<table style="border:1px solid #adadad; background-color: #F3F1EC; color: #666666; padding:8px; -webkit-border-radius:4px; border-radius:4px; -moz-border-radius:4px; line-height:16px; margin-bottom:6px;" width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:20px;font-weight:bold;">PsyPost – Psychology News</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> </td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table style="font:13px Helvetica, sans-serif; border-radius:4px; -moz-border-radius:4px; -webkit-border-radius:4px; background-color:#fff; padding:8px; margin-bottom:6px; border:1px solid #adadad;" width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/psilocybin-unlocks-a-specific-biological-signature-in-the-brain-linked-to-profound-mystical-states/" 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;">Psilocybin unlocks a specific biological signature in the brain linked to profound mystical states</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 19th 2026, 10:00</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#494949;text-align:justify;font-size:13px;">
<p><p>A recent study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pnpbp.2026.111626" target="_blank">Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry</a></em> sheds light on how psilocybin alters human brain activity, shifting it from a resting state to a highly engaged pattern of processing. Scientists found that these measurable brain wave changes directly correspond to the intensity of a person’s psychedelic experience. The research also suggests that a person’s resting brain activity before taking the drug might predict how strongly they will respond, opening new possibilities for personalized therapies.</p>
<p>Psilocybin is the active chemical found in “magic mushrooms” that can cause profound changes in perception, mood, and thought. By interacting with specific serotonin receptors in the brain, the substance tends to promote neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to form new connections. In recent years, scientists have explored its potential as a treatment for conditions like depression, addictive disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorder.</p>
<p>Early clinical trials suggest that even a single dose of psilocybin might help patients reconnect with their emotions and find meaning in daily experiences. Despite this promise, the exact ways psilocybin affects the brain’s rapid electrical activity remain partly unclear.</p>
<p>A research team from the University of Macau and the University of Zurich conducted this study to explore how psilocybin alters fast brain dynamics. They also wanted to see if measuring a person’s baseline brain activity could help explain why people have such different subjective experiences when taking the drug. Developing a better understanding of these mechanisms could help identify which patients are most likely to benefit from this intensive type of treatment.</p>
<p>“Many conventional antidepressants need to be taken daily, and some patients report emotional blunting, meaning they feel less engaged or less responsive to everyday experiences,” said study authors <a href="https://ccbs.ici.um.edu.mo/prof-cheng-teng-ip/" target="_blank">Cheng-Teng Ip</a> and Sebastian Olbrich.</p>
<p>“In recent years, psilocybin has gained interest because early clinical studies suggest that even single administration may help patients reconnect with emotions and meaningful experiences. Yet despite this promise, we still know relatively little about what actually happens in the brain during these effects. In this study, we therefore used EEG to study how psilocybin changes fast brain dynamics and whether baseline brain activity might help explain why people differ in their subjective response.”</p>
<p>The scientists recruited 25 healthy individuals, consisting of 18 males and 7 females with an average age of about 24 years. The study used a double-blind, randomized, crossover design, meaning participants received both the active drug and a placebo on two separate days, spaced 14 days apart. Neither the participants nor the researchers knew which pill was being given on a specific measurement day.</p>
<p>The active dose was an oral capsule containing 10 to 20 milligrams of psilocybin, adjusted based on the participant’s body weight. The placebo was a visually identical capsule filled with inactive mannitol. During each session, the researchers recorded the brain’s electrical activity using an electroencephalogram, a non-invasive test that measures brain waves through small sensors attached to the scalp.</p>
<p>The scientists took 10-minute recordings before the participants took the capsule and again 60 minutes later, right before the drug’s effects were expected to peak. To measure the subjective psychedelic effects, participants completed a detailed survey called the Altered States of Consciousness Questionnaire. This survey evaluates different dimensions of the experience, such as feelings of unity, visual changes, auditory alterations, and anxiety.</p>
<p>When comparing the active drug to the placebo, the scientists observed clear shifts in brain wave patterns. Psilocybin reduced the power of slower brain rhythms, specifically theta and alpha waves. These slow waves are typically associated with relaxed, resting states and the regulation of basic human alertness.</p>
<p>At the same time, the drug increased the power of faster brain rhythms, known as beta and gamma waves. These fast brain waves are normally linked to high arousal, focused attention, and active information processing. This pattern suggests that psilocybin shifts the brain away from a normal idling state toward a highly dynamic and engaged state.</p>
<p>“Our results show that psilocybin produces clear changes in brain activity compared to placebo,” Ip and Olbrich told PsyPost. “In particular, we observed decreases in slower brain rhythms such as theta and alpha waves, which are typically linked to relaxed resting states and vigilance regulation, and increases in faster rhythms such as beta and gamma waves, which are often associated with heightened arousal and active information processing. This pattern suggests that psilocybin shifts the brain away from a typical resting-state pattern toward a more dynamically engaged brain state, possibly reflecting the vivid internally generated experiences that occur during the psychedelic state.”</p>
<p>The researchers also looked at how different parts of the brain communicate with each other, focusing heavily on the default mode network. This is a large-scale network of connected brain regions that typically activates when a person is daydreaming, reflecting on themselves, or letting their mind wander.</p>
<p>Under the influence of psilocybin, the scientists found increased communication and connectivity between the different regions of the default mode network. They also noted similar increases in connectivity within specific localized networks in the parietal lobe, an area near the back of the brain involved in processing sensory information. </p>
<p>When analyzing the survey responses, the researchers found that these changes in brain wave power and connectivity positively correlated with the participants’ subjective experiences. This means that individuals who showed the most intense shifts in their brain waves also reported the strongest psychedelic effects. For example, large clusters of fast brain wave activity correlated heavily with feelings of oceanic boundlessness, a term used to describe a sense of profound unity and positive mood. </p>
<p>“One striking finding was how closely the brain activity changes tracked the subjective psychedelic experience,” the researchers said. “The stronger the changes we observed in specific brain rhythms and network interactions, the more intense participants reported their experiences to be.”</p>
<p>The scientists also tested whether a participant’s brain activity before taking the drug could predict their later experience. They found that specific baseline brain wave patterns, particularly fast wave activity in the frontal and emotional centers of the brain, predicted the intensity of the subjective psychedelic experience. Individuals with higher baseline activity in these regions tended to report more profound psychological alterations after taking psilocybin. </p>
<p>“We were also intrigued to see that certain baseline EEG features were associated with how strongly individuals later responded to psilocybin,” Ip and Olbrich explained. “This suggests that the brain’s initial state before taking the drug may play an important role in shaping the psychedelic experience.”</p>
<p>While these findings provide evidence of how psilocybin alters brain function, there are a few limitations to consider. The study involved a relatively small sample of just 25 healthy participants. Two of the placebo recordings also had to be excluded due to technical issues, which slightly reduced the amount of usable data. This small sample size can restrict how broadly the findings can be applied to the general population. </p>
<p>“Although the study was conducted in healthy volunteers, identifying these neural patterns helps build a foundation for future work in patient populations and may eventually contribute to developing biomarkers that help guide psychedelic-assisted treatments,” Olbrich and Ip said.</p>
<p>In the future, the scientists plan to extend this line of research to clinical populations, including patients with major depressive disorder. They hope to determine whether brain wave patterns or other physiological signals, like heart rate variability, can serve as reliable biological markers.</p>
<p>“One of our longer-term goals is to better understand the mechanism that underlies psilocybin’s therapeutic effects,” the researchers told PsyPost. “There is an ongoing discussion about how much clinical improvement arises from psilocybin’s pharmacological effects and how much it depends on the accompanying psychotherapy and integration sessions.”</p>
<p>“At the same time, psychedelic treatments are relatively resource-intensive, typically requiring several hours of monitored treatment sessions alongside multiple preparation and integration meetings. As such, developing biological markers that help predict treatment response could therefore become very important for guiding patient selection and improving the efficiency and scalability of these therapies in the future.”</p>
<p>“This study examined how psilocybin alters brain activity in healthy participants during the psychedelic state,” Ip and Olbrich continued. “Our group is now extending this work to clinical populations to clarify how central and peripheral physiological signals relate to treatment outcomes.” </p>
<p>“In an upcoming study in patients with major depressive disorder, we are also examining how psilocybin affects heart rate variability and whether autonomic markers might help predict therapeutic response. In that cohort, we observed a comparable pattern of measurable physiological shifts, suggesting that psilocybin may modulate not only large-scale brain dynamics but also autonomic regulation.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pnpbp.2026.111626" target="_blank">Psilocybin-induced alterations in EEG power, connectivity and network dynamics in healthy subjects: Correlations with subjective experience and implications for therapeutic applications</a>,” was authored by Cheng-Teng Ip, Sebastian Olbrich, Mateo de Bardeci, Anna Monn, Andres Ort, John W. Smallridge, and Franz Vollenweider.</p></p>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:13px; text-align: center; color: #666666; padding:4px; margin-bottom:2px;"></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table style="font:13px Helvetica, sans-serif; border-radius:4px; -moz-border-radius:4px; -webkit-border-radius:4px; background-color:#fff; padding:8px; margin-bottom:6px; border:1px solid #adadad;" width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/romantic-indifference-breeds-boredom-lower-intimacy-and-a-wandering-eye/" 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;">Romantic indifference breeds boredom, lower intimacy, and a wandering eye</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 19th 2026, 08:00</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#494949;text-align:justify;font-size:13px;">
<p><p>A set of four studies found that indifference towards a romantic partner is associated with lower relationship and personal well-being. Feelings of boredom in the relationship, lower intimacy, and a higher desire for attractive alternatives were found to underlie this association. The paper was published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672251410278"><em>Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin</em></a>.</p>
