to investigate global data from 256,760 participants across 139 countries to understand these relationships and underlying mechanisms.”</p>
<p>The researchers used data from the Gallup World Poll collected in 2023 and 2024. This dataset includes responses from 256,760 people aged 15 to 100 across 139 countries. Participants answered a series of questions about their physical and mental health, social relationships, and feelings experienced during the previous day.</p>
<p>Loneliness was assessed with a single question: whether the person felt lonely for much of the previous day. About 22.7% of respondents said yes. Physical pain was measured by asking whether the person had experienced physical pain during much of the previous day. Health problems were defined as any conditions that limited daily functioning, and psychological distress was calculated based on whether the person reported sadness, anger, stress, or worry.</p>
<p>In fully adjusted statistical models, the researchers found that individuals who reported feeling lonely had higher odds of experiencing physical pain, were more likely to report health problems, and faced a greater likelihood of experiencing psychological distress compared to those who did not report feeling lonely.</p>
<p>“Lonely people have 2.1 times higher odds of experiencing physical pain, 1.8 times higher odds of having health problems, and are 25.8% more likely to experience psychological distress,” Macchia told PsyPost.</p>
<p>These associations held even after accounting for demographic factors such as age, sex, education, income, marital status, and employment status, as well as social support indicators like whether the respondent had friends or relatives to rely on or felt satisfied with opportunities to meet people.</p>
<p>When the researchers explored why loneliness was linked to pain, they found that distress accounted for the largest portion of this relationship. </p>
<p>“The extent to which psychological distress mediates the link between loneliness and pain was striking,” Macchia said. “Psychological distress accounted for 60.2% of the loneliness–pain link, with physical health accounting for another 18.9%.. The fact that distress is a stronger mechanism of the link between loneliness and pain than physical health is a big finding. </p>
<p>Women in the sample were more likely than men to report loneliness, pain, and distress. The association between loneliness and pain was also slightly stronger among women. By contrast, the relationship between loneliness and pain did not vary much across different age groups. Whether young or old, people who reported feeling lonely were more likely to report pain.</p>
<p>Lonely individuals also tended to experience more social disadvantages. They were more likely to be single, divorced, widowed, unemployed, underemployed, or living with lower income. They were also less likely to have completed higher levels of education. While many lonely people did report having someone to rely on, they were still significantly less likely than non-lonely individuals to say they had strong social support or opportunities to connect with others.</p>
<p>Cross-cultural analyses revealed considerable variation in how loneliness, pain, and distress were experienced around the world. While high levels were observed in some low-income countries, the pattern did not follow simple lines of economic development. In some countries, the link between loneliness and pain was nearly nonexistent, while in others it was more pronounced. </p>
<p>“Also compelling was the global variability of these associations, underscoring the strong influence of cultural contexts,” Macchia remarked.</p>
<p>Although the study’s sample size and global coverage were extensive, the researchers emphasized that their findings cannot establish cause and effect. Because the data were cross-sectional, it is unclear whether loneliness causes pain, pain leads to loneliness, or whether the two are mutually reinforcing. Future studies using longitudinal data will be needed to examine these temporal dynamics more closely.</p>
<p>Another limitation is that all measures were based on self-report, and the survey used single-item questions to assess complex experiences like loneliness and pain. While common in large-scale surveys, this approach may introduce bias or measurement error. People who feel lonely may also be more likely to rate their health or pain more negatively, which could exaggerate some of the associations.</p>
<p>Still, the findings point to several promising directions for future research. The authors hope to conduct follow-up studies that track participants over time to better understand the causal pathways linking loneliness and pain. They also aim to explore interventions that target psychological distress to see whether reducing distress might also reduce physical pain. </p>
<p>Finally, they plan to investigate more closely why these relationships vary across countries, with an eye toward identifying cultural or social policies that might buffer against loneliness and its effects.</p>
<p>“Loneliness is not just an emotional burden—it has real physical consequences, on a global scale,” Macchia explained. “Addressing societal loneliness might have unexpected benefits for reducing physical pain and enhancing overall wellbeing. And the sheer scale of this study (nearly a quarter-million participants across 139 countries) adds weight to the urgency of tackling social disconnection as a health priority.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-15151-0" target="_blank">The association between loneliness and pain, and the role of physical health and distress: an analysis in 139 countries</a>,” was authored by Lucía Macchia and Anne-Kathrin Fett.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/ibogaine-treatment-linked-to-changes-in-brain-rhythms-and-psychiatric-improvements-in-veterans-with-traumatic-brain-injury/" 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;">Ibogaine treatment linked to changes in brain rhythms and psychiatric improvements in veterans with traumatic brain injury</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Sep 6th 2025, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-025-00463-x" target="_blank">Nature Mental Health</a></em> provides initial evidence that the psychedelic compound ibogaine may alter brain activity and improve psychiatric symptoms in individuals with a history of traumatic brain injury. In a group of combat veterans, researchers found that magnesium-ibogaine therapy was associated with changes in cortical oscillations and neural complexity, which were linked to improvements in cognitive functioning, post-traumatic stress, and anxiety. These findings offer a rare look at the neural effects of ibogaine in humans and suggest that altered brain rhythms may play a role in its therapeutic potential.</p>
