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<td><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:20px;font-weight:bold;">PsyPost – Psychology News</span></td>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/new-ai-tool-detects-hidden-consciousness-in-brain-injured-patients-by-analyzing-microscopic-facial-movements/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">New AI tool detects hidden consciousness in brain-injured patients by analyzing microscopic facial movements</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Sep 20th 2025, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study reveals that an artificial intelligence tool can detect tiny, imperceptible facial movements in patients with severe brain injuries, suggesting some may be conscious days or even weeks before it can be confirmed through standard bedside examinations. The research, published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s43856-025-01042-y">Nature Communications Medicine</a></em>, presents a novel computer vision method that could help clinicians better identify which patients are aware, potentially leading to earlier intervention and improved care.</p>
<p>Researchers have long faced a profound challenge in assessing patients after a severe brain injury. In a hospital’s intensive care unit, a doctor might ask a patient who appears unconscious to perform a simple task, such as squeezing their hand or wiggling their toes. A successful response confirms a level of awareness.</p>
<p>However, a significant portion of patients, estimated to be between 15 and 25 percent, may be conscious but physically unable to produce these larger, visible movements. This condition, known as covert consciousness or cognitive-motor dissociation, creates a diagnostic gray area where a patient who can hear and understand is mistakenly classified as unresponsive. This misclassification can have serious consequences for treatment decisions and rehabilitation efforts.</p>
<p>Existing advanced techniques to detect covert consciousness, like specialized brain imaging or electroencephalography, are not always practical for continuous bedside monitoring. The scientists behind this new work hypothesized that the earliest signs of returning consciousness might appear as very small, low-amplitude movements in the face. Because the face has a complex network of small muscles and a large representation in the brain’s cortex, it presented a promising area to search for these subtle signs of volition.</p>
<p>To test this idea, a team of neurosurgery researchers at Stony Brook University developed and evaluated a computer vision tool they named SeeMe. The study involved 37 adult patients who were in a coma following an acute brain injury from causes like trauma or hemorrhage, as well as a comparison group of 16 healthy individuals.</p>
<p>For the patients, the research team conducted daily sessions when medically appropriate. They would first pause any sedating medications for a short period to allow for the most accurate assessment. A camera was positioned at the foot of the patient’s bed, focused on their face.</p>
<p>The patient wore disposable headphones through which a series of three recorded commands were played: “Open your eyes,” “Stick out your tongue,” and “Show me a smile.” Each command was repeated ten times during a session. The SeeMe algorithm then analyzed the video recordings.</p>
<p>The system works by identifying and tracking thousands of microscopic points on the face, such as individual pores, creating a detailed vector map of facial movement. By comparing facial movements during the quiet baseline period to the period immediately following a command, the software could quantify a response even if it was completely invisible to the human eye.</p>
<p>To determine how SeeMe’s performance compared to human observation, the researchers had two trained medical students, who were unaware of the patients’ clinical status or SeeMe’s findings, review the same video recordings. These blinded raters were tasked with identifying any visible responses to the commands. The team also compared SeeMe’s results to the patients’ official clinical assessments recorded by the hospital staff, specifically the Glasgow Coma Scale for eye-opening and the Coma Recovery Scale-Revised for command following involving the mouth.</p>
<p>The findings showed that SeeMe was substantially more sensitive than human observers. Across all sessions, the algorithm identified an average of 5.4 responsive movements out of 10 commands, while the blinded human raters detected only 2.8.</p>
<p>More importantly, the tool detected signs of consciousness significantly earlier than standard clinical examinations. In the 30 patients where SeeMe detected any movement, it found a response before clinicians in more than half of the cases. Specifically for eye movements, SeeMe detected a response to the command “Open your eyes” an average of 4.1 days earlier than doctors documented eye-opening in response to voice.</p>
<p>For mouth movements, which signal a higher level of cognitive function known as command following, SeeMe detected a response an average of 8.3 days before it was observed by clinicians. For instance, one patient who was in a coma after a car accident showed stimulus-evoked mouth movements on SeeMe on day 18 after his injury, but he was not documented as following motor commands clinically until day 37.</p>
<p>The researchers also found a strong link between the movements detected by SeeMe and patients’ eventual outcomes. The magnitude and frequency of the tiny facial movements measured by the system correlated positively with a patient’s functional status at the time of hospital discharge. Patients who had larger and more consistent facial responses detected by SeeMe were more likely to have regained consciousness and have a better overall outcome.</p>
<p>To confirm that these subtle movements were genuine attempts to follow commands rather than random spasms or noise, the team employed another artificial intelligence classifier. This deep neural network was trained on the facial movement data and was able to predict which of the three commands had been given based solely on the pattern of the patient’s facial response with 65 percent overall accuracy. This suggests that the detected movements were specific and intentional.</p>
<p>The study does have some limitations. The researchers note that in a few cases, clinicians detected a response before SeeMe did, which could be explained by natural fluctuations in a patient’s arousal and alertness. The study also included patients with different types of brain injuries, which could affect their recovery paths.</p>
<p>In addition, medical equipment like ventilators sometimes obscured the view of the patient’s mouth, making analysis difficult for those commands. The use of sedation, while necessary for patient care, also complicates the detection of motor responses. The team suggests that their tool is meant to complement, not replace, existing clinical assessments and long-term observation.</p>
<p>For future research, the scientists plan to conduct larger clinical trials to further validate their findings. They hope to incorporate objective measures of muscle activity to confirm the movements detected by the software. The long-term vision is to integrate SeeMe with other monitoring technologies, such as electroencephalography, to create a more comprehensive platform for tracking consciousness in the intensive care unit. Such a system could provide clinicians with a clearer, more objective picture of a patient’s inner state, helping to guide treatment plans and ensure that patients with covert consciousness are identified earlier, giving them a better opportunity for rehabilitation and recovery.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s43856-025-01042-y">Computer vision detects covert voluntary facial movements in unresponsive brain injury patients</a>,” was authored by Xi Cheng, Sujith Swarna, Jermaine Robertson, Nathaniel A. Cleri, Jordan R. Saadon, Chiemeka Uwakwe, Yindong Hua, Seyed Morsal Mosallami Aghili, Cassie Wang, Robert S. Kleyner, Xuwen Zheng, Ariana Forohar, John Servider, Kurt Butler, Chao Chen, Jordane Dimidschstein, Petar M. Djurić, Charles B. Mikell, and Sima Mofakham.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/higher-african-ancestry-may-be-linked-to-slower-rise-in-alzheimers-biomarker/" 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;">Higher African ancestry may be linked to slower rise in Alzheimer’s biomarker</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Sep 20th 2025, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000213976" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Neurology</a></em> provides evidence that African American individuals with higher levels of African genetic ancestry may experience a slower increase over time in a blood biomarker associated with Alzheimer’s disease. This pattern was not explained by common risk genes or other known health or lifestyle factors. The findings add nuance to ongoing efforts to understand racial disparities in Alzheimer’s disease risk and highlight the importance of studying diverse populations in dementia research.</p>
