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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/psychedelic-experiences-linked-to-reduced-cannabis-use-and-greater-psychological-flexibility/" 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;">Psychedelic experiences linked to reduced cannabis use and greater psychological flexibility</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Oct 17th 2025, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in the <em><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02791072.2024.2375720" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Journal of Psychoactive Drugs</a></em> has found that psychedelic experiences are linked to reductions in cannabis use and improvements in psychological flexibility. Participants who reported a personally meaningful experience with a classic psychedelic, such as LSD or psilocybin, tended to show lower levels of problematic cannabis use afterward, and many also reported changes in how they relate to difficult thoughts and emotions. The findings suggest that naturalistic psychedelic experiences might influence substance use behaviors in a lasting way.</p>
<p>Cannabis use has increased considerably over the past decade. According to global data from 2020, more than 190 million people reported using cannabis in the previous year. As use becomes more common, so does the risk of developing cannabis use disorder, a condition that affects roughly one in ten users and is associated with significant challenges, including high relapse rates and few effective treatment options.</p>
<p>Currently, there are no approved medications for treating cannabis use disorder. Behavioral interventions can help, but their effects often do not last. Researchers are increasingly interested in whether psychedelics might offer a new path forward. Prior studies suggest potential benefits of psychedelics in treating tobacco and alcohol dependence. There is also some evidence that psychedelics might reduce cannabis use, but those earlier studies often relied on targeted sampling methods or did not explore changes in psychological functioning.</p>
<p>The new study sought to build on this early work by using a broader sample of cannabis users who had experienced a psychedelic trip that they considered personally significant. The researchers aimed to find out whether these experiences were followed by lasting changes in cannabis use and in psychological flexibility, a factor often associated with mental health and well-being.</p>
<p>“Cannabis use disorder is very common in the general population, and currently, there are no pharmacological treatments that have proven effective for this condition. Moreover, psychedelics have shown promising results in treating substance use disorders, but very few studies have investigated their effects on cannabis use disorder,” said study author Bruno Roméo of the Department of Psychiatry and Addictology at Paul Brousse Hospital and the PSYCOMADD research unit at Paris-Saclay University.</p>
<p>The researchers conducted an online retrospective survey between March and July 2023. Participants were recruited through the French Psychedelic Society’s website and social media. To be eligible, participants had to be at least 18 years old, fluent in French, have used cannabis, and report having had a significant psychedelic experience at least six months prior.</p>
<p>A total of 152 participants completed most or all of the survey. They were asked to recall their cannabis use before and after their psychedelic experience. They also completed standardized questionnaires measuring the severity of cannabis use problems, psychological flexibility, and the intensity of their psychedelic experience.</p>
<p>The majority of participants were men, with an average age of 36. Most described their chosen psychedelic experience as recreational or motivated by self-exploration. Common substances included LSD and psilocybin. Very few participants reported that their psychedelic experience was originally intended to help them stop using cannabis.</p>
<p>Despite this, the study found a significant decline in problematic cannabis use following the psychedelic experience. Scores on the Cannabis Use Disorder Identification Test dropped by about 38 percent from the baseline measurement to the six-month follow-up. These reductions were evident as early as one month after the experience and appeared to persist over time.</p>
<p>Cannabis use became less frequent, and the daily duration of intoxication also decreased. For example, the number of participants who met criteria for severe cannabis use disorder dropped from roughly 23 percent to about 9 percent over six months. Similarly, the proportion of participants who reported cannabis cravings and tolerance also declined.</p>
<p>At the same time, participants showed an increase in psychological flexibility, as measured by a validated self-report questionnaire. Psychological flexibility refers to a person’s ability to adapt to challenging situations, stay open to emotional experiences, and pursue meaningful goals even when facing discomfort. Scores on this measure rose significantly one month after the psychedelic experience and remained elevated six months later.</p>
<p>Another notable finding was the association between the intensity of the psychedelic experience and the reported changes. Participants who rated their experience as more intense on a mystical experience scale were more likely to report reductions in cannabis use and gains in psychological flexibility. These correlations suggest that the subjective nature of the experience might play a role in the observed changes.</p>
<p>However, when the researchers used a statistical model to predict who would reduce their cannabis use, they found that baseline severity was the strongest predictor. The intensity of the mystical experience and changes in psychological flexibility did not emerge as direct predictors in that model, though they remained correlated with change in other analyses.</p>
<p>“The main key takeaways: An association was found between naturalistic psychedelic use and a reduction in CUDIT scores, frequency of cannabis use, and the acute duration of daily intoxication,” Roméo told PsyPost. “Participants reported a concomitant increase in psychological flexibility following their psychedelic experiences, which was correlated with the intensity of the psychedelic experience.”</p>
<p>As with all research, there are limitations to consider. Because the research was retrospective and relied on self-reported memories, the results are subject to recall bias. Participants were asked to compare their current and past behavior based on memory, and the accuracy of these recollections cannot be verified.</p>
<p>There was no control group of individuals who had not taken psychedelics, making it difficult to determine whether the changes were directly caused by the psychedelic experience. Many other factors could explain the observed changes, such as life events, personal motivation, or broader shifts in cannabis use patterns.</p>