<p>Indifference in romantic relationships is a state in which a person experiences neither strong positive nor strong negative feelings toward their partner. Instead of love, excitement, anger, or frustration, the relationship is characterized by emotional neutrality and a lack of affective engagement.</p>
<p>This absence of emotional investment can be particularly problematic because romantic relationships typically rely on strong emotional bonds. When a partner becomes indifferent, interactions may become mechanical, routine, or emotionally empty. Indifference manifests as boredom, reduced interest in shared activities, and a diminished desire for intimacy. Individuals who feel indifferent toward their partner may also become more attentive to attractive alternatives outside the relationship.</p>
<p>Because indifference involves a lack of both positive and negative emotions, it may signal emotional disengagement rather than active conflict. This state can be difficult to address in couples therapy, as there may be little emotional energy left to motivate change. Over time, persistent indifference may increase the likelihood of relationship dissolution.</p>
<p>Study author Mirna Đurić and her colleagues conducted a set of 4 studies investigating the associations between indifference in romantic relationships and well-being. They hypothesized that indifference would be associated with lower relationship satisfaction and personal well-being, and that this link might arise because of relational boredom, attention to other domains of life (such as work, hobbies, friends and family, or attractive alternatives), or lower intimacy.</p>
<p>In their pilot study, involving participants recruited via Prolific, the authors conducted an initial test of their hypotheses. Studies 1 and 2 were then conducted on 591 and 980 participants recruited via Prolific. The primary goal of these studies was to develop and validate the Subjective Interpersonal Indifference Scale (an assessment for measuring indifference). Finally, the participants of Study 3 were 360 individuals involved in romantic relationships recruited through a panel agency in the Netherlands. These couples were followed over a span of 3 years, allowing the study authors to examine the associations longitudinally. Every 6 months over the study period, participants were asked to complete online questionnaires.</p>
<p>In Study 1, participants completed assessments of indifference (the scale developed by the study authors), relationship well-being, personal well-being (three items from the Satisfaction with Life Scale, plus stress and depression from the DASS-21), relational boredom (the 15-item Relational Boredom Scale), and general partner evaluation.</p>
<p>In Study 2, the relational well-being scale was slightly adapted, and the study authors added measures of intimacy, desire for attractive alternatives (e.g., “Over the past two weeks how much did you desire someone other than your partner?”), and focus on work, hobbies, or other people. Study 3 used the same assessments as the previous studies with some minor adjustments to fit the longitudinal design.</p>
<p>Results of the first study showed that individuals experiencing higher levels of indifference had thoughts of breaking up more frequently and experienced more relational boredom. They tended to be much less satisfied with their relationships, to be less committed, to trust their partner less, and to be less satisfied with their lives. Importantly, these negative associations held true even when controlling for general partner devaluation, proving that indifference uniquely harms well-being rather than just being a byproduct of disliking a partner.</p>
<p>Study 2 confirmed these results and additionally indicated that indifference was linked to higher stress and more severe depressive symptoms. The authors tested statistical models proposing that the detrimental effects of indifference on well-being and relationship satisfaction are mediated by relational boredom, lower intimacy, and a desire for attractive alternatives. </p>
<p>The data supported these models: indifference toward one’s partner increased boredom, lowered intimacy, and made an individual desire attractive alternatives more. In turn, these factors reduced relationship satisfaction, trust, and life satisfaction, while increasing stress, depression, and thoughts of breaking up.</p>
<p>However, the analyses also revealed that focusing more heavily on work, hobbies, or other people did not mediate the link between indifference and relationship well-being. While the desire for attractive alternatives explained a great deal of the relationship decay, simply redirecting energy toward non-romantic tasks did not.</p>
<p>Results of Study 3 generally confirmed these findings across time. While longitudinal associations tended to be slightly weaker than concurrent ones, earlier indifference was still significantly associated with lower later relationship satisfaction. This decline was reliably predicted by higher earlier desires for attractive alternatives, relational boredom, and lower intimacy.</p>
<p>“In contrast to the strong positive, and occasional negative, evaluations that people expect to experience in romantic relationships, some individuals may instead experience indifference toward their romantic partner. Our findings reveal that this state – characterized by simultaneously low positive and negative evaluations – can be both distressing and harmful. Across four studies, we demonstrate that indifference toward a romantic partner is linked to higher relational boredom, higher desire for alternative partners, and lower intimacy, which are in turn associated with poorer relationship and personal well-being,” the study authors concluded.</p>
<p>The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the significance of indifference toward one’s romantic partner for relationship quality and overall well-being. However, it should be noted that the observational design of these studies does not allow for definitive causal interpretations. Additionally, all data were based on self-reports, leaving room for reporting bias to have affected the results.</p>
<p>The paper “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672251410278">Just Not That Into You: Experiences of Indifference Toward a Romantic Partner</a>” was authored by Mirna Đurić, Francesca Righetti, Giulia Zoppolat, and Iris K. Schneider.</p></p>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:13px; text-align: center; color: #666666; padding:4px; margin-bottom:2px;"></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table style="font:13px Helvetica, sans-serif; border-radius:4px; -moz-border-radius:4px; -webkit-border-radius:4px; background-color:#fff; padding:8px; margin-bottom:6px; border:1px solid #adadad;" width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/your-music-playlist-might-reveal-subtle-clues-about-your-intelligence/" 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 music playlist might reveal subtle clues about your intelligence</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 19th 2026, 06:00</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#494949;text-align:justify;font-size:13px;">
<p><p>A new study published in the <em>Journal of Intelligence</em> suggests that a person’s everyday music listening habits contain subtle clues about their general cognitive ability. Scientists discovered that the lyrics of the songs people choose to play provide more insight into their intelligence than the musical beats or melodies do. These findings provide evidence that the digital footprints we leave behind in our daily lives could eventually help approximate cognitive skills without formal testing.</p>
<p>Traditional intelligence assessments rely on formal tests given in highly controlled, stressful environments. Yet, cognitive abilities are used constantly to navigate the complexities of everyday life outside of the laboratory.</p>
<p>With smartphones and digital apps capturing so much of what we do, researchers saw an opportunity to study cognitive ability in a natural setting. They chose to focus on music listening because it is a very common daily activity that engages multiple brain networks involving memory, emotion, and auditory processing.</p>
<p>Past research linking music to intelligence has mostly relied on laboratory experiments or self-reported surveys. In those settings, people might misremember what they listen to or claim to like sophisticated music to look good. By using digital tracking data, the scientists aimed to capture exactly what people were listening to in the real world.</p>
<p>“Most research on cognitive abilities, or intelligence in simpler terms, focuses on situations where people try to perform their best, such as tests, school performance, or job tasks. Because of that, we know a lot about how cognitive abilities relate to achievement, but much less about whether they appear in everyday, low-stakes behaviors,” said study author <a href="https://www.lmu.de/psy/en/persons/contact-page/larissa-sust-d42de5af.html" target="_blank">Larissa Sust</a>, a postdoctoral researcher at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.</p>
<p>“At the same time, many daily activities now leave digital traces that allow us to study such real-life behavior more naturally than before. Our study was motivated by this gap: we wanted to see whether patterns in an everyday digital activity might also reflect differences in cognitive ability. As a starting point, we chose music listening, which is a common behavior that can easily be tracked on smartphones using custom research applications.”</p>
<p>The researchers tracked the smartphone usage of 185 participants over a period of five months. They utilized a custom research application installed on the participants’ personal phones to log every song played.</p>
<p>The participants also completed a short cognitive ability test on their smartphones. This test measured their capacity for fluid reasoning, vocabulary comprehension, and mathematical knowledge. These skills together make up a person’s general cognitive ability, which reflects how well someone can think rationally and adapt to new situations.</p>
<p>Over the course of the study, the participants listened to 58,247 unique songs. The researchers then gathered detailed information about these tracks from online music databases like Spotify. They extracted audio characteristics, such as the tempo and the acoustic qualities of the sound.</p>
<p>They also analyzed the lyrical content of the songs using a specialized linguistic tool. This tool categorized the words in the lyrics based on psychological themes, emotional tone, and social references. In total, the scientists gathered 215 different features related to audio, lyrics, and general listening habits for each participant.</p>
<p>To make sense of this massive amount of data, the researchers employed machine learning. Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence where computer programs analyze large sets of data to identify complex patterns. They trained these computer models to see if the music listening features could predict a participant’s score on the cognitive ability test.</p>
<p>The researchers tested different types of computer algorithms. Only the complex, nonlinear models successfully detected meaningful patterns in the data. This suggests that the relationship between music habits and intelligence is highly intricate rather than simple and direct.</p>
<p>The computer models detected a small but reliable link between a person’s music listening behavior and their cognitive test scores. The most informative predictors were not the musical sounds, but the words within the songs. The lyrical preferences of the participants provided the strongest evidence of their cognitive ability.</p>
<p>“When we looked more closely at how our prediction models worked and which aspects of music listening were most informative, one finding surprised us,” Sust told PsyPost. “The lyrics of the songs people listened to were more useful for predicting cognitive ability than the musical features.” </p>
<p>“In other words, the themes and language used in the lyrics seemed to matter more than aspects like tempo or musical key. This was unexpected because previous research often suggested that melodic preferences play a larger role (e.g., when predicting personality traits), and many people assume that intelligence is mainly reflected in preferences for certain genres, such as classical or jazz music.” </p>
<p>Specifically, the models found that people who listened to songs with less positive emotional tones tended to have higher predicted intelligence scores. The researchers suggest that sad or melancholic music might appeal to those who use music for introspection and reflection.</p>