<p>Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias affect African American communities at higher rates than non-Hispanic White populations in the United States. Research has shown that this increased risk likely stems from a combination of factors, including differences in cardiovascular health, educational access, stress exposure, and experiences of racism. However, biological factors, including genetics, may also contribute to this disparity.</p>
<p>One way researchers study Alzheimer’s disease risk is through biological markers found in blood or cerebrospinal fluid. These include phosphorylated tau181 (p-Tau181), a protein associated with Alzheimer’s-related changes in the brain; glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), which reflects brain inflammation; and neurofilament light (NfL), a marker of general neuronal damage.</p>
<p>Previous studies using self-reported racial categories have found lower levels of these biomarkers among African American individuals, but findings have been inconsistent. Importantly, most of this research has focused on cross-sectional data, capturing only a single point in time. To better understand whether patterns in biomarker change over time might differ by ancestry, the authors of the current study used genetic data to estimate the proportion of African ancestry in each participant and tracked biomarker changes over an 11-year span.</p>
<p>“There is a much higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias for African American individuals than for European American individuals. But the underlying reasons are still unknown. We are hoping to improve our understanding of this topic and eventually inform prevention strategies,” explained study author <a href="https://www.genetics.uga.edu/directory/people/kaixiong-calvin-ye" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kaixiong (Calvin) Ye</a>, an associate professor in the Department of Genetics at the University of Georgia.</p>
<p>The researchers used data from the Family and Community Health Study (FACHS), a long-running study that began in the 1990s and has followed hundreds of African American families from Georgia and Iowa. For the current analysis, they focused on 573 participants with blood samples collected in either 2008 or 2019, and a subset of 225 participants who had blood drawn in both years. The average age at the 2019 follow-up was around 57 years. Most participants were women.</p>
<p>The team measured levels of three Alzheimer’s-related biomarkers—p-Tau181, GFAP, and NfL—from serum samples collected in 2008 and again in 2019. They used genetic data to estimate each person’s proportion of African ancestry based on comparison with a reference dataset from the 1000 Genomes Project. This allowed them to move beyond broad racial categories and assess ancestry as a continuous variable. They also excluded participants who were closely related to avoid bias in genetic comparisons.</p>
<p>In the cross-sectional analysis, there was no significant link between African ancestry proportion and biomarker levels at a single time point. Biomarker levels were primarily associated with age. For instance, older participants tended to have higher levels of p-Tau181, GFAP, and NfL, which is consistent with prior research. Men had higher p-Tau181 and lower GFAP levels than women, but ancestry was not a significant factor in this analysis.</p>
<p>The most noteworthy findings came from the longitudinal analysis. Over the 11-year span, participants with higher African ancestry showed a smaller increase in p-Tau181 levels. This pattern was statistically significant and remained stable even after accounting for a wide range of other factors, including age, sex, physical activity, body mass index, blood pressure, blood sugar levels, education, income, and diagnosed medical conditions such as diabetes or stroke. In contrast, African ancestry was not significantly associated with changes in GFAP or NfL.</p>
<p>The researchers also examined whether known genetic risk factors for Alzheimer’s, including the APOE e4 allele and polygenic scores derived from large studies of European ancestry populations, could explain the findings. They found no evidence that these genetic risk indicators were associated with p-Tau181 levels or their change over time in their African American sample. This suggests that genetic variants linked to Alzheimer’s in White populations may not have the same predictive value in African American populations.</p>
<p>When the researchers divided participants into groups based on ancestry, those in the top 20 percent for African ancestry were less likely to show increases in p-Tau181 over the 11 years compared to those in the lowest 20 percent. The trend suggested that more African ancestry may be linked to a more stable trajectory in this Alzheimer’s-related biomarker.</p>
<p>“The blood level of phosphorylated tau181 (p-Tau181) is a biomarker of the progression of Alzheimer’s disease,” Ye told PsyPost. “It is well-known that the p-Tau181 level increases as individuals age. The most important finding from our study is that the age-related increase in the p-Tau181 level is slower in individuals with higher African ancestry. Our finding indicates that the same p-Tau181 level has different implications for Alzheimer’s disease progression in different ancestry groups.”</p>
<p>“This key finding was surprising to me. Some previous studies have found that in comparison with non-Hispanic White individuals, African American individuals exhibit significantly lower blood p-Tau181 levels. These two observations indicate that the level and age-related dynamics of p-Tau181 have different indications, and thus different predictive and prognostic values, between the African American and European American individuals.”</p>
<p>As with all research, there are some limitations. First, the FACHS sample is relatively young, with an average age under 60 at follow-up. Alzheimer’s disease typically develops later in life, so these findings reflect early biological changes rather than clinical outcomes like cognitive decline or diagnosis. The participants were also relatively healthy, which may limit the ability to detect stronger associations.</p>
<p>Second, although ancestry was estimated using genetic data, ancestry itself may be associated with a range of environmental and social factors that were not fully captured in the study. For example, neighborhood conditions, diet, or exposure to discrimination could influence biological aging in ways that track with ancestry but are not necessarily genetic.</p>
<p>“Although we observe that association of slower change in the blood p-Tau181 level and the African ancestry proportion, we don’t know the specific factors causing this association, which could be environmental, sociocultural, behavioral, physiological, or genetic factors,” Ye said. “We have two long-term goals: 1) Figure out the factors that are driving the different prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease across ethnic groups; 2) Develop prevention strategies to lower the risk of Alzheimer’s disease for everyone.”</p>