<p>“There is a major limitation, which is the retrospective design of our study,” Roméo said. “This design does not allow us to attribute potential causality to our results.”</p>
<p>The sample was also self-selected and recruited through a psychedelic interest group. People who had positive experiences with psychedelics may have been more likely to take part in the survey. This introduces the possibility of volunteer bias. It is also likely that participants chose to describe their most meaningful psychedelic experience rather than one at random, which could have inflated the apparent benefits.</p>
<p>Despite these limitations, the study sheds additional light on the relationship between psychedelic experience and substance use patterns, and highlights some areas for future exploration. The authors propose that a prospective study—where participants are followed over time starting before their psychedelic experience—could provide more conclusive evidence. They also suggest including therapeutic preparation and integration support, which are often used in clinical psychedelic trials, to better understand the role of context and psychological support.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02791072.2024.2375720" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Significant Psychedelic Experiences Evaluated for Mystical Characteristics Associated with Cannabis Use Reduction and Psychological Flexibility Improvement: A Naturalistic Cross-Sectional Retrospective Survey</a>,” was authored by B. Romeo, E. Kervadec, B. Fauvel, L. Strika-Bruneau, A. Amirouche, V. Verroust, P. Piolino, and A. Benyamina.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/how-a-single-detail-about-trump-radically-changes-partisan-views-on-immigration/" 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;">How a single detail about Trump radically changes partisan views on immigration</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Oct 17th 2025, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in the <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/XPS.2025.10013" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Journal of Experimental Political Science</a></em> suggests that Americans’ attitudes toward immigration are shaped not only by cultural or economic concerns but also by their beliefs about how immigrants vote. When Americans were told that certain immigrant groups favored Donald Trump and the Republican Party, Republicans became more supportive of immigration, while Democrats grew less supportive. These results suggest that perceptions of immigrants’ political preferences can influence support for immigration in ways that reflect broader partisan dynamics.</p>
<p>Public opinion on immigration in the United States tends to be deeply divided along party lines. Democrats are generally more supportive of increased immigration, while Republicans often take a more restrictive stance. Scholars have long examined how economic competition, cultural identity, and national security concerns contribute to these divisions. However, this study explores a different angle. It asks whether partisan assumptions about immigrants—specifically, beliefs about which political party they support—affect how Americans feel about letting more immigrants into the country.</p>
<p>There is a widespread perception in the United States that immigrants tend to vote for Democrats. This belief has been echoed in both mainstream media and right-wing commentary, and it has led some to claim that immigration benefits the Democratic Party at the ballot box. The authors of the study, Daniel McDowell of Syracuse University and David A. Steinberg of Johns Hopkins University, sought to test whether these assumptions shape people’s views about immigration policy.</p>
<p>“The way that immigrants are often portrayed as reliable Democratic voters is really what drew us to the topic,” explained McDowell, the Maxwell Advisory Board Professor of International Affairs. “This perception seemed to animate some of the resistance to immigration on the U..S political right, especially because more immigration would then result in diminished electoral success for Republicans down the road. We similarly wondered if some share of pro-immigration sentiment on the political left reflected the belief that new arrivals were essentially co-partisans, and that immigration could eventually bring about a permanent Democratic majority.”</p>
<p>To investigate this question, the researchers embedded a preregistered experiment in a nationally representative survey of 3,000 American adults. The survey was conducted in the final week before the 2024 United States presidential election. Participants were recruited through Dynata, a survey firm, and the sample was designed to reflect the general population in terms of age, gender, and education level.</p>
<p>The experiment focused on immigrants from two countries (Venezuela and Vietnam) because data from previous elections suggested that many immigrants from these countries had shifted toward supporting Donald Trump. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups. The control group received basic information about immigration from one of the two countries. The treatment group received the same information, but with an added sentence stating that most immigrants from that country support Donald Trump and the Republican Party.</p>
<p>After reading this information, respondents were asked whether they agreed or disagreed that the United States should allow more immigration from that country. They answered using a scale from zero to ten, with higher numbers indicating more support.</p>
<p>The study also included a follow-up question asking respondents whether they believed immigrants from the country they had just read about would support Trump or his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris. This question helped the researchers determine whether the treatment successfully shifted perceptions of immigrants’ political leanings.</p>
<p>The results show that most Americans in the control group (who received no political information about immigrants) assumed that migrants from Venezuela or Vietnam would vote for the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris. Nearly 80 percent of respondents in this group expected migrants to support her, compared to just 20 percent who believed they would back Trump.</p>
<p>In the treatment group, this pattern flipped. About 62 percent of those who were told that migrants supported Trump believed those immigrants would vote Republican. This suggests that the treatment worked as intended and successfully changed respondents’ beliefs about immigrant political preferences.</p>