<p>Songs with lyrics focused on the present moment, perceived honesty, and home-related topics were also associated with higher cognitive ability. On the other hand, preferring lyrics with many social words or tentative language tended to predict lower intelligence scores.</p>
<p>Audio characteristics contributed very little to predicting cognitive ability, with one notable exception. The models found that a preference for songs with low liveness was a strong predictor of higher intelligence. Liveness refers to the probability that a track was recorded in front of a live audience.</p>
<p>The scientists propose that live recordings are often highly energetic and less controlled. Individuals with higher cognitive ability might prefer studio recordings because they often use music for focused, intellectual engagement rather than high-energy stimulation.</p>
<p>Listening habits also played a role in the predictions. Participants who spent more time overall listening to music tended to have higher intelligence scores. Additionally, preferring songs in languages other than German, which was the native language of the sample, was associated with higher cognitive ability.</p>
<p>“One key takeaway is that cognitive abilities (or intelligence) may be reflected not only in tests or high-stakes performance but also subtly in everyday behavior,” Sust explained. “In our study, patterns in people’s music listening contained small but detectable signals related to their cognitive ability, suggesting that the digital traces we leave behind in daily life could potentially help approximate intelligence.”</p>
<p>“While music listening alone provides only limited information, combining multiple types of digital behavior (e.g., what books people read, what places they visit) in the future might make such predictions more accurate and could eventually support adaptive digital tools or early detection of cognitive decline.”</p>
<p>While these patterns are interesting, the researchers note some potential misinterpretations and limitations. The predictive power of music listening alone was quite small, meaning an app cannot accurately judge a person’s intelligence just by looking at their playlist. </p>
<p>“On their own, these effects are therefore likely not strong enough to be practically useful,” Sust noted. “However, they suggest that everyday digital behavior may contain small signals of cognitive differences, which could become more meaningful if combined with many other types of behavioral data.”</p>
<p>The relationships observed in the study are purely correlational, meaning that listening to certain music does not cause a person to become smarter or vice versa. The researchers caution that other unmeasured factors, such as a person’s age, could be influencing both their intelligence test scores and their music preferences. </p>
<p>“An important caveat is that the associations we found may be influenced by other factors, known as confounding variables,” Sust said. “For example, age could play a role, because it is related both to cognitive abilities and to the kinds of music people tend to listen to. We are currently working on follow-up analyses to better understand and account for such effects.”</p>
<p>The study, “Deep Beats, Deep Thoughts? Predicting General Cognitive Ability from Natural Music-Listening Behavior,” was authored by Larissa Sust, Maximilian Bergmann, Markus Bühner, and Ramona Schoedel.</p></p>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:13px; text-align: center; color: #666666; padding:4px; margin-bottom:2px;"></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table style="font:13px Helvetica, sans-serif; border-radius:4px; -moz-border-radius:4px; -webkit-border-radius:4px; background-color:#fff; padding:8px; margin-bottom:6px; border:1px solid #adadad;" width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/popular-ai-chatbots-generate-unsafe-diet-plans-for-teenagers/" 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;">Popular AI chatbots generate unsafe diet plans for teenagers</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 18th 2026, 20:00</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#494949;text-align:justify;font-size:13px;">
<p><p>Many teenagers trying to manage their weight are turning to artificial intelligence chatbots to generate personalized diet plans. However, a new study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2026.1765598" target="_blank">Frontiers in Nutrition</a></em> reveals that these computer-generated menus often fall short on basic calories and fail to provide the proper balance of essential nutrients. Following these flawed digital recommendations could put young people at risk of nutritional deficiencies during a period of rapid physical growth.</p>
<p>Childhood and adolescent obesity rates are rising rapidly across the globe. This condition carries immediate and long-term health risks, including a higher chance of developing type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and sleep apnea. Health experts typically recommend that young people manage their weight through a combination of increased physical activity, behavioral changes, and specialized nutrition therapy.</p>
<p>Dietitians are the ideal professionals to guide this process because they design sustainable meal patterns tailored to a growing body. A trained dietitian takes into account a teenager’s developmental needs, family habits, and the school food environment. Access to professional nutritional counseling, however, is often limited by high costs and heavy clinical workloads.</p>
<p>Because of these barriers, a notable portion of teenagers now rely on the internet for health advice. Artificial intelligence tools, which generate human-like text in response to user prompts, have become especially popular resources for dietary information. Prior research has explored how well these text-generating programs handle general nutrition questions or adult meal planning.</p>
<p>Few studies have tested how safely these tools can craft diets for teenagers. Adolescence is a time of immense physical and cognitive maturation, meaning young people have specific nutritional requirements that differ from those of adults. Ayşe Betül Bilen, an assistant professor of nutrition and dietetics at Istanbul Atlas University in Turkey, led a research team to investigate this issue.</p>
<p>Bilen and her colleagues wanted to know if popular chatbots could produce safe and balanced meal plans for young people without professional oversight. The research team noted that adolescents often type simple requests into search engines, rather than providing technical medical details. To see how the algorithms would respond to a typical teenager, the researchers decided to compare the software outputs against a professional standard.</p>
<p>The researchers set up a test using five widely available artificial intelligence models. The programs tested included OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Microsoft’s Bing Chat, Anthropic’s Claude, and Perplexity. The team used the free versions of these tools because a typical teenager would be most likely to access the options without a paywall.</p>
<p>To simulate the varied needs of real adolescents, the team created four hypothetical profiles of fifteen-year-olds. These profiles represented a boy and a girl classified as overweight, along with a boy and a girl classified as obese. The researchers determined these categories using body mass index percentiles, a standard measurement that compares a child’s weight and height against growth charts for their specific age and sex.</p>
<p>For the purposes of this study, the eighty-fifth to ninety-fourth percentile was defined as overweight, while the ninety-fifth percentile and above was defined as obese. For each profile, the researchers prompted the five chatbots to generate a three-day weight loss nutrition plan. The instructions asked for three main meals and two snacks per day, using portion sizes in grams or milliliters.</p>
<p>The prompts specifically requested foods that are easy to find in Turkey, where the study was based. The researchers did not include target calorie counts or specific dietary guidelines in their prompts. They wanted to mimic the natural language a teenager might use when asking a computer for help.</p>
<p>Each software program was run in two separate sessions for the four profiles, resulting in sixty total days of computer-generated meals. Next, the researchers needed a benchmark to evaluate these digital menus. A pediatric dietitian created a one-day reference plan for each of the four adolescent profiles.</p>
<p>These human-made plans strictly followed international guidelines for energy balance and nutrient distribution. The research team used a specialized nutrition database to analyze the contents of both the computer-generated and human-made diet plans. They looked at the total calories provided, as well as the balance of macronutrients.</p>
<p>Macronutrients are the main building blocks of our diet, categorized as carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. The analysis revealed a massive calorie deficit in the computer-generated diets. On average, the algorithms underestimated the adolescents’ daily energy needs by nearly 700 calories when compared to the dietitian’s plan.</p>
<p>A deficit of this size is equivalent to skipping an entire meal, which the researchers noted could harm metabolic health and eating behaviors over time. “We show that diet plans generated by AI models tend to substantially underestimate total energy and key nutrient intake when compared to guideline-based plans prepared by a dietitian,” Bilen said in a press release.</p>
<p>The computer programs also struggled to provide the correct balance of macronutrients. According to established health guidelines, teenagers should get about forty-five to fifty percent of their daily calories from carbohydrates. In the algorithms’ meal plans, carbohydrates made up only thirty-two to thirty-six percent of the total energy.</p>
<p>This severe drop in carbohydrates often leads to a drop in dietary fiber, which is necessary for healthy digestion and maintaining a balanced gut microbiome. To make up for the lack of carbohydrates, the artificial intelligence models heavily relied on proteins and fats. The digital plans recommended that proteins provide up to twenty-four percent of daily energy, which exceeds the standard recommendation of fifteen to twenty percent.</p>
<p>A diet excessively high in protein can force the kidneys to work harder than normal and increase the amount of calcium lost through urine. Fats made up roughly forty-one to forty-five percent of the computer-generated calories, far above the ideal target of thirty to thirty-five percent. “AI-generated diet plans consistently deviated from the recommended macronutrient balance, which is particularly problematic for adolescents,” Bilen pointed out.</p>
<p>Bilen suggested that the software might be pulling information from trendy internet diets. Many popular weight-loss routines favor high-protein and low-carbohydrate meals. Because artificial intelligence programs learn by scanning vast amounts of online text, they often repeat these popular concepts rather than prioritizing age-appropriate medical guidelines.</p>
<p>“AI models are primarily trained to generate responses that appear plausible and user-friendly rather than clinically precise,” Bilen said. “Our findings suggest they may rely on generalized or popular diet patterns instead of fully integrating age-specific nutritional requirements.”</p>
<p>The researchers also checked the computer menus for micronutrients, which are the vitamins and minerals our bodies need in small amounts to function properly. The algorithms showed high inconsistency in this area. Some programs provided far too much vitamin D and folate, while others overestimated calcium and phosphorus.</p>
<p>Trace minerals like iron, zinc, copper, and manganese also varied wildly depending on which program the researchers tested. No single computer model consistently matched the human dietitian across all nutritional categories. The research team noted that teenagers are already at risk for vitamin and mineral deficiencies, and relying on an algorithm could worsen these issues.</p>
<p>The researchers acknowledged a few limitations to their work. Because the study relied on hypothetical profiles, it did not track real teenagers eating the computer-generated meals. This means the researchers could not observe actual metabolic changes or shifts in eating behaviors in human subjects.</p>