<p>Ibogaine is a psychoactive alkaloid derived from the root bark of the <em>Tabernanthe iboga</em> shrub, native to Central Africa. Traditionally used in spiritual ceremonies, ibogaine has gained attention in recent years for its possible therapeutic properties, particularly in treating substance use disorders. More recently, anecdotal reports and small studies have suggested that it might help with symptoms related to traumatic brain injury, or TBI, such as anxiety, depression, cognitive dysfunction, and post-traumatic stress.</p>
<p>Unlike classic psychedelic compounds such as psilocybin or LSD, ibogaine is categorized as oneirogenic—it tends to produce immersive, dream-like states accompanied by extended periods of self-reflection. Its effects are long-lasting and pharmacologically complex. Ibogaine interacts with a wide array of targets in the brain, including serotonin and dopamine transporters, opioid receptors, and the N-methyl-D-aspartate system. Despite this pharmacological breadth, little is known about how ibogaine alters human brain function.</p>
<p>To address this gap, researchers Jennifer I. Lissemore, Corey J. Keller, Nolan R. Williams, and their colleagues at Stanford University conducted a prospective study to explore how a single session of magnesium-ibogaine therapy might affect brain activity. They focused on two neural features commonly altered by brain injury: cortical oscillations, which refer to rhythmic patterns of neural activity, and neural complexity, which reflects how variable or stable brain signals are over time.</p>
<p>“Many veterans have independently sought out ibogaine treatment based on anecdotal reports, despite the lack of safety data or scientific validation in this population,” explained Lissemore, a postdoctoral scholar affiliated with <a href="https://bsl.stanford.edu/" target="_blank">the Brain Stimulation Lab</a>.</p>
<p>“We saw a critical need to rigorously study ibogaine in a controlled setting – both to evaluate its therapeutic potential and to better understand its impact on brain function. This study was designed to address that gap and provide the first clinical and neurophysiological evidence to inform policy, clinical practice, and future trials. This study was also motivated by our overarching interest as researchers in developing new, rapid-acting treatment options in psychiatry.”</p>
<p>The study involved 30 male veterans who had previously served in Special Operations Forces and had documented histories of traumatic brain injury from combat, blast exposure, or head trauma. Most of the participants reported psychiatric diagnoses at baseline, including post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety, and alcohol use disorder. On average, participants had experienced nearly 39 TBIs across their lifetimes, most of which were classified as mild.</p>
<p>Before undergoing ibogaine treatment, participants stopped taking medications that could interfere with the compound. They then traveled independently to a treatment facility in Mexico, where they received oral ibogaine combined with intravenous magnesium sulfate—a formulation known as magnesium-ibogaine. The magnesium was added to reduce potential cardiovascular risks associated with ibogaine, such as disruptions to heart rhythms. No psychotherapy was delivered during the experience, although preparatory and integration coaching were offered.</p>
<p>To assess changes in brain function, participants underwent high-density electroencephalography (EEG) scans at three time points: before treatment, roughly three and a half days afterward, and again one month later. During the EEG recordings, participants were asked to keep their eyes open and remain awake while letting their minds wander. EEG data were analyzed to examine both frequency-specific brain rhythms (e.g., theta, alpha, beta, gamma) and measures of neural complexity.</p>
<p>After ibogaine treatment, participants showed changes in the rhythms of their brain activity. Specifically, the power of slower oscillations—particularly those in the theta (4–8 Hz) and alpha (8–13 Hz) ranges—increased, while faster oscillations in the beta (13–30 Hz) and gamma (30–50 Hz) bands decreased. This shift toward slower activity was reflected in a higher ratio of theta to beta power, which correlated with improvements in executive functioning, particularly in tasks requiring cognitive inhibition.</p>
<p>Another key finding was a reduction in peak alpha frequency—essentially a slowing of the brain’s dominant rhythm. This effect was most prominent in posterior brain regions and persisted even one month after treatment. Lower peak alpha frequency after ibogaine was associated with reductions in post-traumatic stress and anxiety symptoms.</p>
<p>Neural complexity, as measured by Lempel–Ziv complexity (a statistical index of signal variability), also decreased after treatment. Lower complexity suggests that brain signals became more stable and less random over time. This reduction in complexity was linked to improvements in executive functioning, and individuals who had lower complexity at baseline tended to experience greater cognitive gains after treatment.</p>
<p>Some of the effects on brain rhythms and complexity were still present one month after treatment, suggesting that ibogaine may lead to lasting changes in how the brain organizes its activity at rest.</p>
<p>Several of the observed changes in EEG measures were tied to clinical improvements. For example, participants who showed greater increases in the theta/beta ratio also demonstrated larger gains in cognitive inhibition, a form of executive control. Similarly, those with more pronounced decreases in peak alpha frequency experienced greater reductions in post-traumatic stress symptoms, particularly in the arousal and reactivity domain.</p>
<p>“A single treatment led to large and lasting improvements in symptoms like PTSD, anxiety, and difficulties with thinking,” Lissemore told PsyPost. “Brain recordings (EEG) showed that these improvements were accompanied by changes in brain activity – ibogaine shifted brain activity toward slower, calmer rhythms and made brain signals more predictable. These changes suggest that ibogaine may help the brain move into a more stable state that is potentially less reactive to stress – something especially important for recovery from TBI and PTSD.”</p>
<p>At baseline, individuals with lower peak alpha frequency and lower neural complexity were more likely to benefit from treatment. These findings suggest that EEG patterns recorded before treatment might help predict who is most likely to respond to ibogaine.</p>