<p>“There are very large genetic studies that have identified many genetic factors (or genetic variants) that are associated with the risk of Alzheimer’s disease or with the blood biomarker levels. But most of these studies were performed in individuals of European ancestry. Our study found that genetic factors identified in European samples are not as predictive in African American individuals. More genetic studies of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia are needed in individuals of African ancestry.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000213976" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Associations of Longitudinal Changes in Blood Biomarkers of Dementia With the Proportion of Genetically Inferred African Ancestry</a>,” was authored by Lu Wang, Huifang Xu, Ronald L. Simons, Steven R.H. Beach, Man-Kit Lei, Mei Ling Ong, Robert A. Philibert, Michelle M. Mielke, Yitang Sun, Yueqi Lu, Charleston W.K. Chiang, Burcu F. Darst, and Kaixiong Ye.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/the-politics-of-iq-are-liberals-smarter-than-conservatives/" 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;">The politics of IQ: Are liberals smarter than conservatives?</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Sep 20th 2025, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>The question of whether political leanings are connected to intelligence is a long-standing and often contentious topic. While many assume their ideological opponents are simply less intelligent, scientific research paints a far more nuanced picture.</p>
<p>A series of studies published over the last decade reveals that the answer depends heavily on how “intelligence” is measured and which specific political beliefs are examined. The findings show that while lower cognitive ability is consistently associated with social conservatism, the relationship with economic conservatism is more complicated, with recent research pointing to the unique role of verbal skills and genetic factors.</p>
<h2>The Initial Puzzle: A Republican Advantage in Verbal Intelligence</h2>
<p>Contrary to a common assumption that intelligence aligns with liberalism, a 2014 study published in the journal <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2014.03.005%5D(https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2014.03.005"><em>Intelligence</em></a> presented a puzzling finding. Previous research had consistently shown that people with higher intelligence tend to be more socially liberal and less religious, which would suggest Democrats might have a cognitive edge. This study sought to test that expectation directly.</p>
<p>The research, led by Noah Carl, analyzed data from the General Social Survey (GSS), a large, nationally representative survey of American adults. Intelligence was measured using a 10-word vocabulary test, which serves as a proxy for verbal intelligence. Political affiliation was determined by how people identified themselves—as a “strong Democrat,” “strong Republican,” Independent, and so on—as well as their voting history in presidential elections.</p>
<p>The results were unexpected. Before accounting for other factors, individuals who identified as Republican had slightly higher average verbal intelligence scores than those who identified as Democrat, with the advantage ranging from 2 to 5 IQ points. The gap was largest when comparing “strong Republicans” to “strong Democrats.” A similar, smaller Republican advantage of about 2 IQ points was found among voters. However, when the researchers statistically controlled for socioeconomic characteristics like education, income, race, and marital status, the Republican advantage almost entirely disappeared or, in some cases, even reversed.</p>
<p>To understand this, the study also examined the link between verbal intelligence and specific policy beliefs. It found that higher verbal intelligence was associated with more socially liberal views, such as support for abortion access and LGBTQ+ rights. At the same time, higher verbal intelligence was also linked to more “economically liberal” views, a term used in the classical sense to mean support for free-market principles and less government intervention. This is what is more commonly known today as economic conservatism. The study suggested that the higher intelligence of economically conservative Republicans might compensate for the potentially lower intelligence of socially conservative ones, leading to the small overall Republican advantage.</p>
<h2>Confirming the Finding with Broader Cognitive Measures</h2>
<p>To ensure these findings were not a fluke of using a single vocabulary test, the same researcher published a follow-up study in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2014.08.003%5D(https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2014.08.003"><em>Intelligence</em> </a>later in 2014. This second study built directly on the first by using the same GSS dataset but expanding the analysis to include three additional measures of cognitive ability: a test of probability knowledge, a test of verbal reasoning, and an interviewer’s assessment of how well the respondent understood the survey questions.</p>
<p>The methodology was similar to the first study, comparing the average scores on these cognitive tests between self-identified Republicans and Democrats. It also investigated how much of the relationship could be explained by socioeconomic factors like education and income.</p>
<p>The findings confirmed the results of the initial paper. On all three new cognitive measures, Republicans showed a small but statistically significant advantage, with differences ranging from approximately 1 to 4 IQ points. Again, the advantage was largest when comparing the most strongly identified partisans. The analysis also revealed that a significant portion—often more than half—of this relationship was accounted for by socioeconomic position.</p>
<p>The study suggested a chain of influence: individuals with higher cognitive ability tend to achieve higher education and income, and people with these higher socioeconomic profiles are more likely to identify as Republican. This confirmed the initial finding was robust across different types of cognitive tests but also reinforced that socioeconomic factors were deeply intertwined with the results.</p>
<h2>The Broader View: Lower Intelligence and Social Conservatism</h2>
<p>While the Carl studies pointed to a small Republican advantage, they stood in contrast to a wider body of research. A comprehensive meta-analysis published in the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1002/per.2027"><em>European Journal of Personality</em></a> in 2015 synthesized decades of research to clarify the broader relationship between cognitive ability, right-wing ideological attitudes, and prejudice. A meta-analysis is a “study of studies” that combines the results of many different papers to find an overall effect.</p>
<p>Researchers led by Emma Onraet compiled data from 67 studies focusing on right-wing attitudes and 23 studies focusing on prejudice, totaling over 84,000 and 27,000 participants, respectively. They examined different types of ideology, such as authoritarianism and social conservatism, and different types of cognitive tests. It is important to note this analysis focused on sociocultural attitudes, not economic ones.</p>
<p>The meta-analysis revealed a consistent and noticeable trend: on average, people with lower cognitive ability scores were reliably more likely to endorse right-wing social attitudes and hold prejudiced views. The overall strength of this connection was considered moderate—not a perfect one-to-one relationship, but a clear pattern observed across dozens of different studies.</p>
<p>This link was even more pronounced for specific beliefs, with a stronger connection found between lower cognitive ability and both authoritarianism and ethnocentrism (prejudice against other ethnic groups).</p>
<p>The study also gave an early hint that the a person’s specific type of intelligence might matter, noting that verbal skills in particular seemed more strongly related to ideology than other cognitive abilities. By focusing on social attitudes, this large-scale review helped sharpen a distinction that would become central to later research: the link between intelligence and political beliefs appears to operate differently for social issues compared to economic ones.</p>
<h2>Pinpointing the Key Skill: The Unique Role of Verbal Ability</h2>
<p>Building on the hints from prior work, a 2017 study in <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289616300757"><em>Intelligence</em></a> sought to determine which specific kind of intelligence—verbal or non-verbal—is the main driver of political ideology. It is one thing to say “intelligence” is linked to liberalism, but another to identify the precise cognitive skill involved.</p>