<p>The study did not incorporate the prior dietary habits of any participants, as that would require making assumptions about their daily routines. The prompts were also written in Turkish, which might limit how well the results apply to other languages or cultural contexts. Artificial intelligence software updates rapidly, so the specific errors found in these versions might change as the programs are refined over time.</p>
<p>The researchers noted that future studies should track real-life dietary habits alongside more advanced versions of the software. Health professionals advise that algorithm-based tools should not replace traditional nutritional counseling. While the technology might serve as a basic educational aid, it currently lacks the precision needed to manage adolescent health safely.</p>
<p>Teenagers and their parents should consult qualified medical experts before starting any restrictive weight-loss programs. “Adolescence is a critical period for physical growth, bone development, and cognitive maturation,” Bilen concluded. “Lower energy and carbohydrate intake, combined with increased protein and fat ratios, may pose risks during the adolescent growth period.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2026.1765598" target="_blank">Artificial intelligence diet plans underestimate nutrient intake compared to dietitians in adolescents</a>,” was authored by Ayşe Betül Bilen, Gülen Ecem Kalkan, and Hülya Yılmaz Önal.</p></p>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:13px; text-align: center; color: #666666; padding:4px; margin-bottom:2px;"></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table style="font:13px Helvetica, sans-serif; border-radius:4px; -moz-border-radius:4px; -webkit-border-radius:4px; background-color:#fff; padding:8px; margin-bottom:6px; border:1px solid #adadad;" width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/new-trial-suggests-cbd-oil-could-lower-anxiety-in-autistic-children-and-reduce-parenting-stress/" 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 trial suggests CBD oil could lower anxiety in autistic children and reduce parenting stress</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 18th 2026, 18:00</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#494949;text-align:justify;font-size:13px;">
<p><p>A recent study published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.70159" target="_blank">Autism Research</a></em> suggests that cannabidiol oil might help improve certain social behaviors and reduce anxiety in autistic children. While the treatment did not significantly alter the primary measure of broad social communication, the findings provide evidence that it could ease specific daily challenges and lower the stress levels of parents. </p>
<p>Currently, there are no approved medical treatments specifically designed to help with the social difficulties associated with autism. When doctors prescribe medications to manage related behavioral challenges, those drugs often come with unwanted side effects.</p>
<p>Because of this lack of safe options, parents and medical professionals have started looking into other possibilities. Cannabidiol, commonly known as CBD, is a compound found in the cannabis plant that does not produce the high associated with marijuana. It has gained attention for its potential to help with various neurological and psychiatric conditions.</p>
<p>The human body contains a complex network of chemical signals called the endocannabinoid system. This biological system plays a role in regulating mood, sleep, and social behavior in everyday life. Preclinical studies suggest that this system might function differently in people with autism, making it a plausible target for new medical treatments.</p>
<p>“Families are looking for safe, effective options to support social difficulties and anxiety in their autistic children who are struggling in these areas, but the commonly prescribed pharmacological options are limited and can come with unpleasant side effects. At the same time, there has been a significant increase in access to CBD for autism, but a reliable evidence base is still developing and there’s wide variability in products and dosing,” said Nina-Francesca Parrella, a cognitive neuroscience researcher in Deakin University’s Cognitive Neuroscience Unit.</p>
<p>To test the impact of CBD, the researchers designed a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover trial. This type of study means that the children received both the active CBD oil and an inactive placebo oil at different times, and neither the families nor the scientists knew which oil was being given when. The trial included twenty-nine children diagnosed with autism, including eighteen boys and eleven girls, with an average age of nine and a half years old.</p>
<p>Each child participated in the study for a total of thirty-two weeks. They took either the CBD oil or the placebo oil every day for twelve weeks, followed by an eight-week break to let the substance completely leave their systems. After the break, the children switched to the other oil for another twelve weeks.</p>
<p>The scientists calculated the daily amount of oil based on each child’s weight, giving them ten milligrams of CBD per kilogram of body weight. The specific product used in the trial was a broad-spectrum CBD oil that contained natural plant compounds called terpenes. This specific formulation was chosen because it has almost zero intoxicating ingredients, meaning it does not contain the compound that causes a traditional cannabis high. Parents administered the oil at home twice a day using a precise syringe, keeping a daily online log of their child’s routine and mood.</p>
<p>To measure changes in behavior, Parrella and her colleagues relied on several detailed questionnaires completed by the parents. The primary tool was the Social Responsiveness Scale, Second Edition, which evaluates how severely autism-related symptoms affect a child in everyday social situations. They also used secondary measures, including the Developmental Behavior Checklist, Second Edition, the Autism Parenting Stress Index, and the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, Third Edition.</p>
<p>The results showed that the CBD oil did not create a statistically significant improvement in the primary measure of broad social responsiveness. Children’s scores on the main social scale did drop by an average of seventeen points while taking CBD compared to a seven-point drop on the placebo. However, because the sample size was small, this difference was not mathematically strong enough to confirm a definite therapeutic effect.</p>
<p>Despite this, the scientists found improvements in several of the secondary measures. According to the Developmental Behavior Checklist, children showed measurable gains in specific social relating skills. They also exhibited fewer signs of anxiety on this same checklist while taking the CBD oil compared to the placebo phase.</p>
<p>The benefits extended to the families as well. Parenting a child with autism tends to involve unique stressors, making family well-being an important aspect of pediatric care. Parents reported significantly lower levels of stress on the Autism Parenting Stress Index during the period their child was taking the active treatment. In contrast, adaptive behaviors like daily communication and basic life skills measured by the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales did not show any changes.</p>
<p>“In this pilot trial, CBD oil did not significantly improve our primary measure of social communication compared with placebo after 12 weeks,” Parrella told PsyPost. “However, we did observe improvements on some secondary measures, particularly improved social relating, reduced anxiety symptoms, and lower parenting stress. So, what we found is promising but quite preliminary – larger trials are still required.”</p>
<p>The CBD oil was generally very well tolerated by the children during the duration of the trial. Only two participants experienced mild stomach discomfort while taking the active treatment. One of these children, who had pre-existing stomach issues, withdrew from the study early, while the other felt better after a week and safely continued the treatment.</p>
<p>“Gastrointestinal discomfort was the main side effect reported in a small number of participants, but it is possible that the carrier MCT oil contributed in these cases,” Parrella said.</p>
<p>While these early findings offer hope, the researchers caution against misinterpreting the results as definitive proof that CBD is an effective autism treatment. Because this was a small pilot study, the results are preliminary and cannot be generalized to all autistic children. The scientists stress that any use of cannabinoid products in children should always occur under appropriate medical supervision.</p>
<p>Additionally, the wide variety of CBD products available to the public means that store-bought oils might not have the same ingredients or effects as the specific medical-grade formula used in this research. </p>
<p>Moving forward, the scientists plan to conduct larger trials across multiple clinics to see if these anxiety and social relating benefits hold up in a bigger, more diverse group of children. Future studies will likely explore whether adjusting the dosage could reduce stomach issues while maintaining the positive behavioral effects.</p>
<p>The researchers also hope to investigate whether the observed improvements in social skills are a direct result of the CBD or a byproduct of the child feeling less anxious overall. It is possible that a child who feels calmer is naturally more willing to engage in social interactions. By examining these nuances, the scientific community can better understand who might benefit most from this type of intervention.</p>
<p>“There is a real need to further explore the extent to which reduced anxiety might mediate the effect of CBD on social relating, and other individual differences such as gender, degree of social relating difficulties, and intellectual disability,” Parrella said. “We are actively seeking funding to run a larger placebo-controlled trials to tests this!”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.70159" target="_blank">Effects of Cannabidiol on Social Relating, Anxiety, and Parental Stress in Autistic Children: A Randomized Controlled Crossover Trial</a>,” was authored by Nina-Francesca Parrella, Aron T. Hill, Peter G. Enticott, Tanita Botha, Sarah Catchlove, Luke Downey, and Talitha C. Ford.</p></p>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:13px; text-align: center; color: #666666; padding:4px; margin-bottom:2px;"></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table style="font:13px Helvetica, sans-serif; border-radius:4px; -moz-border-radius:4px; -webkit-border-radius:4px; background-color:#fff; padding:8px; margin-bottom:6px; border:1px solid #adadad;" width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/how-to-stop-overthinking-top-4-books-to-transform-your-mindset-and-boost-mental-clarity/" 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 to stop overthinking, according to psychologists</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 18th 2026, 17:30</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#494949;text-align:justify;font-size:13px;">
<p><p class="ng-star-inserted">For many people, the human mind can feel like an exhaustingly busy place. A casual conversation with a coworker or a minor financial decision can trigger hours of endless analysis. You might find yourself staring at the ceiling at night, replaying old mistakes or imagining future catastrophes.</p>
<p>When you overthink, you do not even have to move a muscle to feel completely drained. Your brain responds to stressful thoughts as if they were physical threats in your immediate environment. This kicks off a biological stress response that floods your body with energy to fight or flee.</p>
<p>While this response helps in genuine emergencies, it becomes incredibly draining when activated repeatedly by mere thoughts. Your brain also uses significant energy to anticipate outcomes, remember details, and make decisions. Add in the sleep lost to a racing mind, and it is easy to see why chronic overthinking leaves people feeling depleted.</p>
<p>Psychologists refer to this exhausting mental loop as repetitive negative thinking. This broad term encompasses two main habits that keep people stuck in their heads. The first is rumination, which pulls your attention backward into the past.</p>
<p>Rumination involves replaying past events, analyzing mistakes, and agonizing over things you cannot change. You might obsess over a slightly awkward comment you made at a grocery store, endlessly wondering what the other person thought of you. The second habit is worry, which is firmly focused on the future.</p>