<p>The authors note that slower brain rhythms, especially in the theta range, have been linked in previous studies to neuroplasticity and long-term learning. It is possible that the observed increase in theta power after ibogaine reflects a brain state more conducive to change, especially in people recovering from trauma.</p>
<p>“Clinically, the extent of improvement in symptoms after ibogaine treatment was surprising,” Lissemore said. “Neurobiologically, the changes in brain function that we saw after a single treatment with ibogaine were a lot like the changes we see in the brain after long-term meditation practice.”</p>
<p>Although the results are promising, it is important to note that the study was not a randomized controlled trial. All participants received the same treatment, and there was no placebo group for comparison. This makes it difficult to rule out the influence of expectancy, coaching, or other factors unrelated to the pharmacological effects of ibogaine. The sample was also highly specific—male Special Operations veterans with high TBI exposure—and may not generalize to broader clinical populations. Still, the magnitude and persistence of the observed brain and behavioral changes provide a strong rationale for follow-up trials using more rigorous designs. </p>
<p>“The results need to be confirmed in larger, controlled trials,” Lissemore said. “That said, this is the first study to show how ibogaine affects brain activity in humans, and it provides an important first step toward developing magnesium-ibogaine as a potential treatment for veterans with traumatic brain injury.”</p>
<p>“While not yet ready for routine use, these findings offer a potential new path forward for treating complex post-TBI symptoms in veterans, particularly when other therapies have failed. The results may encourage federal physicians to support further research and consider enrollment of patients into future clinical trials.”</p>
<p>“Ibogaine is a powerful compound that should not be used outside of medically supervised settings,” Lissemore added. “Clinicians should view these findings as promising early evidence that a therapeutic shift in brain state may be achievable in a single ibogaine session, but further research and regulatory steps are needed before clinical use.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-025-00463-x" target="_blank">Magnesium–ibogaine therapy effects on cortical oscillations and neural complexity in veterans with traumatic brain injury</a>,” was authored by Jennifer I. Lissemore, Anna Chaiken, Kirsten N. Cherian, Derrick Buchanan, Flint Espil, Jackob N. Keynan, Malvika Sridhar, Camarin E. Rolle, Manish Saggar, Corey J. Keller, and Nolan R. Williams.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/ai-vision-gpt-4v-shows-human-like-ability-to-interpret-social-scenes-study-finds/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">AI vision: GPT-4V shows human-like ability to interpret social scenes, study finds</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Sep 5th 2025, 16:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1162/IMAG.a.134" target="_blank">Imaging Neuroscience</a></em> has found that large language models with visual processing abilities, such as GPT-4V, can evaluate and describe social interactions in images and short videos in a way that closely matches human perception. The research suggests that artificial intelligence can not only identify individual social cues, but also capture the underlying structure of how humans perceive social information.</p>
<p>Large language models (LLMs) are advanced machine learning systems that can generate human-like responses to text inputs. Over the past few years, LLMs have become capable of passing professional exams, emulating personality traits, and simulating theory of mind. More recently, models such as GPT-4V have gained the ability to process visual inputs, making it possible for them to “see” and describe scenes, objects, and people.</p>
<p>This leap in visual capability opens new possibilities for psychological research. Human social perception depends heavily on our ability to make quick inferences from visual input—interpreting facial expressions, body posture, and interactions between people. </p>
<p>If AI models can match or approximate these human judgments, they may offer scalable tools for behavioral science and cognitive neuroscience. But the key question remains: How well can AI interpret the nuanced, often ambiguous social signals that humans rely on?</p>
<p>To explore this question, researchers at the University of Turku used OpenAI’s GPT-4V to evaluate a set of 468 static images and 234 short video clips, all depicting scenes with rich social content drawn from Hollywood films. The goal was to see whether GPT-4V could detect the presence of 138 different social features—ranging from concrete behaviors like “laughing” or “touching someone” to abstract traits like “dominant” or “empathetic.”</p>
<p>These same images and videos had previously been annotated by a large group of human participants. In total, over 2,200 individuals contributed more than 980,000 perceptual judgments using a sliding scale from “not at all” to “very much” to rate each feature. The human evaluations were used as a reference point to assess how closely GPT-4V’s ratings aligned with the consensus of real observers.</p>
<p>For each image or video, the researchers prompted GPT-4V to generate numerical ratings for the full set of social features. They repeated this process five times to account for the model’s variability, then averaged the results. In the case of video clips, since GPT-4V cannot yet directly process motion, the researchers extracted eight representative frames and added the transcribed dialogue from the clip.</p>
<p>The results showed a high level of agreement between GPT-4V and human observers. The correlation between AI and human ratings was 0.79 for both images and videos—a level that approaches the reliability seen between individual human participants. In fact, GPT-4V outperformed single human raters for 95% of the social features in images and 85% in videos.</p>
<p>However, GPT-4V’s ratings did not always match group-level consensus. When compared to the average of five human raters, the AI’s agreement was slightly lower, particularly for video clips. This suggests that while GPT-4V provides a strong approximation of human perception, its reliability may not yet match the collective judgment of multiple human observers working together.</p>