<p>The study, led by Steven G. Ludeke, analyzed data from two separate American community samples. Both samples included measures of politics as well as tests for both verbal intelligence (e.g., vocabulary, analogies) and non-verbal intelligence (e.g., block design, matrix reasoning). A key difference was that one sample completed a self-administered test at home, while the other was assessed in a lab by a trained researcher using a standard IQ inventory. The researchers then used statistical models to see which type of ability best predicted scores on a political liberalism scale.</p>
<p>The results showed that while higher general intelligence was associated with more liberal views, this link was driven almost exclusively by verbal ability. In models that included both verbal and non-verbal intelligence as predictors, non-verbal ability had no independent relationship with political ideology.</p>
<p>Verbal ability, however, remained a strong predictor. In fact, the entire association between general intelligence and liberal beliefs was accounted for by a person’s verbal skills. The study also found that the relationship was significantly stronger in the sample that used the professionally-administered, in-person IQ test, suggesting that brief, self-administered tests may underestimate the true strength of the connection.</p>
<h2>Resolving the Paradox: A Tug-of-War in Economic Beliefs</h2>
<p>The research so far presented a paradox: lower intelligence seemed linked to social conservatism, but some studies suggested a positive link with economic conservatism. A 2021 study published in the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01461672211046808"><em>Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin</em></a> tackled this inconsistency head-on by focusing solely on economic ideology.</p>
<p>This research, led by Alexander Jedinger and Axel Burger, involved two parts. First, they conducted a meta-analysis of 19 articles to find the average relationship between cognitive ability and economic conservatism. Second, they analyzed data from the 2016 American National Election Study (ANES) to test competing theories about *why* this link exists.</p>
<p>The meta-analysis of existing research found a small but significant positive average correlation between higher cognitive ability and greater economic conservatism. However, the results were extremely varied across studies, with some showing positive links, some negative, and some no link at all. The relationship was stronger in studies that used specific policy questions (operational ideology) rather than just asking people to label themselves (symbolic ideology).</p>
<p>The second part of the study offered an explanation for this messiness. Analyzing the ANES data, the researchers found evidence for two opposing “countervailing” pathways that link intelligence to economic attitudes. First, a “self-interest” path showed that higher cognitive ability leads to higher income, which in turn predicts more economic conservatism.</p>
<p>Second, an “epistemic needs” path showed that higher cognitive ability is associated with a lower need for certainty and closure, which in turn predicts less economic conservatism. These two mechanisms act like a tug-of-war, pulling people in opposite directions. This finding helps explain why the overall correlation is so weak and why different studies have produced conflicting results.</p>
<h2>The Latest Evidence: Genetics, Family, and the Primacy of Verbal Skills</h2>
<p>The most recent research, published in <em>Intelligence</em> in 2024, has pushed the inquiry into new territory by incorporating genetics and using powerful family-based study designs to control for environmental influences. A pair of studies led by Tobias Edwards has provided some of the strongest evidence to date on the nature of the intelligence-ideology link.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289624000254">One study</a> used data from the Sibling Interaction and Behavior Study (SIBS), which includes both biological and adopted siblings. This design allows researchers to separate the effects of genetics from shared family upbringing. Intelligence was measured with standard IQ tests and also with “polygenic scores,” which are estimates of a person’s genetic predisposition for a trait based on their DNA.</p>
<p>The study found that even within the same family, the sibling with a higher IQ or a higher polygenic score for intelligence was more likely to hold liberal political beliefs. This suggests that the connection is not just a product of one’s environment but may be partially rooted in the genetic variations that influence cognitive ability.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289624000709">second study</a> by the same authors used data from two large Minnesota-based family studies to conduct a comprehensive test of the verbal versus non-verbal intelligence question. The researchers looked at a wide range of outcomes, including voter turnout, civic engagement, religiosity, and different facets of political ideology.</p>
<p>They found that verbal IQ was consistently about twice as strong a predictor of these socio-political attitudes and behaviors as performance (non-verbal) IQ. This powerful effect of verbal ability held true even when comparing siblings raised in the same house and after accounting for education levels, confirming and extending the 2017 findings from Ludeke and colleagues.</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>So, are liberals smarter than conservatives? The science shows that this is the wrong question to ask. The answer is far from a simple “yes” or “no” and has become clearer over time. Research suggests that people with lower cognitive abilities are more likely to endorse socially conservative and authoritarian views. However, the link with economic conservatism is a complicated tug-of-war between self-interest and epistemic needs, resulting in a very weak and inconsistent relationship.</p>
<p>Most importantly, recent studies have revealed that it is not general intelligence but specifically *verbal intelligence*—the ability to understand and reason with words—that most strongly predicts liberal-leaning views, civic engagement, and lower traditionalism. This connection appears to have a genetic component and is not simply a result of education or upbringing.</p>
<p>Researchers caution, however, that these are statistical averages and that intelligence is only one of many factors influencing a person’s beliefs. As study author Tobias Edwards previously <a href="https://www.psypost.org/genetic-variations-help-explain-the-link-between-cognitive-ability-and-liberalism/">told PsyPost</a>, “It is very tempting to make inferences to the veracity of an ideology based on the intelligence of its supporters,. But this would be a mistake. There have been extraordinarily intelligent people on both the left and right… there is no reason why we must presume one ideology to be more intelligent than another, even if smart people seem more likely to align with one belief or another.”</p>
<p>Finally, it is essential to remember that these findings exist within a specific moment in time, because the beliefs that define “liberal” and “conservative” are not static. The Republican Party of today, for instance, holds different core positions on issues like trade and foreign policy than the party of Dwight D. Eisenhower. As party platforms and ideological movements evolve, the cognitive traits of the people they attract may change as well.</p>
<p>The research itself points to this fluidity. In one study, Edwards noted that his recent data showed higher intelligence was linked to <em>less</em> fiscal conservatism, a reversal of the trend found in older data.</p>
<p>“This surprise highlights an important point; there is no law saying that intelligent people must always be supportive of particular beliefs or ideologies. The way our intelligence affects our beliefs is likely dependent upon our environment and culture. Looking back across history, we can see intelligent individuals have been attracted to all sorts of different and often contradictory ideas.”</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/dopamine-study-dissolves-psychiatrys-diagnostic-boundaries/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Dopamine study dissolves psychiatry’s diagnostic boundaries</a>
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<p><p>For decades, psychiatrists have treated psychosis as if it were separate conditions. People experiencing hallucinations and delusions might be diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, severe depression and related diagnoses, and receive completely different treatments based on diagnosis. But new research suggests this approach may be fundamentally flawed.</p>