<p>These changing perceptions had a strong effect on people’s views about immigration. In the control group, Democrats were the most supportive of increased immigration, giving an average score of 5.3 on the 10-point scale. Independents averaged 4.2, and Republicans just 3.0. These results are consistent with long-standing partisan divides on immigration.</p>
<p>But in the treatment group, where respondents were told that immigrants favored Trump, those divides disappeared. Republican support for immigration rose to an average score of 4.3. Meanwhile, Democratic support dropped to 4.4. This near-convergence indicates that beliefs about how immigrants vote can override traditional partisan divides on immigration.</p>
<p>“We were confident that the treatment effect would work as we expected, given the partisan nature of most issues in the United States today,” McDowell told PsyPost. “However, the size and durability of the treatment effect, conditional on party ID, across two culturally distinct immigrant groups was a bit surprising. In a sense, I guess you could say the treatment worked better than even we anticipated.”</p>
<p>The study also found that the effects were most pronounced among strong partisans. Republicans and Democrats who identified strongly with their party were more responsive to the treatment than those who considered themselves weak partisans. Independents, by contrast, were not significantly influenced by the treatment. Their average levels of support for immigration remained the same, whether or not they were told that immigrants favored Trump.</p>
<p>Importantly, the effects of the treatment were similar across both immigrant groups. Whether participants were asked about Venezuelan or Vietnamese immigrants, the direction of the effect stayed the same. However, all respondents were somewhat more favorable toward Vietnamese immigrants overall, a pattern that aligns with previous research suggesting Americans tend to prefer immigrants from certain regions or countries.</p>
<p>The researchers also explored whether political ideology, such as identifying as liberal or conservative, explained the results. Although ideology did influence responses to some degree, partisanship was a stronger predictor of how participants reacted to the information.</p>
<p>“Immigration attitudes are not immune to strategic electoral thinking and hyper-partisanship,” McDowell explained. “For many Americans, our study shows that the desirability of immigration depends not just on cultural or economic factors, but also whether voters believe migrants have the same partisan preferences that that they do.”</p>
<p>“Our findings will only have practical significance if Americans’ beliefs about immigrants’ partisan identities moves away from the status quo. If the underlying beliefs do not change, then our results will not be predictive of future shifts in immigration attitudes. On the other hand, if Americans begin to view immigrants as politically neutral, or even in some cases, likely Republican voters, then we would expect to see some convergence — or de-polarization — between Democratic and Republican voters on the issue. This is precisely what our results show. While it is too soon to tell if this is occurring, it is something to keep an eye on.”</p>
<p>Although the study provides clear evidence that Americans’ immigration views are shaped by their perceptions of immigrants’ political preferences, it has several limitations.</p>
<p>First, the researchers focused only on legal immigration. It remains uncertain whether similar results would appear when asking about unauthorized immigration or border enforcement, which are often more controversial topics. The study also asked only about immigration from two countries, which may not capture the full range of public opinion on immigration from other parts of the world.</p>
<p>Second, the researchers did not include a treatment where immigrants were described as supporting the Democratic Party. They made this decision because most Americans already assume that immigrants vote Democratic, but future studies could still explore how this assumption plays out when it is made explicit.</p>
<p>The study also cannot conclusively determine whether the observed effects are due to strategic thinking, personal affinity for like-minded individuals, or some combination of the two. More research is needed to better understand why people prefer immigrants who share their political views.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/XPS.2025.10013" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Do Immigrants’ Partisan Preferences Influence Americans’ Support for Immigration?,</a>” was published September 1, 2025.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/neuroscientists-can-now-predict-what-color-youre-seeing-the-secret-is-surprisingly-black-and-white/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Neuroscientists can now predict what color you’re seeing. The secret is surprisingly black and white.</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Oct 17th 2025, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2717-20.2025" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Journal of Neuroscience</a></em> suggests that the human brain responds to colors in a way that is surprisingly consistent across different people. By comparing patterns of brain activity, researchers were able to predict what color a person was seeing using a model trained on brain activity from other people. The findings indicate that color perception, while subjective, may be tied to shared structures in the visual system.</p>
<p>Color perception often feels personal. People frequently wonder whether the red they see looks the same to someone else. While this philosophical question remains open, neuroscience provides tools to explore whether the brain processes color in similar ways across individuals. Previous studies have shown that it is possible to decode what color a person is seeing based on their own brain activity. However, it was unclear whether such decoding could work across different brains.</p>
<p>Michael Bannert and Andreas Bartels, researchers at the University of Tübingen and Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, set out to explore whether color evokes similar patterns of brain activity in different people. They also wanted to understand how the brain’s organization based on visual space contributes to color processing.</p>
<p>Their study used a technique that aligned patterns of brain responses across individuals, not based on color itself, but on responses to black-and-white stimuli. This alignment allowed them to test whether information about color could be transferred from one person’s brain to another’s.</p>
<p>“We had been working on color vision for quite a while already when we discovered a method (developed by others) that made it possible to align neural responses from different brains to one another,” explained Bannert, a postdoctoral researcher. “‘Aligned’ here means that given a pattern of brain activity in one observer, you could compute what pattern of brain activity corresponds to that in another observer. Those methods were typically applied to brain data collected while people watched very complex, naturalistic input like movies. They had not been used to align isolated single visual features.”</p>