<p>The study also examined whether GPT-4V captured the deeper structure of how humans organize social information. Using statistical techniques such as principal coordinate analysis, the researchers found that the dimensions GPT-4V used to represent the social world—such as dominant vs. empathetic or playful vs. sexual—were strikingly similar to those found in human data. </p>
<p>This suggests that the model is not only mimicking surface-level judgments but may be tapping into similar patterns of representation that humans use to make sense of social interactions.</p>
<p>To take the comparison one step further, the researchers used GPT-4V’s social feature annotations as predictors in a functional MRI (fMRI) study. Ninety-seven participants had previously watched a medley of 96 short, socially rich video clips while undergoing brain scans. By linking the social features present in each video to patterns of brain activity, the researchers could map which areas of the brain respond to which types of social information.</p>
<p>Remarkably, GPT-4V-based stimulus models produced nearly identical brain activation maps as those generated using human annotations. The correlation between the two sets of maps was extremely high (r = 0.95), and both identified a similar network of regions—such as the superior temporal sulcus, temporoparietal junction, and fusiform gyrus—as being involved in processing social cues.</p>
<p>This finding provides evidence that GPT-4V’s judgments can be used to model how the brain perceives and organizes social information. It also suggests that AI models could assist in designing and interpreting future neuroimaging experiments, especially in cases where manual annotation would be time-consuming or expensive.</p>
<p>These findings open several possible directions for future research and real-world applications. In neuroscience, LLMs like GPT-4V could help generate high-dimensional annotations of complex stimuli, allowing researchers to reanalyze existing brain data or design new experiments with greater precision. In behavioral science, AI could serve as a scalable tool for labeling emotional and social content in large datasets.</p>
<p>Outside the lab, this technology could support mental health care, by identifying signs of distress in patient interactions, or improve customer service by analyzing emotional cues in video calls. It could also be used in surveillance systems to detect potential conflicts or identify unusual social behaviors in real-time settings.</p>
<p>At the same time, the study’s authors caution that these models are not perfect replacements for human judgment. GPT-4V performed worse on some social features that involve more subjective or ambiguous judgments, such as “ignoring someone” or “harassing someone.” These types of evaluations may require contextual understanding that AI systems still lack, or may be influenced by training data biases or content moderation filters.</p>
<p>The model also tended to rate low-level features more conservatively than humans—possibly due to its probabilistic nature or its safeguards against generating controversial outputs. In some cases, the AI refused to evaluate scenes containing sexual or violent content, highlighting the constraints imposed by platform-level safety policies.</p>
<p>While the results are promising, some limitations should be noted. The AI ratings were compared against a relatively small number of human raters per stimulus, and larger datasets could provide a more robust benchmark. The model was also tested on short, scripted film clips rather than real-world or live interactions, so its performance in more natural settings remains an open question.</p>
<p>Future work could explore whether tailoring LLMs to specific demographic perspectives improves their alignment with particular groups. Researchers might also investigate how AI models form these judgments—what internal processes or representations they use—and whether these resemble the mechanisms underlying human social cognition.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1162/IMAG.a.134" target="_blank">GPT-4V shows human-like social perceptual capabilities at phenomenological and neural levels</a>,” was authored by Severi Santavirta, Yuhang Wu, Lauri Suominen, and Lauri Nummenmaa.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/antisocial-personality-traits-linked-to-blunted-brain-responses-to-angry-faces/" 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;">Antisocial personality traits linked to blunted brain responses to angry faces</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Sep 5th 2025, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>A new neuroimaging study published in the <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2025.06.038" target="_blank">Journal of Psychiatric Research</a></em> has found that adults who report higher levels of antisocial personality traits show reduced brain responses to threatening social cues. Specifically, the study found that individuals with more symptoms of antisocial personality disorder, or ASPD, showed lower activation in brain regions involved in processing emotional and social information when confronted with angry faces appearing to loom toward them.</p>
<p>Antisocial personality disorder is typically characterized by a consistent disregard for the rights of others, often beginning in adolescence and persisting into adulthood. Individuals with ASPD tend to engage in behaviors that are impulsive, aggressive, and sometimes violent. While ASPD is sometimes confused with psychopathy, the two are not identical. Psychopathy includes emotional traits like callousness and shallow affect, while ASPD is primarily diagnosed based on observable antisocial behaviors.</p>
<p>People with ASPD are at increased risk of aggression, which can take the form of reactive aggression—impulsive responses to provocation—or goal-directed aggression intended to achieve a specific outcome. Past research has suggested that threat processing may play a role in both forms of aggression. For example, hypersensitivity to threat has been associated with reactive aggression, while a blunted response to threat may be linked to instrumental aggression. In either case, how individuals perceive and process social cues related to anger or danger may be central to their behavioral responses.</p>
<p>Much of the prior work in this area has focused on adolescents with conduct disorder or callous-unemotional traits. These studies have pointed to abnormalities in regions such as the amygdala and other parts of the brain involved in fear processing and emotion regulation. Less is known about how these systems function in adults with ASPD.</p>