<p>Our latest study, published in <em><a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2837253">JAMA Psychiatry</a></em>, reveals that the brain changes driving psychotic symptoms are remarkably similar across these supposedly distinct mental health conditions. The findings could change how doctors choose treatments for the millions of people worldwide who experience psychosis.</p>
<p>Psychosis itself is not a disease, but rather a collection of generally deeply distressing symptoms, where people may struggle to distinguish reality from normal perception. They might hear voices that are not there, hold false beliefs with unshakeable conviction, or find their thoughts becoming jumbled and incoherent. These symptoms are new in onset, and terrifying – regardless of whether they occur alongside depression, mania, or without these mood symptoms.</p>
<p>We studied 38 people experiencing their first episode of psychosis with mood symptoms, comparing them with healthy volunteers. Using sophisticated brain scanning technology, we measured the synthesis of dopamine – a brain chemical tied to motivation and reward – in different regions of the brain.</p>
<p>We found that while most people with manic episodes showed higher dopamine synthesis in emotion-processing areas of the brain compared to those with depression, there was a common pattern across all participants: higher dopamine synthesis in thinking and planning regions were consistently linked to more severe psychosis symptoms (hallucinations and delusions), regardless of their official diagnosis.</p>
<p>This discovery challenges some aspects of modern psychiatric practice. Currently, treatment decisions rely heavily on diagnostic categories that may not reflect what is actually happening in people’s brains. Two people with identical symptoms might receive entirely different drugs simply because one was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and another with depression.</p>
<p>Our study shows dopamine dysfunction is not uniform in psychosis. Moving beyond trial-and-error prescribing requires matching treatments to underlying biology rather than diagnostic categories alone.</p>
<h2>Towards precision psychiatry</h2>
<p>The implications could be profound. Rather than basing treatment solely on psychiatric categories, doctors might soon use biological markers to identify which drugs will work best for individual people. This approach, known as precision psychiatry, mirrors how oncologists already tailor cancer treatments to the genetic makeup of specific tumours.</p>
<p>For people with psychosis, this could mean faster recovery and fewer side-effects, by switching from drugs that do not work. Finding the right treatment often involves months of trying different drugs while people continue to suffer from debilitating symptoms.</p>
<p>Our research suggests people whose psychosis involves strong mood symptoms might benefit from drugs that target emotion-processing brain circuits, while those without mood disorders might need drugs that work differently on thinking and planning regions. Some people might even benefit from treatments that address cognitive problems alongside hallucinations and delusions.</p>
<p>This does not mean psychiatric diagnoses are worthless. They remain crucial for organising healthcare services, facilitating communication between professionals, and determining access to treatment. But they may no longer be the best guide for choosing medications.</p>
<p>The study involved a relatively small number of people, and the findings need to be replicated in larger groups before changing clinical practice. Still, this research represents a significant step towards a more scientific, biology-based approach to treating one of psychiatry’s most challenging symptoms.</p>
<p>As our understanding of the brain advances, the rigid categories that have dominated psychiatry for decades are beginning to blur. If the brain (and mother nature) does not respect diagnostic boundaries, neither should our treatments.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img decoding="async" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/263319/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/brain-chemistry-reveals-psychiatrys-false-divisions-new-study-263319">original article</a>.</em></p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/new-research-reveals-early-brain-cell-changes-in-young-athletes-exposed-to-head-impacts/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">New research reveals early brain cell changes in young athletes exposed to head impacts</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Sep 19th 2025, 13:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study has found that repeated head impacts from contact sports can lead to lasting and measurable changes in the brains of young and middle-aged athletes. These alterations, which include inflammation and the loss of specific brain cells, can appear years before the development of the hallmark protein clumps associated with chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The research, supported by the National Institutes of Health, was published in the scientific journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09534-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nature</a></em>.</p>
<p>Scientists have long known that repetitive head impacts, such as those sustained in sports like American football, are the primary risk factor for a neurodegenerative disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy. A major challenge for researchers and clinicians is that this condition can only be definitively diagnosed by examining brain tissue after a person has died. The initial biological events that set the disease in motion have remained unclear, making it difficult to detect or treat in its early stages.</p>
<p>Many young individuals with a history of head impacts report symptoms that are not fully explained by the known pathology of the disease, pointing to a gap in understanding the earliest consequences of these injuries.</p>
<p>To investigate these early changes, a team of scientists from the Boston University CTE Center and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System, along with other collaborating institutions, designed a study to look at the brain at a single-cell level. They analyzed postmortem brain tissue from 28 deceased individuals who were younger than 51 years old.</p>
<p>The individuals were divided into three groups: a control group with no history of contact sports or head impacts, a group of athletes with a history of repetitive head impacts but no evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy pathology, and a group of athletes with diagnosed early-stage chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The majority of the athletes had played American football.</p>
<p>The researchers used a sophisticated technique known as single-nucleus RNA sequencing. This method allowed them to isolate individual cells from the brain tissue and analyze their genetic activity. By reading which genes were turned on or off in each cell, the scientists could determine the cell’s state and function. For example, they could distinguish between a healthy, resting immune cell and one that had become activated and inflammatory. This detailed approach provided a snapshot of the cellular landscape of the brain in response to head impacts. They then used other imaging and staining techniques to confirm their findings directly within the brain tissue.</p>
<p>One of the most significant findings concerned the brain’s resident immune cells, known as microglia. In the brains of individuals with a history of head impacts, both with and without the formal disease diagnosis, the microglia showed a distinct shift. There was a significant decrease in the population of healthy, “homeostatic” microglia, which are responsible for maintaining a stable brain environment. In their place, the researchers identified new subtypes of microglia that were in an inflammatory state. The proportion of these inflammatory microglia was directly associated with the number of years an athlete had played contact sports.</p>