<p>“In particular in the context of color we believed that this was an important applications because it has been a long-standing philosophical question if people see the same colors differently or similarly. This matters because colors do not objectively exist in the external world but instead are the product of our minds. Color experience is just the result of our minds making sense of the sensory input.”</p>
<p>“Although we were aware that fMRI data would not tell us how different observers would <em>consciously perceive</em> a color (in the sense of qualia, i.e., in the sense of ‘what it is like to see red’) we felt that it would be the closest thing we could do to address this question by asking a slightly easier one: Are the patterns of brain activity in some way similar when two different people see the same stimulus?”</p>
<p>The study involved 15 adult participants who underwent brain scans while looking at visual stimuli. Each participant took part in two types of scanning sessions. In the first, researchers used a method called retinotopic mapping to identify how different parts of the visual field are represented across the cortex. This process involved viewing a black-and-white checkerboard pattern that moved systematically through the visual field. Because the stimuli contained no color, these scans captured brain activity related only to spatial location.</p>
<p>In the second part of the study, participants viewed colorful visual patterns consisting of expanding concentric rings. These rings came in three colors—red, green, and yellow—and were shown at either a high or low level of brightness. While participants focused on a central dot, their brain responses to these color stimuli were recorded using functional magnetic resonance imaging.</p>
<p>To align data across brains, the researchers applied a computational method known as shared response modeling. This technique allows the researchers to compare patterns of brain activity from different people by projecting them into a shared neural space. Importantly, the model was trained using only the data from the black-and-white retinotopic mapping scans. In other words, the alignment of brains was based solely on how they responded to the location of visual stimuli, not their color.</p>
<p>Once the brains were aligned, the team tested whether a machine learning classifier could use the brain activity from one group of participants to correctly predict the color or brightness being viewed by another participant. The results suggested that this was indeed possible.</p>
<p>When the model was trained on data from multiple participants and tested on a new person, it was able to identify the viewed color at levels significantly above chance. The success of this cross-brain prediction implies that color triggers shared patterns of neural activity in specific areas of the visual cortex. This outcome suggests that some aspects of color processing are consistent across individuals, at least in early and intermediate visual areas.</p>
<p>“When different observers see the same color stimulus, their brains responds in ways that are to some extent similar,” Bannert told PsyPost. “They are so similar in fact that it is possible to predict from activity in one person’s brain what color they are seeing if one already knows what the brain responses look like in other people’s brains. So, <em>to their brains</em> the same color looks in some sense similar.”</p>
<p>The researchers also found that color preferences were tied to specific regions in the visual field. For example, certain parts of the brain that processed areas near the center of gaze were more responsive to particular colors, such as yellow, while more peripheral areas showed stronger responses to other colors, like red or green. These patterns varied across different visual areas, suggesting that the brain’s color responses are shaped not only by the color itself but also by where the color appears in the visual field.</p>
<p>To test the reliability of these findings, the researchers ran additional analyses to see if they could predict, across individuals, which specific color each small part of the brain (known as a voxel) would respond to most strongly. These predictions also succeeded above chance, especially in early visual regions like V1 and V2, as well as in mid-level regions such as hV4 and LO1. This finding provides additional evidence that large-scale patterns of color sensitivity are shared across brains and are mapped according to visual space.</p>
<p>“It is important to understand how we predicted what color a person was seeing across different observers: The method involves a computer model that learns for each brain how it represents the visual field, i.e., what parts of the brain light up in response to a stimulus that appears in the center of what you’re seeing, to the left of it, to the right of it, top/bottom etc… basically by systematically stimulating all locations in the sensory array,” Bannert explained.</p>
<p>“For this systematic stimulation, people are shown flashing black and white checkerboard stimuli that move slowly across the field (called retinotopic mapping). Crucially, this stimulus does not involve any color! But nevertheless the computer model finds a mapping between the ways that different brains represents the visual space. And as it turns out, this mapping allows us to decode color from patterns in brain A, although the computer model only ever had access to color patterns observed in brains B, C, D, etc.”</p>
<p>“The fact that color decoding across brains is possible in the described way shows that it is at least partially driven by the fact that there is a systematic relationship between the representation of visual space and the representation of color and that this relationship is preserved across brains. Put simply: ‘Let me measure how your brain represents your visual space (with standard retinotopic mapping) and I will tell you what color you are seeing.'”</p>
<p>While the results suggest a shared neural basis for color perception, the researchers caution that this does not mean all individuals experience color identically. The study did not address how colors are subjectively perceived, only how the brain processes visual input. In other words, while the neural code for a particular color may be similar across people, this does not confirm whether their internal experiences are the same.</p>
<p>Another limitation is that only three colors were tested, and the stimuli did not include blue, a color known to be processed differently in the visual system. The study also focused on relatively simple patterns in controlled conditions. Real-world visual experiences are often more complex, involving interactions of color with motion, texture, and meaning.</p>