<p>To explore this, the researchers recruited 54 men from Sichuan Province in China, including 27 violent offenders incarcerated at a judicial police hospital and 27 individuals from the general community. Participants completed a self-report questionnaire measuring ASPD symptoms and underwent brain scans while participating in a task designed to simulate social threat.</p>
<p>The task involved looking at photographs of faces displaying either angry or neutral expressions. These images were animated to appear as if they were either approaching (looming) or moving away (receding) from the viewer. Looming angry faces, in particular, were intended to evoke a sense of threat. Participants were asked to press a button as soon as they saw a face, which allowed researchers to measure their behavioral response times in addition to their brain activity.</p>
<p>The facial images were drawn from a validated database tailored for Chinese participants, and the angry and neutral expressions were matched for clarity and recognizability. The task was repeated over two scanning sessions, and the researchers analyzed brain responses using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI.</p>
<p>To assess the severity of antisocial traits, the researchers used a standardized subscale of the Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire. This measure asked participants to endorse statements such as “I enjoy taking risks” or “I have frequently engaged in physical fights.” ASPD scores were calculated based on how many such statements the individual endorsed.</p>
<p>While participants’ reaction times to the facial stimuli did not vary significantly based on emotion or movement direction, the brain scan data revealed a striking pattern. Individuals who scored higher on the ASPD scale showed significantly reduced neural responses when viewing looming angry faces, compared to looming neutral faces. This effect was most pronounced in three specific brain areas: the left superior temporal gyrus, the left inferior temporal gyrus, and the right ventral tegmental area.</p>
<p>The superior temporal gyrus is believed to play a role in understanding others’ mental states and interpreting social cues—a capacity sometimes referred to as Theory of Mind. The inferior temporal gyrus is involved in facial recognition, particularly in distinguishing facial identity and features. The ventral tegmental area is part of the brain’s reward and aversion system and is known to be responsive to emotionally salient stimuli, including those that are threatening.</p>
<p>Reduced activity in these regions when viewing threatening faces may suggest a diminished ability to recognize or respond to social signals that typically indicate potential danger or the need to adjust one’s behavior. This could help explain why some individuals with high levels of antisocial traits fail to avoid situations that lead to conflict or punishment.</p>
<p>The findings align with earlier studies in younger populations. For instance, adolescents with disruptive behavior problems and high levels of callous-unemotional traits tend to show similar patterns of reduced activity in brain regions related to empathy and threat detection. The present study suggests that this pattern may extend into adulthood and may be associated with self-reported antisocial behavior.</p>
<p>The ability to detect and respond to social threats plays an important role in regulating behavior. People who can quickly identify anger or disapproval in others are more likely to adjust their actions to avoid conflict or negative consequences. A reduced sensitivity to these cues, on the other hand, may contribute to aggressive or antisocial behavior by lowering the perceived risks of acting out.</p>
<p>From a clinical perspective, these findings point to the possibility of using brain-based measures to better identify individuals at heightened risk of aggression. The National Institute of Mental Health has proposed a research framework called the Research Domain Criteria, or RDoC, which encourages the integration of behavioral and biological data to improve psychiatric diagnosis. Under this framework, measures of threat processing might one day help refine assessments of antisocial tendencies.</p>
<p>The study also hints at potential directions for intervention. Training individuals with high levels of antisocial traits to better recognize facial expressions and emotional cues might help reduce aggressive behavior. Similar training programs have been explored in other populations, such as individuals with autism or social anxiety, though their effectiveness in ASPD remains to be tested.</p>
<p>There are some limitations that need to be considered. The sample size was relatively small, and the findings may not generalize beyond the specific population studied. Many of the participants were incarcerated, which may influence their responses in ways not fully accounted for. Additionally, the strength of the MRI scanner used was lower than the more commonly used 3T machines, which may have reduced the sensitivity of some measurements.</p>
<p>Another limitation is that the researchers relied on a self-report questionnaire to assess ASPD symptoms. While the tool is widely used, it does not capture the full clinical picture and cannot replace a formal diagnosis by a mental health professional.</p>
<p>The study also did not distinguish between different types of aggression. Individuals with ASPD may engage in both reactive aggression, which is impulsive and driven by emotional responses, and instrumental aggression, which is calculated and goal-directed. Future studies might explore how different forms of aggression relate to neural threat processing.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2025.06.038" target="_blank">Negative correlation between level of self-reported antisocial personality disorder symptoms and neural responsiveness to looming threats</a>,” was authored by Hui Zhao, R. James R. Blair, Huali Zhou, Changjian Zhai, Qianglong Wang, Yaran Zhang, Xinyu Ding, Ping Song, Zhuo Zhang, and Bo Yang.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/vaccines-hold-tantalizing-promise-in-the-fight-against-dementia/" 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;">Vaccines hold tantalizing promise in the fight against dementia</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Sep 5th 2025, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>Over the past two centuries, vaccines have been critical for preventing infectious diseases. The World Health Organization estimates that <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1326154">vaccination prevents between 3 million and 5 million deaths annually</a> from diseases like diphtheria, tetanus, influenza, measles and, more recently, COVID-19.</p>