<p>Worry consists of anticipating things that might go wrong. This often takes the form of endless hypothetical scenarios, such as imagining a rained-out vacation or a failed job interview. Ethan Kross, a psychologist and researcher, told <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2026/03/04/how-to-stop-overthinking/">The Washington Post</a> that thinking itself is actually a healthy tool.</p>
<p>Our inner voice helps us reflect, plan for the future, and make sense of the world around us. This inner dialogue becomes a problem only when it turns repetitive and unproductive. Kross refers to this unhelpful mental loop as chatter.</p>
<p>Whether your chatter involves excessive planning, intrusive images, or agonizing over paint colors, it traps you in a cycle. If you find yourself treading the same mental territory without taking action or moving forward, you are likely overthinking. Fortunately, psychological research provides evidence that clear pathways exist to break this cycle.</p>
<h2><strong>The Hidden Health Costs of a Racing Mind</strong></h2>
<p>The consequences of a racing mind extend far beyond feeling a bit stressed. Dane McCarrick and a team of scientists explored how psychological interventions for worry and rumination affect physical health. They published their findings in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/hea0000985">Health Psychology</a>.</em></p>
<p>The researchers conducted a meta-analysis, which is a large study that combines the results of many smaller studies to find broader trends. They focused on perseverative cognition, a scientific term for continuously thinking about negative events. They wanted to know if stopping these thought patterns could actually improve physical health outcomes.</p>
<p>The scientists found that treatments targeting repetitive thinking produced moderate reductions in worry and rumination. When people learned to stop overthinking, they also showed positive improvements in their health behaviors. This included better sleep patterns, healthier eating habits, and reduced substance use.</p>
<p>McCarrick and his colleagues suggest that repetitive thinking acts as a bridge between psychological stress and physical disease. When you constantly think about a stressor, your body’s physiological stress response remains turned on long after the actual event has ended. By reducing this mental loop, people can protect their bodies from the wear and tear of chronic stress.</p>
<h2><strong>Targeting the Problem with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy</strong></h2>
<p>Psychologists have developed several therapeutic approaches to help people manage their racing minds. Cognitive behavioral therapy is currently one of the most widely used methods. This therapy operates on the idea that psychological problems are based on unhelpful ways of thinking and learned patterns of unhelpful behavior.</p>
<p>Kilian Leander Stenzel and a team of researchers investigated how well this therapy works for repetitive negative thinking. They published their extensive review in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291725000017">Psychological Medicine</a></em>. The researchers analyzed fifty-five separate studies that included nearly five thousand adult participants.</p>
<p>They found that cognitive behavioral interventions consistently helped people reduce their rumination and worry. The therapy proved effective across different types of mental health struggles, suggesting it treats a core human issue. The scientists discovered a particularly important detail about how therapy should be delivered.</p>
<p>Treatments that explicitly targeted repetitive negative thinking were much more effective than general therapy approaches. General therapy might address broad life stressors or mood issues. Specific interventions directly tackle the habit of overthinking itself, yielding much stronger results for the patients involved.</p>
<p>Cognitive behavioral therapy relies on several specific techniques to change these unhelpful patterns. One primary method is cognitive restructuring, which involves treating thoughts as hypotheses rather than absolute truths. A therapist helps a patient examine the concrete evidence for and against a specific fear.</p>
<p>If a patient worries that they are entirely incompetent, the therapist asks them to list evidence supporting and contradicting this belief. Another common technique is the behavioral experiment. If a patient worries that everyone will judge them for a minor mistake, the therapist might ask them to intentionally make a small error in public.</p>
<p>The patient then observes the actual outcome of the situation. This real-world test tends to prove that their catastrophic prediction was inaccurate. By repeatedly challenging these thoughts, patients learn to dismantle the cognitive structures that support their overthinking.</p>
<h2><strong>Shifting Focus with Metacognitive Therapy</strong></h2>
<p>Another highly effective approach is called metacognitive therapy. Peter McEvoy outlined the recent advances in this field in a review published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11920-019-1014-3">Current Psychiatry Reports</a></em>. He explains that metacognition simply means thinking about your own thinking.</p>
<p>Traditional therapies often ask patients to examine the content of their thoughts to see if they are realistic. Metacognitive therapy takes a different route by changing how people relate to the act of thinking itself. The goal is to modify the underlying beliefs that cause a person to obsess over negative ideas in the first place.</p>
<p>McEvoy describes the cognitive attentional syndrome, a pattern that keeps people trapped in emotional distress. This syndrome involves intense self-focused attention, threat monitoring, and unhelpful coping strategies like suppressing thoughts. People get stuck in this cycle because they hold specific beliefs about how their minds work.</p>
<p>Some people hold positive beliefs about worrying, thinking it helps them solve problems or prevents future disasters. Once they start worrying, they often develop negative beliefs about the process. They might begin to feel that their thoughts are completely uncontrollable or physically dangerous, which leads to even more panic.</p>
<p>Metacognitive therapy employs unique exercises to help patients regain control over their focus. The attention training technique requires a person to tune into three or more environmental sounds simultaneously. A patient might focus on distant traffic for ten seconds, switch to a ticking clock, and then rapidly alternate between the two.</p>
<p>This auditory exercise provides evidence that a person can consciously direct their attention. Another technique is situational attentional refocusing, which helps people look outward rather than inward. A patient might be asked to focus entirely on the colors and shapes of a grocery store aisle when they feel a panic attack beginning.</p>
<p>Practitioners also use detached mindfulness to separate the person from their thoughts. Patients learn to observe a thought arriving in their mind without trying to suppress it or interact with it. By recognizing that thoughts are just transient events in the mind, patients can break the cycle of endless analysis.</p>
<h2><strong>The Power of Process Over Content</strong></h2>
<p>This shift in perspective is especially helpful for young people struggling with anxiety and depression. Imogen Bell and her colleagues investigated psychological treatments for repetitive negative thinking in youth. Their research was published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291722003373">Psychological Medicine</a>.</p>
<p>The scientists reviewed twenty-eight clinical trials involving adolescents and young adults. They found that therapy generally helped reduce symptoms of depression, anxiety, and repetitive thinking. The researchers noticed a clear difference based on the exact type of therapy used.</p>
<p>Interventions that focused on changing the actual content of negative thoughts produced only small improvements. Therapies that focused on changing the process of thinking yielded much larger benefits. This provides evidence that teaching young people how to disengage from their thoughts is highly effective.</p>
<p>Instead of arguing with a specific worry about failing a test, a student learns to recognize the worry as just a passing mental event. This approach aligns with third-wave therapies, which emphasize mindfulness and acceptance. By focusing on the mechanics of thinking, therapists can help youth build resilience against a wide variety of mental health challenges.</p>
<h2><strong>Cultivating Mindfulness and Self-Compassion</strong></h2>
<p>Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy offers another proven way to interrupt the cycle of overthinking. Siyi Wei and a team of researchers explored this approach in a comprehensive study. They published their findings in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-025-03348-x">BMC Psychology</a></em>.</p>
<p>This specific therapy combines traditional cognitive strategies with mindfulness practices. It teaches individuals to sustain present-moment awareness while maintaining an open, non-judgmental mindset. The researchers analyzed twenty-nine clinical trials to see how this combination affects rumination and other psychological indicators.</p>
<p>Mindfulness therapies use specific grounding techniques to anchor a person in the present moment. A core practice involves mindful breathing, where an individual focuses entirely on the physical sensation of air entering and leaving their lungs. When the mind inevitably wanders, the person simply notices the distraction and gently returns their focus to the breath.</p>
<p>This practice cultivates a non-judgmental stance toward inner experiences. Instead of fighting a stressful thought, the person observes it with curiosity and lets it pass. Another common technique is the body scan, where a person mentally checks in with each part of their body to release stored physical tension.</p>
<p>The scientists found that the therapy significantly reduced rumination while boosting participants’ self-compassion. This is a vital shift because highly self-critical people often get trapped in cycles of negative rumination. By replacing self-criticism with kindness, individuals can avoid obsessing over their perceived failures.</p>
<p>The therapy also improved a psychological skill known as decentering. Decentering is the ability to step back and observe your own thoughts and emotions as completely separate from your core self. When people develop strong decentering skills, they can watch a negative thought pass through their mind without getting tangled up in it.</p>
<h2><strong>Bringing Treatment into the Digital Age</strong></h2>
<p>As these therapies prove successful, scientists are exploring ways to make them accessible to more people. Amy Joubert and a team of researchers tested an internet-based program designed to manage rumination and worry. They published the results of their clinical trial in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2023.104378">Behaviour Research and Therapy</a></em>.</p>
<p>The researchers recruited adults who experienced elevated levels of repetitive negative thinking. They randomly assigned participants to a clinician-guided online program, a self-help online program, or a waiting list. The program consisted of three online lessons delivered over a six-week period.</p>
<p>The lessons taught participants how to recognize their personal warning signs for rumination and worry. They also learned specific strategies to shift their attention away from endless analysis and into the present moment. The researchers tracked the participants’ progress both immediately after the program and three months later.</p>
<p>Both the guided and self-help groups experienced significant drops in their levels of anxiety, depression, and repetitive thinking. The group that received guidance from a clinician showed slightly better results overall. The clinicians only spent an average of forty-eight minutes supporting each participant throughout the entire six weeks.</p>
<p>This suggests that effective help for overthinking does not necessarily require hours of intense, in-person therapy. Brief, accessible online tools can provide people with the skills they need to calm their minds. The internet-based format removes geographical and financial barriers, allowing more people to find relief.</p>
<h2><strong>Moving the Body to Quiet the Mind</strong></h2>
<p>Therapy is not the only way to manage a racing mind. Physical movement also plays a significant role in reducing repetitive negative thoughts. Shimeng Wang and fellow researchers conducted a systematic review of how physical activity affects overthinking.</p>