<p>Future studies could expand this approach to a wider range of colors, test for responses in more naturalistic settings, or explore how personal experience and learning shape neural responses to color. Researchers may also investigate whether these shared patterns extend to other aspects of visual experience, such as shape, depth, or motion.</p>
<p>“It is important to understand that we are not solving the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness. We do not know what it feels like to observers to see a particular color,” Bannert said. “Nor do we know how that relates to the experience of color in a different person. We just solve the neuroscientific equivalent of that problem: Does seeing the same color elicit the same brain pattern in different observers. It is still possible that, subjectively, people’s subjective color experience will drastically differ even though neural representations may share some similarities. The mapping between neural processes and visual consciousness may still differ wildly across people.”</p>
<p>“We are not trying to solve the problem of color qualia,” the researcher added. “The hard problem of consciousness will remain beyond our methods in the foreseeable future and is this imposing a bound on what we can achieve in this respect. The last 25 years of consciousness research with the most modern neuroscientific methods <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-25-year-old-bet-about-consciousness-has-finally-been-settled/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">has failed to show a clear neural correlate of consciousness</a>. If I had to bet, I would say that it’ll stay this way in the next 25 years at least.”</p>
<p>“But there are certain aspects that can be addressed using experimental paradigms that do tell us important lessons about color perception and at least about small aspects of consciousness. (‘Access consciousness’ is an example, i.e., the extent to which perceptual content can be used by observers to provide report about their visual experience. Note that this is something that a ‘zombie’ could do in principle — a person without any consciousness… or: a clever AI.) We use such experimental paradigm for instance to investigate how people’s knowledge about specific object/color associations determine how easily certain stimuli enter our consciousness in the first place? It turns out that congruent object/color pairs (red strawberry) are more likely to be perceived than incongruent ones (red broccoli).”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2717-20.2025" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Large-Scale Color Biases in the Retinotopic Functional Architecture Are Region Specific and Shared across Human Brains</a>,” was published October 15, 2025.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/income-inequality-appears-to-shape-childrens-brain-development/" 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;">Income inequality appears to shape children’s brain development</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Oct 16th 2025, 16:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-025-00508-1" target="_blank">Nature Mental Health</a></em> has found that children growing up in states with higher income inequality show measurable differences in brain structure and function that may contribute to mental health problems later on. The findings are based on brain scans and psychological assessments of thousands of children aged 9 to 10 in the United States. The results suggest that inequality is associated with thinner and smaller brain regions as well as altered brain network communication.</p>
<p>Adolescence is a period of rapid brain development and increased vulnerability to mental health issues. Previous research has focused heavily on how a family’s income or education levels can influence children’s mental health and brain development. However, the broader effects of structural inequality—the extent to which income is unevenly distributed across a population—have not been thoroughly examined. This study aimed to fill that gap by asking whether state-level income inequality is linked to changes in the developing brain and whether those changes could help explain mental health risks in adolescents.</p>
<p>The authors were motivated by growing evidence that unequal societies tend to have higher rates of mental health problems. These outcomes are not limited to those living in poverty. Rather, inequality itself appears to influence social experiences such as perceived social status, comparisons with others, and feelings of belonging. </p>
<p>These social processes can be stressful, especially for children, and prolonged stress is known to affect the brain. By identifying whether inequality leaves a detectable imprint on the brain during early development, the researchers hoped to better understand one potential biological pathway connecting social conditions to psychological outcomes.</p>
<p>“While numerous studies have examined links between individual socioeconomic status (like family income or parent education), whether macroeconomic factors can also get under the skin and become biologically embedded was unknown,” said study author <a href="https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/divyangana-rakesh" target="_blank">Divyangana Rakesh</a> (<a href="https://bsky.app/profile/divyangana.bsky.social" target="_blank">@divyangana</a>), a lecturer at King’s College London. “Our paper is an important contribution as it links a structural characteristic of a society to children’s brain structure and function. Our findings highlight that structural inequality, over and above family income, is associated with children’s brains.”</p>
<p>The researchers used data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, a long-term project tracking nearly 12,000 children across the United States. For this analysis, they focused on a subset of more than 8,000 children from 17 states who had usable brain scans and mental health assessments. The children were between 9 and 10 years old at the time of the brain imaging and came from a variety of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds.</p>
<p>State-level income inequality was measured using the Gini coefficient, a standard tool in economics. A Gini score of 0 means perfect equality, while a score of 1 means perfect inequality. The researchers compared children’s brain images and psychological symptoms with the level of income inequality in the states where they lived. Importantly, the analysis adjusted for a wide range of other variables, including family income, parental education, mental health, and state policies like Medicaid expansion.</p>
<p>The researchers found that children in states with higher income inequality tended to have thinner and smaller brains overall. These effects were widespread, appearing across many regions involved in decision-making, emotional regulation, attention, and sensory processing. </p>