<p>While there has long been <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2020.01526">broad scientific consensus</a> that vaccines prevent or mitigate the spread of infections, there is new research suggesting that the therapeutic impact might go beyond the benefit of preventing infectious diseases.</p>
<p>An April 2025 study published in the prominent journal Nature found tantalizing evidence that the herpes zoster – or shingles – vaccine <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08800-x">could lower the risk of dementia</a> in the general population by as much as 20%.</p>
<p>We are a team of physician scientists with expertise in the <a href="https://www.psych.uic.edu/profile/anand-kumar">clinical</a> and <a href="https://chicago.medicine.uic.edu/bmg/profiles/rehman-jalees/">basic science</a> of neurodegenerative disorders and dementia.</p>
<p>We believe that this study potentially opens the door to other breakthroughs in understanding and treating dementia and other degenerative disorders of the brain.</p>
<h2>A role for vaccines in reducing dementia risk?</h2>
<p>One of the major challenges researchers face when trying to study the effects of vaccines is finding an unvaccinated “control group” for comparison – a group that is similar to the vaccine group in all respects, save for the fact that they haven’t received the active vaccine. That’s because it’s unethical to assign some patients to the control group and deprive them of vaccine protection against a disease such as shingles.</p>
<p>The Nature study took advantage of a policy change in Wales that went into effect in 2013, stating that people born on or after September 2, 1933, were eligible for the herpes zoster vaccination for at least a year, while those born before that cutoff date were not. The vaccine was administered to <a href="https://theconversation.com/shingles-vaccination-rates-rose-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-but-major-gaps-remain-for-underserved-groups-262020">prevent shingles</a>, a painful condition caused by the same virus that causes chickenpox, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-chickenpox-virus-has-a-fascinating-evolutionary-history-that-continues-to-affect-peoples-health-today-168636">which can lie dormant in the body</a> and be reactivated later in life.</p>
<p>The researchers used the policy change as a natural laboratory of sorts to study the effect of shingles vaccination on long-term health outcomes. In a statistically sophisticated analysis of health records, the team found that the vaccine reduced the probability of getting dementia by one-fifth over a seven-year period. This means that people who received the shingles vaccine were less likely to develop clinical dementia over the seven-year follow-up period, and women benefited more than men.</p>
<p>The study design allowed researchers to compare two groups without actively depriving any one group of access to vaccination. The two groups were also of comparable age and had similar medical comorbidities – meaning similar rates of other medical conditions such as diabetes or high blood pressure.</p>
<p>Results from this and <a href="https://doi.org/10.3233/JAD-221231">other related studies</a> raise the possibility that vaccines may have a broader role in experimental therapeutics outside the realm of infectious diseases.</p>
<p>These studies also raise provocative questions about how vaccines work and how our immune system can potentially prevent dementia.</p>
<h2>How vaccines might be protective</h2>
<p>One scientific explanation for the reduction of dementia by the herpes zoster vaccine could be the direct protection against the shingles virus, which <a href="https://doi.org/10.3233/JAD-230718">may play a role in exacerbating dementia</a>.</p>
<p>However, there is also the possibility that the vaccine may have conferred protection by activating the immune system and providing “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41577-020-0285-6">trained immunity</a>,” in which the immune system is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1084/jem.20221388">strengthened by repeated exposure</a> to vaccines or viruses.</p>
<p>The study did not differentiate between different types of dementia, such as dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease or dementia due to stroke. Additionally, researchers cannot draw any definitive conclusions about possible mechanisms for how the vaccines could be protective from an analysis of health records alone.</p>
<p>The next step would be a prospective, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study – the “gold standard” for clinical trials in medicine – to directly examine how the herpes zoster vaccine compares with a placebo in their ability to reduce the risk of dementia over time. Such studies are necessary before any vaccines, as well as other potential therapies, can be recommended for routine clinical use in the prevention of dementia.</p>
<h2>The challenges of untangling dementia</h2>
<p>Dementia is a major noncommunicable disease that is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41582-024-01051-w">a leading cause of death around the world</a>.</p>
<p>A January 2025 study provided <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-024-03340-9">updated figures on lifetime dementia risk</a> across different subsets of the U.S. population. The researchers estimate that the lifetime risk of dementia after age 55 is 42% – more than double earlier estimates. The dementia risk was 4% by age 75, and 20% by age 85, with the majority of risk occurring after 85. The researchers projected that the number of new cases of dementia in the U.S. would double over the next four decades from approximately 514,000 cases in 2020 to 1 million in 2060.</p>
<p>Once considered a disease largely confined to the developed world, the deleterious effects of dementia are now apparent throughout the globe, as life expectancy increases in many formerly developing countries. While there are different forms of dementia with varying clinical manifestations and underlying neurobiology, <a href="https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/what-is-dementia">Alzheimer’s disease is the most common</a>.</p>
<p>Prospective studies that specifically test how giving a vaccine changes the risk for future dementia may benefit from studying patient populations with specific types of dementia because each version of dementia might require distinct treatments.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, for the past two to three decades, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1566067">amyloid hypothesis of Alzheimer’s disease</a> – which posits that accumulation of a protein called amyloid in the brain contributes to the disorder – <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.arr.2023.102161">dominated the scientific conversation</a>. As a result, most of the efforts in the experimental therapeutics of Alzheimer’s disease have focused on drugs that lower the levels of amyloid in the brain.</p>