<p>They published their findings in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0319806">PLOS One</a></em>. The scientists analyzed nineteen studies that used physical activity as the primary intervention for rumination and worry. They discovered that exercise effectively reduces these unhelpful thought patterns, likely through a combination of physiological and psychological changes.</p>
<p>When you exercise, your brain releases endorphins, which are natural chemicals that promote feelings of pleasure and relaxation. These chemicals bind to receptors in the brain, helping to alleviate the negative emotional arousal that often fuels rumination. Physical activity also promotes neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to adapt and form new connections.</p>
<p>This adaptability is particularly important in the prefrontal cortex, the brain area responsible for cognitive control. By strengthening cognitive control, exercise helps individuals regulate their thoughts and avoid getting trapped in meaningless loops. The researchers found that the specific details of the exercise routine mattered a great deal.</p>
<p>Single, isolated sessions of exercise did not produce lasting changes in rumination or worry. Short-term interventions sometimes even exacerbated negative memory biases in highly anxious individuals. To see real benefits, people needed to engage in sustained, repeated physical activity over time.</p>
<p>The most effective routines involved moderate to high-intensity exercise lasting thirty to sixty minutes per session. Participants saw the best results when they exercised three to five times a week over an extended period. Combined interventions that mixed physical activity with mindful practices, like yoga, yielded the most robust improvements of all.</p>
<h2><strong>Recognizing Unhelpful Coping Strategies</strong></h2>
<p>Understanding the science of overthinking is helpful, but applying it to daily life requires practice. Pia Callesen, a clinical psychologist and metacognitive specialist, wrote in <a href="https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-stop-overthinking-with-help-from-metacognitive-strategies">Psyche</a> magazine that people often use coping strategies that accidentally make their overthinking worse. She frequently helps clients identify and break these exhausting mental habits.</p>
<p>One common mistake is constant threat monitoring. A person worried about their health might obsessively scan their body for signs of illness. While this is meant to provide comfort, it actually creates a heightened sense of danger. This hyper-vigilance ensures the brain stays locked in a state of high alert.</p>
<p>Another unhelpful strategy is excessive reassurance seeking. It is natural to ask friends for advice or to search the internet for answers to a problem. Depending on these actions to calm down puts you on a slippery slope. Spending hours searching online for medical symptoms usually brings up terrifying results, causing even more anxiety.</p>
<p>Excessive planning is a third trap that many overthinkers fall into. Keeping a calendar is healthy, but planning a day down to the minute can be highly problematic. Meticulous planners often try to predict every possible disruption to their schedule. This initiates a massive wave of worry about hypothetical problems that will likely never happen.</p>
<h2><strong>Changing Your Relationship with Thoughts</strong></h2>
<p>Callesen notes that many overthinkers believe their thought processes are completely out of their control. They assume overthinking is an innate personality trait, much like having a certain eye color. Research shows this is a myth, as rumination and worry are actually learned strategies that people choose to use.</p>
<p>Because it is a learned habit, overthinking can be unlearned. Callesen uses a simple metaphor to help her clients understand this concept. She compares passing thoughts to trains arriving at a busy railway station.</p>
<p>Throughout the day, thousands of thoughts arrive at your mental platform. A trigger thought might pull in, suggesting that your coworkers secretly dislike you. You have the option to board that train by analyzing the thought and adding more worries to it.</p>
<p>As you add more carriages of worry and rumination, the train gets heavy, slow, and burdensome. Alternatively, you can choose to let the train pass by without getting on board. You do not control which trains arrive at the station, but you have complete control over which ones you ride.</p>
<p>Another way to visualize this is to imagine a ringing telephone. You cannot control when the phone rings or who is calling you. You do have the power to let it ring without picking up the receiver. If you leave the annoying thought alone and return to your current task, the ringing will eventually stop.</p>
<p>Callesen also uses the windowpane exercise in her clinical practice. She writes a trigger thought in washable ink on a glass window. She then asks her clients to practice looking through the words to notice the trees and sky outside. The clients learn that they can consciously control whether they focus on the written thought or the outside world.</p>
<h2><strong>Setting Boundaries for Your Brain</strong></h2>
<p>Emma McAdam, a licensed therapist, told The Washington Post that many people are not even tuned into their own thoughts. She suggests taking random samples of your thoughts throughout the day to build awareness. You can set an alarm on your phone to prompt periodic mental check-ins.</p>
<p>When the alarm sounds, notice if you were mentally rehearsing an argument or beating yourself up over a past mistake. Once you are aware of the habit, you can start setting boundaries. One highly effective technique is to schedule a dedicated worry time.</p>
<p>You might set aside thirty minutes every evening specifically for analyzing problems and fretting about the future. When a stressful trigger thought pops up during your morning commute, you acknowledge it and postpone it. You tell yourself that you will deal with that specific problem during your scheduled time later that night.</p>
<p>McAdam compares this process to potty training a new puppy. You cannot expect the puppy to simply stop relieving itself entirely. You have to teach the puppy when and where it is appropriate to go.</p>
<p>By containing your worries to a specific time and place, you prevent them from ruining your entire day. You will often find that the thought that felt like a massive emergency at noon feels completely irrelevant by the time evening rolls around. With enough repetition, your brain learns to respect the boundaries you set.</p>
<h2><strong>Gaining Perspective and Taking Action</strong></h2>
<p>When you feel entirely overwhelmed by a specific problem, Ethan Kross told The Washington Post that a strategy called mental time travel can help. Chatter tends to give people severe tunnel vision, making a current stressor feel like the end of the world. To combat this, you can actively force your brain to look at the bigger picture.</p>
<p>Ask yourself how you will feel about this exact problem in a week, a month, or a year. This mental exercise reminds you that your current distress is temporary and will eventually fade. You can also look backward and remind yourself of past stressors you successfully survived. This provides concrete proof that you are capable of handling difficult situations.</p>
<p>Kross also suggests speaking to yourself in the second person when your mind is racing. Instead of thinking about how you cannot handle a situation, try telling yourself that you are going to get through this. Using the word “you” creates psychological distance from the problem. It taps into the natural compassion and objectivity we usually reserve for advising our friends.</p>
<h2 class="ng-star-inserted"><strong class="ng-star-inserted"><span class="ng-star-inserted">Breaking the Cycle of Rumination</span></strong></h2>
<p>Kirsty Ross, an associate professor and senior clinical psychologist at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University, wrote about the mechanics of a racing mind in an article for <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-can-i-stop-overthinking-everything-a-clinical-psychologist-offers-solutions-223973">The Conversation</a>. Ross explains that the human brain is hardwired to scan for threats, which tends to generate highly emotional thoughts about past regrets or future scenarios. Because these perceived threats exist outside the present moment, we cannot immediately fix them, causing the mind to play them on a continuous loop.</p>
<p>While anyone can fall into this cycle, Ross notes that individuals with past trauma, elevated stress, or high sensitivity tend to ruminate more often. To break the loop, she suggests using a mix of emotion-focused and problem-focused strategies. Acknowledging the feelings driving the thoughts provides a starting point for emotional regulation, allowing individuals to then make practical plans for the most likely outcomes.</p>
<p>Viewing these repetitive thoughts as information rather than absolute truths provides evidence of what a person might currently need. Ross recommends a framework of changing, accepting, and letting go to process this mental data. This involves challenging catastrophic predictions, accepting a lack of total control over the future, and trusting in your own ability to cope with upcoming challenges.</p>
<p>Physical health and daily habits also play a major role in managing a busy mind, as a tired brain is far more likely to get stuck in a negative loop. Ross points out that eating well, prioritizing sleep, and enjoying pleasurable distractions can help lower overall stress levels. If overthinking begins to disrupt daily functioning or drain your joy, she advises seeking tools and strategies from a qualified therapist.</p>
<p>Overthinking can interfere with decision-making and negatively impact mental well-being, often leading to fatigue and a sense of being stuck. For those seeking strategies to manage rumination and worry, several authors have documented different psychological approaches. Below are four books that explore methods for redirecting intrusive thoughts and increasing mindful presence.</p>
<h2><strong>Recommended Reads</strong></h2>
<h3>“<a href="https://amzn.to/4a3b9rR" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and into Your Life</a>” by Gary John Bishop.</h3>
<p>Gary John Bishop’s “Unfuk Yourself” offers a direct, conversational approach to self-empowerment. Similar in tone to titles like “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck,” Bishop focuses on personal accountability and the impact of negative self-talk. The book argues that internal dialogue is often the primary barrier to personal progress.</p>
<p>The text outlines seven core assertions, emphasizing that individuals are defined by their actions rather than their thoughts. Bishop uses this framework as a practical guide for handling personal and professional challenges. The writing avoids traditional self-help platitudes, instead encouraging readers to confront self-defeating behaviors head-on.</p>
<p>Bishop, who grew up in Glasgow, Scotland, uses a blunt communication style to blend motivation with practical advice. He calls his approach “Urban Philosophy,” focusing on everyday applications rather than abstract theories. The book asks readers to take responsibility for their choices and focus on actionable steps to change their circumstances.</p>
<h3>“<a href="https://amzn.to/3TPuffm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Live More Think Less</a>” by Pia Callesen.</h3>
<p>In “Live More Think Less,” clinical psychologist Pia Callesen examines overthinking through the lens of metacognitive therapy. Unlike traditional cognitive behavioral therapy, which often focuses on challenging the specific content of negative thoughts, metacognitive therapy focuses on the process of thinking itself. Callesen shares strategies for managing rumination by changing how much attention people pay to their worries.</p>
<p>The book suggests that attempting to solve emotional distress through extensive analysis can be counterproductive. Instead, Callesen introduces exercises aimed at attention regulation. One technique involves visualizing thoughts as items on a conveyor belt, observing them pass by without interacting with them, which helps individuals develop detached mindfulness.</p>
<p>Callesen draws on her clinical practice and research to explain the scientific basis of the metacognitive approach. While the book notes that reading is not a replacement for professional therapy, it outlines the basic principles of the therapy for a general audience. The text provides a framework for spending less time on intrusive thoughts and more time engaged in daily life.</p>