<p>Children from more unequal states also showed altered patterns of communication between major brain networks. In particular, connections between the default mode network, which is active during inward thought, and the dorsal attention network, which helps focus on external tasks, were different in these children.</p>
<p>To find out whether these brain differences helped explain the link between inequality and mental health, the researchers followed up with participants six months and 18 months after the initial scan. They found that lower brain volume, reduced surface area, and changes in communication between specific brain networks partly mediated the connection between growing up in an unequal state and experiencing more mental health symptoms over time. These symptoms included trouble with attention, mood, and behavior.</p>
<p>“These findings add to the growing literature which demonstrates how social factors, in this instance income inequality, can influence well-being through pathways which include structural changes in the brain,” said co-author Vikram Patel, a professor of Harvard University.</p>
<p>Co-author Kate Pickett, a professor at the University of York, added: “Our paper emphasizes that reducing inequality isn’t just about economics – it’s a public health imperative. The brain changes we observed in regions involved in emotion regulation and attention suggest that inequality creates a toxic social environment that literally shapes how young minds develop, with consequences for mental health and impacts that can last a lifetime. This is a significant advance in understanding how societal-level inequality gets under the skin to affect mental health.”</p>
<p>The researchers emphasize that these associations held even after accounting for family-level economic status. This suggests that inequality itself—how resources are distributed across society—has a unique influence on developing brains and mental wellbeing.</p>
<p>The study is large and comprehensive, but it also has limitations. The authors caution that the findings are correlational. That means they show associations between inequality, brain development, and mental health, but they do not prove that inequality directly causes these changes. Experimental or longitudinal research would be needed to establish causality.</p>
<p>The study also focused only on state-level inequality, which may not fully capture children’s local environments. Smaller-scale factors like neighborhood segregation or school resources could also play a role. Additionally, the researchers did not measure stress directly, so while chronic stress is a likely explanation for the brain changes observed, it remains a hypothesis to be tested in future work.</p>
<p>The results are also based on average effects. While the associations are statistically significant, they represent modest differences that may accumulate over time or interact with other risk factors in complex ways.</p>
<p>Another limitation is that the brain measures were averaged across both hemispheres, which might have missed important differences between the left and right sides of the brain. The mental health outcomes were also broad, combining symptoms from multiple categories into a single score. Future research could explore whether specific brain changes are linked to particular types of mental health issues, such as anxiety or attention problems.</p>
<p>Finally, the researchers acknowledge that inequality itself is a multi-dimensional construct. The Gini coefficient captures income distribution but does not include information about wealth, access to resources, or economic mobility. Including additional measures in future studies may offer a more complete picture of how inequality shapes development.</p>
<p>“I would like to replicate it in the United Kingdom and using international data if possible, as well as test associations with longitudinal brain development,” Rakesh said. “I’m also interested in elucidating the pathways through which this happens.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-025-00508-1" target="_blank">Macroeconomic income inequality, brain structure and function, and mental health</a>,” was authored by Divyangana Rakesh, Dimitris I. Tsomokos, Teresa Vargas, Kate E. Pickett, and Vikram Patel.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/in-later-life-a-partners-happiness-is-closely-linked-to-your-own-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;">In later life, a partner’s happiness is closely linked to your own, study finds</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Oct 16th 2025, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study of older European couples reveals that an individual’s life satisfaction is strongly connected to that of their romantic partner. This emotional link is influenced by factors like caregiving roles, health status, and social connections, highlighting the deeply intertwined nature of well-being in later life. The findings were published in the journal <em><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11205-025-03699-3" target="_blank">Social Indicators Research</a>.</em></p>
<p>Researchers have long sought to understand what contributes to a person’s sense of well-being, especially as they age. While factors like personal health and financial security are known to be important, less is understood about how the happiness of the people closest to us affects our own. </p>
<p>A team of researchers led by Terhi Auvinen of the University of Eastern Finland aimed to fill this gap by exploring the connection between partners’ life satisfaction. Their work was guided by theories like “linked lives” and “family systems theory,” which propose that individuals in a family unit are interdependent, and an event affecting one member can ripple through to affect others.</p>
<p>The investigation focused on older couples for several reasons. As people enter their later years and often retire, their social worlds can narrow, making the spousal relationship a more central source of companionship and support. This stage of life also brings an increased likelihood of health challenges, which can lead to one partner taking on a caregiving role for the other. These dynamics suggest that a partner’s state of mind and general satisfaction with life could have a particularly strong influence on an individual’s own well-being. Understanding this connection is important for developing effective social and health policies for aging populations.</p>
<p>To conduct their analysis, the researchers used a vast and comprehensive dataset from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). This long-term project collects information from tens of thousands of adults over the age of 50 across 28 different countries. The team analyzed seven waves of survey data, allowing them to track changes in couples’ lives over many years. Their final sample included 24,760 opposite-sex couples, amounting to more than 155,000 separate observations over time.</p>