<p>However, results to date have been <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)02480-1/fulltext">modest and disappointing</a>. The <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laneur/article/PIIS1474-4422(23)00274-0/fulltext">two recently approved amyloid-lowering therapies</a> have only a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2021.19080873">minimal impact on slowing the decline</a>, are expensive and have potentially serious side effects. And no drug currently approved by the Food and Drug Administration for clinical use reverses the cognitive decline.</p>
<p>Studies based on health records suggest that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2022.12.029">past exposure to viruses increase the risk of dementia</a>, while routine vaccines, including those against tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, pneumonia, shingles and others, <a href="https://doi.org/10.3233/JAD-221231">reduce the risk</a>.</p>
<h2>Innovation and an open mind</h2>
<p>There is sometimes a tendency among scientists to cling to older, familiar models of disease and a reluctance to move in more unconventional directions.</p>
<p>Yet the process of doing science has a way of teaching researchers like us humility, opening our minds to new information, learning from our mistakes and going where that data takes us in our quest for effective, lifesaving therapies.</p>
<p>Vaccines may be one of those paths less traveled. It is an exciting possibility that may open the door to other breakthroughs in understanding and treating degenerative disorders of the brain.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img decoding="async" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/257807/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1"><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p>
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<p><em>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/vaccines-hold-tantalizing-promise-in-the-fight-against-dementia-257807">original article</a>.</em></p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/overconfidence-in-bullshit-detection-linked-to-cognitive-blind-spots-and-narcissistic-traits/" 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;">Overconfidence in bullshit detection linked to cognitive blind spots and narcissistic traits</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Sep 5th 2025, 11:00</div>
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<p><p>New research published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13546783.2025.2531585" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Thinking & Reasoning</a></em> provides evidence that people who are least capable of spotting pseudo-profound nonsense often believe they are better at it than others. The study points to a common pattern: individuals with lower bullshit detection skills tend to overestimate their competence and assume they outperform their peers. At the same time, people who report engaging more frequently in persuasive or evasive bullshitting tend to score higher on personality traits such as narcissism and Machiavellianism.</p>
<p>The term “bullshit,” as used in psychological research, refers to communication that is intended to impress or persuade without regard for truth or clarity. This idea builds on the philosophical work of Harry Frankfurt, who defined bullshit as speech that is indifferent to the truth, and G.A. Cohen, who emphasized its “unclarifiability”—that is, statements that sound profound but cannot be easily explained or meaningfully negated.</p>
<p>Examples include pseudo-profound quotes filled with vague buzzwords or abstract claims that evade concrete interpretation. Unlike lies, which are constructed with an awareness of what is true, bullshit tends to reflect a disregard for truth altogether. This distinction makes bullshit particularly difficult to detect, especially when it mimics the form of deep insight without delivering real content.</p>
<p>The motivation behind the new research was to understand why some people are more susceptible to bullshit and less aware of their own limitations in detecting it. The researchers were particularly interested in metacognitive awareness—the ability to accurately assess one’s own cognitive skills—and whether poor bullshit detection stems from a lack of cognitive ability, a desire to protect self-esteem, or certain personality traits associated with social manipulation.</p>
<p>Earlier studies have shown that people with weaker reasoning skills often exhibit a metacognitive blind spot, believing themselves to be more capable than they are—a phenomenon known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. In the context of bullshit detection, this means that those least able to distinguish vacuous statements from meaningful ones may also be the most confident in their ability to do so. But some people may knowingly engage in bullshitting to influence others or protect their image. By investigating both detection ability and self-reported bullshitting behavior, the researchers aimed to tease apart whether overconfidence is simply a cognitive shortcoming or a socially motivated strategy.</p>
<p>“We were interested in this topic because we had discussions related to the use of the Bullshitting Frequency Questionnaire and the results from our previous study, and we wondered whether people scoring high in self-reported bullshitting behavior actually bullshit more or if they are just more metacognitively aware of this behavior,” said study author Vladimíra Čavojová, an associate professor at the Slovak Academy of Sciences. “However, from this discussion several other ideas came out, and at the end we focused on whether overconfidence in the domain of bullsit detection stems from cognitive limitations, the need to protect self-esteem, or dark personality traits.”</p>
<p>The researchers carried out two preregistered studies with adult participants drawn from the Slovak population. In total, 596 people participated in the first study and 433 in the second. Participants ranged from 18 to 70 years old and were recruited using quota sampling to ensure demographic diversity across age, gender, and education levels. They completed a series of tasks and questionnaires in Slovak using the online platform Qualtrics.</p>