<h3>“<a href="https://amzn.to/4arNT6E" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Stop Overthinking: 23 Techniques to Relieve Stress, Stop Negative Spirals, Declutter Your Mind, and Focus on the Present</a>” by Nick Trenton.</h3>
<p>Nick Trenton’s “Stop Overthinking” addresses the chronic cycle of mental analysis and its relationship to stress. Drawing on his background in economics and behavioral psychology, Trenton provides specific, actionable techniques to help readers break negative thought spirals. The book focuses on practical ways to reduce mental clutter and shift attention back to the present moment.</p>
<p>The book is structured around 23 distinct methods for managing worry. Trenton explains the psychological mechanisms behind overthinking and pairs these explanations with everyday examples. The strategies are designed to be integrated into a daily routine, offering step-by-step instructions for managing acute stress and long-term anxiety.</p>
<p>Trenton writes with an emphasis on self-compassion, acknowledging the difficulty of breaking entrenched cognitive habits. The text relies on behavioral psychology principles to guide readers toward relaxation and mental clarity. By providing a structured toolkit, the book gives individuals concrete steps to redirect their attention when they notice themselves overanalyzing a situation.</p>
<h3>“<a href="https://amzn.to/3TDGytY" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Soundtracks: The Surprising Solution to Overthinking</a>” by Jon Acuff.</h3>
<p>In “Soundtracks,” Jon Acuff examines overthinking as a fear-based habit that interferes with productivity and goal achievement. Basing his conclusions on a research study of 10,000 participants, Acuff outlines the frequency of overthinking and its effects on creativity and professional success. The book presents a framework for identifying and changing the repetitive thoughts that play in the background of everyday life.</p>
<p>Acuff refers to these repetitive thoughts as “soundtracks.” He argues that individuals can improve their mental habits by actively choosing the soundtracks they listen to. The book provides strategies for recognizing negative or unhelpful thoughts and replacing them with statements that encourage action and optimism.</p>
<p>As an author and speaker, Acuff uses a conversational style and humor to explain cognitive reprogramming. “Soundtracks” focuses on practical application, giving readers exercises to evaluate their current thought patterns. The text outlines a systematic approach to retiring unhelpful thoughts and building new mental habits that support personal and professional development.</p></p>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:13px; text-align: center; color: #666666; padding:4px; margin-bottom:2px;"></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table style="font:13px Helvetica, sans-serif; border-radius:4px; -moz-border-radius:4px; -webkit-border-radius:4px; background-color:#fff; padding:8px; margin-bottom:6px; border:1px solid #adadad;" width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/psychologists-found-a-surprisingly-simple-way-to-keep-narcissists-from-cheating/" 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;">Psychologists found a surprisingly simple way to keep narcissists from cheating</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 18th 2026, 16:00</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#494949;text-align:justify;font-size:13px;">
<p><p>A study involving full-time employed individuals revealed that the unethical behavior of narcissists depends on the context. When opportunities for personal gain are restrained and in situations that demand deliberation, the association between grandiose narcissism and unethical behavior disappeared. The paper was published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2026.113658"><em>Personality and Individual Differences</em></a>.</p>
<p>Grandiose narcissism is a personality trait characterized by an inflated sense of self-importance, a strong need for admiration, and a belief in one’s superiority over others. Individuals high in grandiose narcissism tend to view themselves as exceptional and deserving of special treatment. They seek positions of status and influence where they can receive recognition and validation.</p>
<p>Because they prioritize their own success and image, they may show little concern for the needs or rights of others. This self-centered orientation can make unethical behavior more likely when such behavior benefits their goals or reputation. For example, grandiose narcissists may exaggerate achievements, take credit for others’ work, or manipulate information to maintain a positive image. They may also justify unethical actions by believing that rules should not apply to someone as important as they perceive themselves to be.</p>
<p>Research has shown that grandiose narcissism is associated with a higher likelihood of cheating, exploiting others, and engaging in deceptive practices. These behaviors are often driven by a desire to win, gain admiration, or avoid threats to their ego. As a result, grandiose narcissism is frequently studied as a personality factor that can increase the risk of unethical decision-making in social and organizational contexts.</p>
<p>Study authors Caitlin C. Belfiore and Annika Hillebrandt wanted to investigate which conditions make narcissists more or less likely to behave in an unethical way. They hypothesized that narcissists would be more likely to act unethically in situations that highlight opportunities for personal gain and that permit quick, impulsive decisions. In contrast, situations that limit the opportunities for personal gain or those that demand deliberation would weaken the link between narcissism and unethical behavior.</p>
<p>Participants in the study were 350 full-time employees residing in Canada or the U.S., recruited via Prolific to complete a two-part study. All of them completed the first part, but only 176 completed the second part. In the end, the study authors used data from 164 participants (twelve were excluded from the analysis for failing attention checks). Of these final participants, 51% were women. Their average age was 39 years. On average, they had worked for 7 years in their current organization, and 55% were managers.</p>
<p>In the first part of the study, participants completed an assessment of grandiose narcissism (the Narcissistic Personality Inventory) and other dark personality traits (the Short Dark Triad Scale and the Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale). In the second part of the study, participants were divided into three groups. One group was the control group and it completed a task measuring unethical behavior (Wiltermuth’s anagram task) with standard instructions.</p>
<p>In this task, they were told that they had 2 minutes to unscramble a list of 9 scrambled words and report their scores. The instructions emphasized that the words should be unscrambled in the order in which they were presented and that participants should proceed to the next word only after unscrambling the previous word. Participants were told that they should unscramble as many words as possible and that they would receive 0.10 GBP per unscrambled word.</p>
<p>In the second group, the study authors wanted to create a situation that reduced opportunities for personal gain. Participants were told that they would receive a flat 0.30 GBP bonus for completing the task regardless of the number of words they reported. In the third group, the study authors gave participants time for deliberation. </p>
<p>Before reporting their score, participants were forced to wait out a mandatory 1-minute deliberation period. During this time, they were told to take some time to reflect on how many words they had unscrambled and how they were going to report their score.</p>
<p>At the end of the task, participants were asked to indicate how many words they were able to unscramble. They were asked to self-report their score (i.e., how many words they unscrambled), but were not asked to provide any proof of this or to actually write the words (in order to prove that they unscrambled them). However, unbeknownst to the study participants, the third scrambled word was unsolvable.</p>
<p>Because of this, it was impossible to obtain a score of three or more. Reporting such a score meant that the participant was lying about the score. The study authors used this information about whether a participant reported a score that was not possible as a measure of the participants’ unethical behavior.</p>
<p>Results showed that 42% of participants reported scores of three or more. In other words, this percentage of participants falsely reported their scores, indicating unethical behavior. Participants in the reduced personal gain condition tended to report lower preoccupation with personal gain compared to participants in the other two conditions. Those in the deliberation condition tended to report deliberating more than participants in the other two groups. This told the study authors that the experimental manipulation worked as intended.</p>
<p>As expected, participants with higher levels of narcissism in the control group were more likely to behave unethically (i.e., to falsely report their scores). In contrast, in the reduced personal gain and the deliberation groups, narcissism was not associated with unethical behavior. This means that narcissists were not more likely to behave unethically than less narcissistic individuals in situations where they had time to think about what to report and situations where unethical behavior did not increase personal gains.</p>
<p>“Theoretically, this research identifies situational boundary conditions that clarify when narcissistic traits are less likely to translate into unethical conduct. Practically, these findings provide a foundation for designing targeted organizational interventions that reduce opportunities for narcissistic self-interested unethical behavior,” the study authors concluded.</p>
<p>The study contributes to the scientific understanding of narcissism. However, it should be noted that the personal gains used in the study were of trivial value. If the values to be gained were more substantial or if lying carried a real risk, the results might not have been the same.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2026.113658">Ego, impulse, and opportunity: Mitigating the relationship between narcissism and self-interested unethical behavior,</a>” was authored by Caitlin C. Belfiore and Annika Hillebrandt.</p></p>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:13px; text-align: center; color: #666666; padding:4px; margin-bottom:2px;"></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table style="font:13px Helvetica, sans-serif; border-radius:4px; -moz-border-radius:4px; -webkit-border-radius:4px; background-color:#fff; padding:8px; margin-bottom:6px; border:1px solid #adadad;" width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/first-test-of-a-new-neuroscience-theory-shows-how-smart-brains-coordinate-information/" 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;">First test of a new neuroscience theory shows how smart brains coordinate information</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 18th 2026, 14:00</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#494949;text-align:justify;font-size:13px;">
<p><p>A new study published in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-025-09354-4"><em>Communications Biology</em></a> suggests that people who perform better on intelligence tests may have brains that communicate more flexibly across distant regions. The research found that more diverse connections between key brain areas, along with more complex patterns of brain activity over time, were linked to higher intelligence scores.</p>
<p>Researchers have long sought to understand the biological basis of intelligence. Early studies often focused on identifying specific brain regions responsible for higher cognitive abilities. In particular, the frontal and parietal lobes have frequently been associated with reasoning, problem-solving, and complex decision-making. More recent theories suggest that intelligence might also rely on how flexibly brain networks can shift between different patterns of activity when solving problems.</p>
<p>Led by Jonas A. Thiele from the University of Würzburg, Germany, the researchers behind the study wanted to test these new ideas more directly. Specifically, they aimed to provide the first empirical test of the newly proposed Multilayer Processing Theory (MLPT) of intelligence, which suggests that human intelligence relies on processes operating across multiple spatial and temporal scales.</p>