<p>In the survey, participants rated their life satisfaction on a scale from 0 (“completely dissatisfied”) to 10 (“completely satisfied”). The researchers used a statistical technique known as fixed effects regression. This method is well-suited for tracking changes over time because it focuses on what happens within an individual’s life, effectively controlling for stable personal traits like personality or background that do not change. The analysis also accounted for other time-varying factors, including each partner’s health, functional limitations, employment status, perceived financial situation, and whether they were giving or receiving care.</p>
<p>The study’s main finding was a robust and consistent association between the life satisfaction of partners. On average, for every one-point increase in a partner’s reported life satisfaction, an individual’s own satisfaction increased by approximately 0.3 points. This link held firm even after the researchers controlled for a wide range of personal and household characteristics, such as health problems, financial strain, or changes in social networks. The connection was also equally strong for both men and women.</p>
<p>“It is well known that being in a relationship generally increases well-being and life satisfaction, as do other well-functioning social relationships. In many ways, we are dependent on the people around us, and their experiences and challenges are also reflected in ourselves,” said doctoral researcher Terhi Auvinen from the University of Eastern Finland. While about two-thirds of couples reported similar levels of life satisfaction, the study also found that in more than a third of cases, partners reported differing levels of happiness.</p>
<p>The researchers then explored specific circumstances that might alter the strength of this emotional link. They found that health disparities played a part. The association between partners’ happiness was slightly weaker when only one person in the relationship had chronic health conditions or disabilities. A similar pattern emerged in caregiving situations. The connection was weakest when an individual was the sole provider of personal care for their partner, suggesting that this demanding role may create a degree of emotional distance.</p>
<p>An individual’s social life outside the relationship also appeared to be a factor, particularly for women. For female respondents, the link to their partner’s life satisfaction was strongest when their own social network was very small, consisting of only one person they could confide in. As a woman’s network of friends, family, and other confidants grew larger, her well-being became less tied to her partner’s. For men, the size of their social network did not appear to change the strength of this connection.</p>
<p>“Women with a broad social network may be emotionally less dependent on their partner. However, the size of a man’s social network did not have an effect on how strongly their partner’s life satisfaction influenced their own,” Auvinen said.</p>
<p>The study also revealed significant differences across nations. The association between partners’ life satisfaction was strongest in several Eastern and Southern European countries, including Hungary, Slovakia, and Greece. In contrast, the link was weakest in Western and Northern European nations that tend to report higher overall life satisfaction, such as Finland, Denmark, Sweden, and Switzerland. This suggests that in societies with a higher baseline of well-being and potentially stronger social safety nets, individuals may be more emotionally independent within their romantic relationships.</p>
<p>These findings have important implications for how we think about well-being in aging populations. They show that life satisfaction is not merely an individual experience but a shared one within a couple. This suggests that interventions aimed at improving a person’s quality of life may have positive spillover effects on their partner. For instance, providing support to an individual with a chronic illness could also boost the well-being of their spouse. Considering the couple as a unit could make health and social policies more effective.</p>
<p>“SHARE enables us to seek solutions to questions and consequences related to population ageing. For decision-makers, it provides reliable and comparable information to support policymaking,” said Professor Ismo Linnosmaa of the University of Eastern Finland.</p>
<p>The authors acknowledge some limitations to their work. While their analysis shows a strong association, it cannot definitively prove that one partner’s happiness causes the other’s. The influence is likely reciprocal, with partners affecting each other simultaneously. The study was also limited to older, opposite-sex couples, meaning the results may not generalize to younger people or same-sex couples.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11205-025-03699-3" target="_blank">(Un)happy Together—The Interrelated Life Satisfaction of Older Couples</a>,” was authored by Terhi Auvinen, Joonas Uotinen, and Maria Vaalavuo.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/your-address-holds-clues-to-your-brains-structure-and-function-according-to-new-neuroscience-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;">Your address holds clues to your brain’s structure and function, according to new neuroscience research</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Oct 16th 2025, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study suggests that where a person lives can be linked to their brain health and potential risk for dementia. Researchers found that individuals residing in neighborhoods with greater social, economic, and environmental challenges showed measurable differences in their brain structure and function. The findings were published in <em><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/bsa3.70030" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Behavior & Socioeconomics of Aging</a></em>, a journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.</p>
<p>Scientists have long documented that Black and other minority communities experience higher rates of Alzheimer’s disease. Many researchers believe these disparities are not explained by biology alone but are influenced by social and structural factors, often called the social determinants of health.</p>
<p>These determinants are the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age. While previous studies have connected neighborhood conditions to memory and thinking skills, few have examined the direct biological links to brain changes seen in imaging scans and blood tests.</p>