<p>The analysis of these inflammatory microglia revealed that they were expressing genes related to immune signaling, oxygen deprivation, and metabolism. To validate this observation, the team used specialized staining methods on a larger set of 37 brain samples. This analysis confirmed that as the years of football play increased, the number of healthy microglia decreased. These changes were most prominent in the deep folds of the brain’s outer layer, or cortex, a region known to be particularly vulnerable to the mechanical forces of head trauma.</p>
<p>The study also identified changes in the cells that line the brain’s blood vessels, called endothelial cells. In the athletes’ brains, these cells showed signs of an inflammatory response. They were also activating genes associated with angiogenesis, the process of forming new blood vessels. This suggests that the brain’s vascular system is actively responding to the trauma, potentially as part of a repair process that may become dysfunctional over time. These changes in the blood vessels may contribute to the breakdown of the blood-brain barrier, a protective lining that is often compromised in chronic traumatic encephalopathy.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most striking result was the discovery of specific neuron loss. The researchers found a substantial reduction in a particular type of nerve cell located in the upper layers of the cortex. These neurons, identified by the genes they express, were significantly depleted in the brains of individuals exposed to repetitive head impacts, regardless of whether they had developed the protein deposits of chronic traumatic encephalopathy. On average, athletes with a history of impacts had 56 percent fewer of these specific neurons compared to the control group.</p>
<p>This loss of brain cells was directly linked to the duration of an athlete’s exposure to contact sports. The more years a person played football, the fewer of these neurons were present in the vulnerable sulcal regions of the brain. The finding that this neurodegeneration occurs before the appearance of the disease’s classic protein pathology is profound. It suggests that brain damage and cell death may be an early and direct consequence of repetitive head impacts, and could help explain the cognitive and mood symptoms reported by young athletes. This neuronal loss was confirmed using staining methods on a larger cohort of 86 individuals, again showing a clear link between years of football play and reduced neuron density in that specific brain region.</p>
<p>In an effort to understand how these different cell types might be communicating with each other to drive the disease process, the team performed a computational analysis of signaling pathways. They identified a potential communication link between the inflammatory microglia and the altered endothelial cells. It appears that microglia may be sending signals that activate the endothelial cells, contributing to the vascular changes. One molecule, TGFB1, was identified as a key component of this signaling pathway, which was more active in individuals with early-stage disease.</p>
<p>The study does have some limitations. The number of brain samples available from young individuals is small, which is an inherent challenge in this type of research. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is also a disease that can appear in patches, meaning the tissue samples taken might not have captured every aspect of the pathology. Future work with larger and more diverse groups of individuals will be needed to build on these findings and explore changes in other brain regions.</p>
<p>This research offers a new window into the earliest stages of brain injury following repetitive head impacts. The findings suggest that significant damage at the cellular level is happening long before chronic traumatic encephalopathy can be diagnosed with current methods. By identifying specific types of cells and molecular pathways involved in this early response, the study provides potential targets for developing new diagnostic tools and therapeutic interventions. Such advances could one day help detect brain injury in living athletes and prevent the progression to severe neurodegeneration.</p>
<p>“This study underscores that many changes in the brain can occur after repetitive head impacts,” said Walter Koroshetz, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, a part of the National Institutes of Health. “These early brain changes might help diagnose and treat CTE earlier than is currently possible now.”</p>
<p>The research shifts the focus from the advanced stages of the disease in older individuals to the very first cellular signs of damage in younger people. Richard Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health, commented on the importance of this work. “What’s striking is the dramatic cellular changes, including significant, location-specific neuron loss in young athletes who had no detectable CTE,” he said. “Understanding these early events may help us protect young athletes today as well as reduce risks for dementia in the future.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09534-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Repeated head trauma causes neuron loss and inflammation in young athletes</a>,” was authored by Morgane L. M. D. Butler, Nida Pervaiz, Kerry Breen, Samantha Calderazzo, Petra Ypsilantis, Yichen Wang, Julia Cammasola Breda, Sarah Mazzilli, Raymond Nicks, Elizabeth Spurlock, Marco M. Hefti, Kimberly L. Fiock, Bertrand R. Huber, Victor E. Alvarez, Thor D. Stein, Joshua D. Campbell, Ann C. McKee, and Jonathan D. Cherry.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/pain-intensity-and-unpleasantness-are-decreased-after-a-virtual-walk-through-green-space/" 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;">Pain intensity and unpleasantness are decreased after a virtual walk through green space</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Sep 19th 2025, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>An experimental study in Poland found that the perceived intensity and unpleasantness of experimentally induced pain decreased after a four-minute walk through a green environment (a virtual park rich in vegetation). The pain was induced by a thermode attached to the inner side of participants’ forearms and heated to as much as 50.5 °C. The paper was published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-12911-w"><em>Scientific Reports</em></a>.</p>
<p>Green spaces are areas of natural vegetation, such as parks, gardens, forests, or urban green belts, that are accessible to people. They offer opportunities for recreation, relaxation, and contact with nature in both urban and rural settings.</p>
<p>Psychologically, green spaces tend to reduce stress by lowering cortisol levels and calming the nervous system. They are linked to improved mood, greater happiness, and lower rates of depression and anxiety. Being surrounded by greenery can also restore attention and mental energy, a phenomenon described by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_restoration_theory">attention restoration theory</a>. Even brief exposure to trees or grass can enhance concentration and reduce mental fatigue. Neighborhoods with abundant greenery often show lower crime rates and higher perceived safety, partly due to stronger community cohesion.</p>
<p>Study author Anna Mucha and her colleagues set out to examine how experiencing a virtual reality (VR) green space affects people’s perception of pain compared to an urban VR environment. Specifically, they wanted to see whether immersion in a VR green space would reduce the perception of experimentally induced thermal pain in healthy adults more than an urban VR scenario.</p>
<p>Participants were 81 healthy adults, with an average age of 23 years; 61% were women. They were randomly divided into two groups. One group took a four-minute walk through a VR green space using VR goggles, while the other walked through an urban VR setting of the same duration using the same equipment.</p>
<p>Before the VR walk, the researchers fitted participants with a 30 × 30 mm thermode, part of the TSA-II neurosensory analyzer. A thermode is a device that precisely delivers controlled heating or cooling to the skin. In this study, it was set to increase its temperature from 30 °C up to 50.5 °C. The researchers first tested each participant’s pain threshold and tolerance. The device started at 30 °C and increased by 1.5 °C per second, stopping at the maximum or when the participant chose to end the test.</p>
<p>The pain threshold was the lowest temperature at which participants reported feeling pain. Pain tolerance was the point at which they chose to stop the test because the sensation became unbearable. Participants used a handheld remote to stop the temperature increase, after which the thermode cooled quickly.</p>