<p>Bullshit detection was measured using a series of statements that mixed pseudo-profound nonsense with genuine motivational sayings. For example, participants were presented with phrases such as “Good health imparts reality to subtle creativity,” “Imagination is inside exponential space time events,” and “Consciousness is the growth of coherence, and of us.” These sentences, which sound lofty but lack clear meaning, were contrasted with motivational quotes like “Your teacher can open the door, but you must enter by yourself,” and “A river cuts through a rock, not because of its power but its persistence.”</p>
<p>Participants were asked to judge each as either “profound” or “not profound.” Their bullshit detection accuracy was then calculated based on how well they distinguished between vacuous statements and those with genuine, interpretable meaning.</p>
<p>To assess metacognitive accuracy, participants estimated their own performance on the detection task and guessed how others would perform. This allowed the researchers to calculate overestimation (how much better people thought they did than they actually did) and overplacement (how much better they thought they did relative to others).</p>
<p>Participants also completed a self-assessment scale measuring the frequency with which they engaged in persuasive or evasive bullshitting. Additional measures included tests of verbal ability, analytic thinking, and personality assessments for narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, sadism, and self-esteem.</p>
<p>In Study 1, the researchers also included an experimental manipulation: participants were randomly assigned to receive positive, negative, or no feedback about their performance to test how threats to self-esteem might influence overconfidence. However, this manipulation had minimal effects and was not central to the final analyses.</p>
<p>Both studies confirmed the existence of a Dunning-Kruger pattern in the domain of bullshit detection. Participants with lower detection ability were significantly more likely to overestimate how well they performed and to believe they were better than others at identifying bullshit. In contrast, participants with higher detection skills tended to underestimate their performance, suggesting a miscalibration in both directions.</p>
<p>Cognitive variables, particularly verbal ability, were strong predictors of actual performance on the detection task. Individuals with better verbal reasoning were more accurate in spotting pseudo-profound nonsense and were also less likely to overestimate their abilities. However, verbal ability explained only a small portion of the variance in participants’ self-rated bullshit detection ability, suggesting other factors play a role in metacognitive misjudgments.</p>
<p>Self-esteem emerged as a key variable in overconfidence. Participants with higher self-esteem tended to give themselves higher performance estimates, regardless of how well they actually did. However, self-esteem did not predict actual bullshit detection accuracy.</p>
<p>Personality traits, especially narcissism and Machiavellianism, were more strongly linked to self-reported bullshitting behavior than to detection ability. Individuals scoring higher on these traits were more likely to admit engaging in both persuasive and evasive bullshitting. Notably, narcissists thought they were better at bullshit detection than they actually were, while also believing others were relatively competent too—a pattern suggesting inflated general confidence rather than outright arrogance.</p>
<p>Interestingly, Machiavellians showed better performance on bullshit detection tasks, despite also reporting higher tendencies to bullshit. This suggests that some individuals may be aware of their own manipulative tendencies and selectively use bullshitting as a social tool rather than out of ignorance.</p>
<p>The researchers found that the frequency of persuasive bullshitting was consistently associated with lower detection skills. People who were more prone to using bullshit to persuade others tended to be worse at recognizing it themselves. This pattern lends support to the idea that bullshitting can function as a compensatory strategy among those with weaker reasoning abilities.</p>
<p>In contrast, cognitive ability had little bearing on evasive bullshitting, which may be more related to social anxiety or self-protection than persuasion. Both types of bullshitting, however, were associated with lower self-esteem, suggesting that people who feel less secure about their abilities may be more likely to use bullshit as a defense mechanism.</p>
<p>“The key takeaway is that people who are most vulnerable to bullshit tend to overestimate themselves the most (they have a blind spot on their own incompetence), and the overconfidence was associated with weaker cognitive abilities and higher self-esteem,” Čavojová told PsyPost. “In other words, the most vulnerable to bullshit are those who are least aware of their own vulnerability. This seems to be especially true for people with narcissistic traits, but interestingly, Machiavellianism seems to help with bullshit detection and is also associated with persuasive bullshitting.”</p>
<p>The researchers acknowledge that their study relies on a specific conceptualization of bullshit—namely, statements that are unclarifiable or pseudo-profound. This approach emphasizes the structure of statements rather than the intentions behind them. As such, the findings may not fully extend to real-world political or persuasive bullshit, which often involves clearer, more emotionally resonant language.</p>
<p>Another limitation concerns the self-report measures of bullshitting frequency. It is possible that participants either underestimated or overestimated how often they engaged in such behavior, due to social desirability bias or poor introspective access.</p>
<p>Future research could explore how bullshit detection and bullshitting behavior operate in more realistic settings, such as political debates, advertising, or online communication. Developing tools that can capture the subtleties of bullshit in everyday life could improve the ecological validity of findings in this field. There is also a need to better integrate different definitions of bullshit into a more unified framework.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13546783.2025.2531585" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bullshit detection and metacognitive awareness: the interplay of cognitive factors, self-esteem, and dark traits</a>,” was authored by Vladimíra Čavojová, Jakub Šrol, and Ivan Brezina.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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