<p>A team of researchers led by Sudarshan Krishnamurthy at Wake Forest University School of Medicine sought to fill this gap. They aimed to understand if living in a disadvantaged area was associated with the physical markers of brain health related to Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. They wanted to see if factors like poverty, environmental pollution, and social vulnerability left a tangible imprint on the brain. This approach moves beyond cognitive test scores to explore the underlying biology.</p>
<p>The investigation involved 679 adults aged 54 and older who were part of the Wake Forest Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center Healthy Brain Study. The group included 157 participants who identified as Black or African American and 522 who identified as White.</p>
<p>The researchers linked each participant’s home address to three different national databases that measure neighborhood-level challenges. These included the Area Deprivation Index, which assesses factors like poverty, education, housing quality, and employment. They also used the Social Vulnerability Index, which measures a community’s preparedness to handle disasters and includes data on socioeconomic status, household characteristics, and transportation access. The third measure was the Environmental Justice Index, which adds environmental burdens like air and water pollution and proximity to hazardous sites.</p>
<p>Each participant also underwent a series of health assessments. Magnetic resonance imaging scans were used to get a detailed look at their brain structure and function. The scientists measured the thickness of the cortex, which is the brain’s outer layer responsible for higher-level thinking. They also examined the volume of white matter hyperintensities, which are small areas of damage often linked to vascular problems.</p>
<p>In addition, they assessed cerebral blood flow, or how much blood is reaching different parts of the brain. The team also collected blood samples to measure the levels of plasma biomarkers, which are proteins associated with the development of Alzheimer’s disease.</p>
<p>The analysis first revealed that, on average, the Black participants in the study lived in neighborhoods with significantly higher levels of disadvantage, social vulnerability, and environmental injustice compared to the White participants.</p>
<p>When the researchers looked for connections between these neighborhood scores and brain health, they found a distinct pattern. Among Black participants, living in an area with greater disadvantage was associated with poorer neuroimaging outcomes. Specifically, higher scores on the neighborhood indices were linked to a thinner cortex in brain regions vulnerable to Alzheimer’s disease. These participants also showed less uniform blood flow in the brain’s gray matter.</p>
<p>These associations were not observed among the White participants. Even after the researchers accounted for individual health factors like blood pressure, cholesterol, and diabetes through a cardiometabolic index, the link between neighborhood conditions and brain imaging markers in Black participants remained. The findings suggest that the environment where one lives may have a distinct impact on brain health that is independent of some personal health metrics.</p>
<p>“This study is consistent with other research showing that the state of the social environment in which people live can shape their brain health in profound ways,” said Timothy Hughes, an associate professor of gerontology and geriatric medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and the study’s senior author.</p>
<p>This work builds on previous research that has found similar connections. For example, <a href="https://www.psypost.org/surprisingly-strong-link-found-between-a-womans-address-and-her-memory-decline/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">another recent study</a> published in <em>Alzheimer’s & Dementia</em> showed that women in midlife who lived in neighborhoods with high concentrated poverty experienced faster memory decline, with the sharpest decline seen among Black women. The Wake Forest study adds a critical layer to this by connecting neighborhood factors not just to cognitive performance but to the underlying biological changes in the brain itself.</p>
<p>“This study is one of the first to connect a variety of place-based social factors with advanced biological markers of dementia,” said Krishnamurthy, a sixth-year M.D.-Ph.D. candidate and lead author. “It shows that the conditions and environment in which people live, such as access to clean air, safe housing, nutritious food and economic opportunity, may leave a lasting imprint on brain health.”</p>
<p>The researchers note that the place-based measures used in the study may partially capture the effects of structural racism. The inequitable distribution of resources, opportunities, and environmental hazards across neighborhoods often falls along racial lines, creating disparities in health outcomes. The study contributes to a growing body of evidence that social and environmental factors are not just background influences but are central to understanding and addressing Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.</p>
<p>Krishnamurthy emphasized the policy relevance of the findings. “If we truly want to improve brain health across all communities, we must look beyond individual choices and hone in on the broader systems and structures that shape health at the neighborhood level.”</p>
<p>The study does have some limitations. Because the data was collected at a single point in time, it cannot prove that neighborhood conditions cause brain changes, only that they are associated. The study also did not include participants from other racial and ethnic groups, such as Hispanic or Asian American communities, where these factors may have different effects. Finally, the researchers did not have information on how long each participant had lived in their respective neighborhood, which could influence the level of exposure to these environmental factors.</p>
<p>Future research is needed to confirm these findings in larger, more diverse populations over longer periods. Such studies could help to illustrate the origins of disparities in Alzheimer’s outcomes and identify specific interventions. The authors suggest that both grassroots initiatives and policy efforts aimed at improving neighborhood conditions may be effective strategies for promoting better brain health and reducing dementia risk for everyone.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/bsa3.70030" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Associations of place-based social determinants of health with biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias</a>,” was authored by Sudarshan Krishnamurthy, Lingyi Lu, Marc D. Rudolph, Melissa Rundle, Courtney Sutphen, Thomas C. Register, Xiaoyan I. Leng, Sarah A. Gaussoin, Megan Lipford, Da Ma, Allison Caban-Holt, Goldie S. Byrd, Laura D. Baker, Samuel N. Lockhart, Suzanne Craft, James R. Bateman, and Timothy M. Hughes.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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