<p>Participants also rated the intensity and unpleasantness of the pain. For this, the thermode was set to a temperature 0.5 °C below each participant’s tolerance level for up to 10 seconds. They rated pain intensity on an 11-point visual analogue scale and also assessed their positive and negative emotions. These ratings were completed before and after the assigned VR walk, with participants still wearing the goggles and immersed in the virtual environment during the second set of assessments.</p>
<p>The results indicated that pain intensity and unpleasantness decreased after the VR walk in the green environment. Pain tolerance thresholds remained similar before and after the walk in both the green and urban settings. Positive emotions increased, while negative emotions decreased after the green walk. No changes in emotional state were observed following the urban walk.</p>
<p>“These results indicate that contact with nature, even in the form of VR, can effectively relieve pain not only by reducing its intensity but also by reducing its unpleasantness,” the study authors concluded.</p>
<p>The study sheds light on the effects of exposure to green spaces on the perception of pain. However, it should be noted that this experiment was conducted in virtual reality and did not involve real exposure to nature, or real walking through nature.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-12911-w">Effect of virtual walk in green or urban spaces on pain perception among healthy adults,</a>” was authored by Anna Mucha, Anita Pollak, and Ewa Wojtyna.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/who-actually-commits-political-violence-in-the-united-states-heres-what-the-data-says/" 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;">Who actually commits political violence in the United States? Here’s what the data says</a>
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<p><p>After the Sept. 10, 2025, assassination of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, President Donald Trump claimed that <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/15/politics/left-wing-groups-trump-domestic-terrorists">radical leftist groups foment political violence</a> in the U.S., and “they should be put in jail.”</p>
<p>“The radical left causes tremendous violence,” he said, asserting that “they seem to do it in a bigger way” than groups on the right.</p>
<p>Top presidential adviser Stephen Miller also weighed in after Kirk’s killing, saying that left-wing political organizations constitute “<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/stephen-miller-vengeance-charlie-kirk-murder-rcna231329">a vast domestic terror movement</a>.”</p>
<p>“We are going to use every resource we have … throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again,” Miller said.</p>
<p>But policymakers and the public need reliable evidence and actual data to understand the reality of politically motivated violence. From <a href="https://theconversation.com/white-nationalism-born-in-the-usa-is-now-a-global-terror-threat-113825">our research on extremism</a>, it’s clear that the president’s and Miller’s assertions about political violence from the left are not based on actual facts.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Arthur-Jipson">Based on our</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=59KMWD8AAAAJ&hl=en">own research</a> and a review of related work, we can confidently say that most domestic terrorists in the U.S. are politically on the right, and right-wing attacks account for the vast majority of fatalities from domestic terrorism.</p>
<h2>Political violence rising</h2>
<p>The understanding of political violence is complicated by differences in definitions and the <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/doj-deletes-own-study-website-032537612.html">recent Department of Justice removal</a> of an important government-sponsored study of domestic terrorists.</p>
<p>Political violence in the U.S. has <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/09/15/charlie-kirk-political-violence-trends">risen in recent months</a> and takes forms that go unrecognized. During the 2024 election cycle, nearly half of all states reported <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/policy-solutions/state-agenda-election-security-and-resiliency">threats against election workers</a>, including <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/election-officials-communities-color-face-more-abuse">social media death threats, intimidation and doxing</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/charlie-kirk-shooting-investigation-09-16-25">Kirk’s assassination</a> illustrates the growing threat. The <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/09/16/nx-s1-5542545/utah-files-murder-charges-against-tyler-robinson">man charged with the murder</a>, Tyler Robinson, allegedly planned the attack in writing and online.</p>
<p>This follows other politically motivated killings, including the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-mn/pr/vance-boelter-indicted-murders-melissa-and-mark-hortman-shootings-john-and-yvette-0">June assassination</a> of Democratic Minnesota state Rep. and former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband.</p>
<p>These incidents reflect a <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2025/0714/minnesota-shootings-rising-political-violence">normalization of political violence</a>. Threats and violence are increasingly treated as acceptable for achieving political goals, posing serious risks to democracy and society.</p>
<h2>Defining ‘political violence’</h2>
<p>This article relies on some of our <a href="https://theconversation.com/white-nationalism-born-in-the-usa-is-now-a-global-terror-threat-113825">research on extremism</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2116870119">other academic research</a>, federal reports, <a href="https://acleddata.com/conflict-data">academic datasets</a> and <a href="https://cpost.uchicago.edu/research/apv/surveys/">other monitoring</a> to assess what is known about political violence.</p>
<p>Support for political violence in the U.S. is spreading from extremist fringes <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/09/12/nx-s1-5538063/a-look-at-research-on-americans-changing-attitudes-toward-political-violence">into the mainstream</a>, making violent actions seem normal. Threats can move from online rhetoric to actual violence, <a href="https://news.uchicago.edu/will-political-violence-destroy-our-democracy">posing serious risks to democratic practices</a>.</p>
<p>But different agencies and researchers use different definitions of political violence, making comparisons difficult.</p>
<p>The FBI and Department of Homeland Security <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2023-07/23_0724_opa_strategic-intelligence-assessment-data-domestic-terrorism.pdf">define domestic violent extremism</a> as threats involving actual violence. They do not investigate people in the U.S. for constitutionally protected speech, activism or ideological beliefs.</p>
<p>Domestic violent extremism is <a href="https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R47885">defined by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security</a> as violence or credible threats of violence intended to influence government policy or intimidate civilians for political or ideological purposes. This general framing, which includes diverse activities under a single category, guides investigations and prosecutions.</p>
<p>Datasets compiled by academic researchers use narrower and more operational definitions. <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/the-global-terrorism-database-how-do-researchers-measure-terrorism">The Global Terrorism Database</a> counts incidents that involve intentional violence with political, social or religious motivation.</p>
<p>These differences mean that the same incident may or may not appear in a dataset, depending on the rules applied.</p>
<p>The FBI and <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/21_0514_strategic-intelligence-assessment-data-domestic-terrorism_0.pdf">Department of Homeland Security</a> emphasize that these distinctions are not merely academic. Labeling an event “<a href="https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R47885">terrorism</a>” rather than a “<a href="https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/civil-rights/hate-crimes">hate crime</a>” can change who is responsible for investigating an incident and how many resources they have to investigate it.</p>
<p>For example, a <a href="https://www.cato.org/blog/politically-motivated-violence-rare-united-states">politically motivated</a> shooting might be coded as terrorism in federal reporting, cataloged as political violence by the <a href="https://acleddata.com/">Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project</a>, and prosecuted as homicide or a hate crime at the state level.</p>
<h2>Patterns in incidents and fatalities</h2>
<p>Despite differences in definitions, several consistent patterns emerge from available evidence.</p>
<p>Politically motivated violence is a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2116870119">small fraction of total violent crime</a>, but its impact is magnified by <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/how-recent-political-violence-in-the-u-s-fits-into-a-long-dark-history">symbolic targets, timing and media coverage</a>.</p>
<p>In the first half of 2025, 35% of <a href="https://www.start.umd.edu/data-tools/GTD">violent events</a> <a href="https://www.wcvb.com/article/rising-political-violence-targets-government-entities-staff/66055104">tracked by University of Maryland researchers targeted U.S. government</a> personnel or facilities – more than twice the rate in 2024.</p>
<p>Right-wing extremist violence has been deadlier than left-wing violence <a href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/the-rise-of-political-violence-in-the-united-states/">in recent years</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalating-terrorism-problem-united-states">Based on</a> <a href="https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-17-300">government</a> and <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/report/murder-and-extremism-united-states-2024">independent analyses</a>, right-wing extremist violence has been responsible for the overwhelming majority of fatalities, amounting to approximately 75% to 80% of U.S. domestic terrorism deaths since 2001.</p>
<p>Illustrative cases include the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/06/17/878828088/5-years-after-charleston-church-massacre-what-have-we-learned">2015 Charleston church shooting</a>, when white supremacist Dylann Roof killed nine Black parishioners; the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/tag/tree-of-life-synagogue">2018 Tree of Life synagogue attack</a> in Pittsburgh, where 11 worshippers were murdered; the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/tag/el-paso-shooting">2019 El Paso Walmart massacre</a>, in which an anti-immigrant gunman killed 23 people. The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, an earlier but still notable example, killed 168 in the <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/oklahoma-city-bombing">deadliest domestic terrorist attack in U.S. history</a>.</p>
<p>By contrast, left-wing extremist incidents, including those tied to anarchist or environmental movements, have made up about 10& to 15% of incidents and less than 5% of fatalities.</p>
<p>Examples include the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front <a href="https://digitalcommons.buffalostate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1062&context=history_theses">arson and vandalism campaigns in the 1990s and 2000s</a>, which were more likely to target property rather than people.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/05/02/us/seattle-may-day-protests">Violence occurred during Seattle May Day protests in 2016</a>, with anarchist groups and other demonstrators clashing with police. The clashes resulted in multiple injuries and arrests. In 2016, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/09/us/dallas-police-shooting.html">five Dallas police officers were murdered</a> by a heavily armed sniper who was targeting white police officers.</p>
<h2>Hard to count</h2>
<p>There’s another reason it’s hard to account for and characterize certain kinds of political violence and those who perpetrate it.</p>
<p>The U.S. focuses on prosecuting criminal acts rather than formally designating organizations as terrorist, <a href="https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R46829">relying on existing statutes</a> such as conspiracy, weapons violations, <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual-109-rico-charges">RICO provisions</a> and hate crime laws to pursue individuals for specific acts of violence.</p>
<p>Unlike foreign terrorism, <a href="https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R47885">the federal government does not have a mechanism</a> to formally charge an individual with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/10/brandon-russell-neo-nazi-bomb-plot-trial">domestic terrorism</a>. That makes it difficult to characterize someone as a domestic terrorist.</p>
<p>The State Department’s <a href="https://www.state.gov/foreign-terrorist-organizations#:~:text=%C2%A7%202339A(b)(1,)(1)(A)">Foreign Terrorist Organization list</a> applies only to groups outside of the United States. By contrast, U.S. law bars the government from labeling domestic political organizations as <a href="https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-136/responding-to-domestic-terrorism-a-crisis-of-legitimacy/">terrorist entities</a> because of First Amendment free speech protections.</p>
<h2>Rhetoric is not evidence</h2>
<p>Without harmonized reporting and uniform definitions, the data will not provide an accurate overview of political violence in the U.S.</p>
<p>But we can make some important conclusions.</p>
<p>Politically motivated violence in the U.S. is <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/09/12/charlie-kirk-political-violence-expert-analysis-00558638">rare compared with overall violent crime</a>. Political violence has a disproportionate impact because even rare incidents can amplify fear, influence policy and deepen societal polarization.</p>
<p>Right-wing extremist violence has been <a href="https://ccjls.scholasticahq.com/article/26973-far-left-versus-far-right-fatal-violence-an-empirical-assessment-of-the-prevalence-of-ideologically-motivated-homicides-in-the-united-states">more frequent and more lethal than left-wing violence</a>. The number of extremist groups is substantial and <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=1098155677">skewed toward the right</a>, although a count of organizations does not necessarily reflect incidents of violence.</p>
<p>High-profile political violence often brings <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/extremism-scholar-analyzes-influence-of-rhetoric-on-political-violence">heightened rhetoric and pressure for sweeping responses</a>. Yet the empirical record shows that political violence remains concentrated within specific movements and networks <a href="https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2025/09/12/is-radical-left-violence-really-on-the-rise-in-america">rather than spread evenly across the ideological spectrum</a>. Distinguishing between rhetoric and evidence <a href="https://www.asisonline.org/security-management-magazine/latest-news/today-in-security/2025/september/political-violence-risks/">is essential for democracy</a>.</p>
<p>Trump and members of his administration are threatening to target whole organizations and movements and the people who work in them with aggressive legal measures – to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-radical-left-healing-charlie-kirk-assassination-rcna231032">jail them</a> or <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/us/politics/jd-vance-charlie-kirk-show.html">scrutinize their favorable tax status</a>. But research shows that the majority of political violence comes from people <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/report/murder-and-extremism-united-states-2024">following right-wing ideologies</a>.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img decoding="async" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/265367/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/right-wing-extremist-violence-is-more-frequent-and-more-deadly-than-left-wing-violence-what-the-data-shows-265367">original article</a>.</em></p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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