<p>Instead of studying brain activity while people rested or performed simple tasks, they examined brain activity while participants completed a well-known intelligence test called Raven’s Progressive Matrices. In this test, participants look at patterns of shapes and must determine which piece correctly completes the logical sequence.</p>
<p>To explore these multi-scale brain processes, the scientists analyzed two different sets of data collected in separate laboratories. In the first dataset, brain activity from 67 participants (26 females, average age 23) was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they worked through the intelligence test. This method tracks blood flow in the brain, allowing researchers to see which regions are communicating with each other across different spatial networks during a task.</p>
<p>In the second dataset, 131 participants (65 females, average age 24) completed the same type of reasoning test while their brain activity was recorded using electroencephalography (EEG), which measures electrical signals produced by the brain. Unlike fMRI, EEG can capture very rapid changes in brain activity, allowing researchers to study how the complexity of brain signals changes over time.</p>
<p>The fMRI results highlighted a crucial nuance: individuals who scored higher on the intelligence test did not simply have “stronger” overall brain connectivity. Instead, they demonstrated more diverse communication between regions in the frontal and parietal parts of the brain. These areas appeared to act as highly efficient “connector hubs,” linking entirely different brain networks together to coordinate information when participants were solving complex problems.</p>
<p>The EEG analysis revealed that individuals with higher intelligence scores exhibited greater signal complexity at longer (coarser) timescales, suggesting richer and more flexible large-scale brain dynamics. At the same time, there was a weaker, non-significant trend indicating lower complexity at very short (finer) timescales, which may reflect simpler, more efficient local processing within smaller brain circuits.</p>
<p>Together, the findings support the idea that intelligence does not come from a single brain area, but rather from how effectively different regions work together across various scales of space and time.</p>
<p>Thiele and colleagues concluded: “[O]ur findings provide the first empirical evidence for the key assumptions of the Multilayer Processing Theory (MLPT), which posits that higher intelligence emerges from more flexible global long-range processes operating at coarser timescales, coordinating simpler short-range processes within smaller neuronal assemblies at finer timescales.”</p>
<p>Despite these insights, the researchers caution that the study has several limitations. For instance, the fMRI scans and EEG recordings were taken from different groups of participants, meaning the two datasets could not be directly compared. Furthermore, the sample sizes were relatively small, which can limit statistical power, and all participants were young adults, meaning the results may not necessarily generalize to children or older adults.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-025-09354-4">Decoding the human brain during intelligence testing</a>,” was authored by Jonas A. Thiele, Joshua Faskowitz, Olaf Sporns, Adam Chuderski, Rex Jung, and Kirsten Hilger.</p></p>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:13px; text-align: center; color: #666666; padding:4px; margin-bottom:2px;"></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table style="font:13px Helvetica, sans-serif; border-radius:4px; -moz-border-radius:4px; -webkit-border-radius:4px; background-color:#fff; padding:8px; margin-bottom:6px; border:1px solid #adadad;" width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/scientists-discover-a-new-brain-pathway-that-rapidly-depletes-diet-resistant-body-fat/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Scientists discover a new brain pathway that rapidly depletes diet-resistant body fat</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 18th 2026, 12:00</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#494949;text-align:justify;font-size:13px;">
<p><p>Scientists have identified a potent pathway originating in the brain that can cause the rapid depletion of all body fat, including stubborn fat deposits that typically resist diet and exercise. This process operates independently of the nervous system signals usually responsible for fat loss, and it instead relies on a specific state of low blood sugar and low insulin. The findings were published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s42255-025-01424-5" target="_blank">Nature Metabolism</a></em>.</p>
<p>Survival depends on the ability of the body to store and mobilize calories during times of severe need. Most fat cells release energy in response to typical signals like fasting or physical activity. However, humans and other mammals possess specialized populations of fat cells, known as stable adipocytes, that remain largely unchanged during normal calorie restriction or exercise.</p>
<p>These stable fat cells make up about 70 percent of the fat located deep within human bone marrow. Scientists wanted to understand why these specific fat cells resist typical weight-loss cues and how the body eventually breaks them down during extreme conditions. In severe states of starvation or wasting diseases, the body ultimately consumes these stable fat reserves. Until now, the exact biological mechanisms controlling this end-stage fat depletion were unknown because scientists lacked a reliable animal model. </p>
<p>“Certain fat cells within the body are stable and resistant to diet and exercise. We wanted to figure out why and how to deplete them,” said study author Erica L. Scheller, an associate professor at the Washington University School of Medicine and executive director of the Washington University Center of Regenerative Medicine.</p>
<p>To explore this phenomenon, the researchers developed a new procedure to rapidly trigger the loss of all body fat in adult male mice between 12 and 17 weeks of age. They continuously delivered a hormone called leptin, which normally regulates energy balance, directly into the brains of the mice.</p>
<p>The delivery was achieved using microscopic pumps implanted under the skin and connected to the brain. The researchers administered doses of either 10 or 100 nanograms of leptin per hour over a nine-day period. They strictly controlled the food intake of these mice, matching it exactly to a control group of mice that received a harmless saline solution.</p>
<p>Over the nine days, the mice receiving the highest dose of brain-directed leptin lost an average of 19.3 percent of their body mass. This occurred even though they consumed the exact same amount of food as the control mice. The scientists observed a specific, cascading pattern of fat loss.</p>
<p>Regular fat deposits under the skin and around the organs disappeared within the first few days of the experiment. The stable fat hidden deep within the bone marrow was much more resistant to the treatment. This deep skeletal fat only depleted completely by day nine in the mice receiving the highest leptin dose.</p>
<p>The researchers initially suspected that local nerves or stress hormones called catecholamines, such as adrenaline, were driving this extreme fat loss. To test this, they surgically severed the sciatic nerve in one leg of several mice to disable the local nervous system. In a separate experiment, they used a specialized chemical to destroy sympathetic nerves throughout the entire body of another group of mice.</p>
<p>The scientists also tested genetically modified mice, aged nine to 12 months, that were completely unable to produce certain stress hormones. To their surprise, removing the nerves and stress hormones did not prevent the extreme fat loss. This provides evidence that the brain communicates with these stable fat cells through an entirely different method via the bloodstream.</p>
<p>Further testing revealed that the continuous leptin delivery caused the mice to experience concurrent low blood sugar and low insulin levels. This specific physical state is clinically known as hypoinsulinemic hypoglycemia. </p>
<p>To see if this physical state was responsible for the fat loss, the scientists implanted insulin pellets under the skin of a new group of leptin-treated mice. This artificial implant restored the circulating insulin in the mice back to normal levels. Restoring insulin selectively protected the stable bone marrow fat from being broken down, though regular body fat still disappeared. This suggests that the exact combination of low blood sugar and low insulin is necessary to unlock these stubborn fat reserves.</p>
<p>“We were very surprised that the activation of stable adipocyte loss by the brain occurred through signals in the blood and did not involve the peripheral nervous system,” Scheller told PsyPost. “This is different than standard neural systems that regulate traditional fat depots.”</p>
<p>The scientists then examined the genetic makeup of these stable fat cells using advanced genetic sequencing techniques. They found that, under normal conditions, stable fat cells produce high levels of specific proteins that act as internal brakes. One major brake is a protein called G0S2, which blocks the internal cellular machinery that breaks down stored fat.</p>
<p>When the mice experienced low blood sugar and low insulin, the production of this G0S2 protein dropped significantly. The removal of this internal brake allowed an enzyme called adipose triglyceride lipase to finally break down the stored fat. This biological process is known as lipolysis, which is how the body turns stored fat into usable energy.</p>
<p>The researchers also observed this exact same process in a separate group of mice experiencing severe, tumor-induced weight loss. They injected colon cancer cells into 12-week-old adult mice to induce a severe wasting disease known as cachexia. In the final days of the cancer progression, these mice experienced the exact same drop in blood sugar, insulin, and the G0S2 protein. This suggests that this newly discovered biological pathway represents a universal response to extreme physical stress. </p>
<p>“In mice, activation of stable fat catabolic pathways drives loss of all body fat within 9 days without reducing food intake,” Scheller said. “Future titration of the effect could be used to inform therapies for fat loss and to support healthy fat storage in patients with cachexia and wasting disorders.”</p>
<p>While these findings provide insights into how the body burns fat, the researchers caution against viewing this as a potential weight-loss strategy. These stable fat deposits tend to provide necessary mechanical and physical support to important body structures.</p>
<p>Depleting these specialized fat cells is considered dangerous. In human patients, the loss of bone marrow fat is associated with severe consequences like bone fractures. One potential misinterpretation of the study is that standard diets could trigger this extreme fat loss, but the researchers note that typical dieting does not produce the severe biological conditions required to activate this pathway.</p>
<p>The study was primarily conducted in mice, meaning the exact timelines and biochemical thresholds might differ slightly in humans. Additionally, the exact blood-based signals that interact with the fat cells once the internal brakes are removed remain unidentified. The scientists believe there may be multiple circulating factors working together to complete the final fat breakdown process.</p>
<p>The scientists hope that understanding this newly discovered biological pathway will eventually inform targeted medical interventions. By blocking this specific fat-loss pathway, doctors might be able to support healthy fat storage in severely ill individuals. This could ultimately improve survival rates and the overall quality of life for these vulnerable patients.</p>
<p>“Wasting is a debilitating consequence of diseases including cancer, chronic infection, and end-stage organ failure,” Scheller said. “Atrophy of muscle and fat can decrease a patient’s ability to withstand necessary chemotherapy and treatment, contributing substantially to loss of life. We hope to use this work to discover new intervention points to prevent pathological fat loss and improve survival.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s42255-025-01424-5" target="_blank">A catecholamine-independent pathway controlling adaptive adipocyte lipolysis</a>,” was authored by Xiao Zhang, Sreejith S. Panicker, Jordan M. Bollinger, Anurag Majumdar, Rami Kheireddine, Lila F. Dabill, Clara Kim, Brian Kleiboeker, Fengrui Zhang, Yongbin Chen, Kristann L. Magee, Brian S. Learman, Adam Kepecs, Gretchen A. Meyer, Jun Liu, Steven A. Thomas, Irfan J. Lodhi, Ormond A. MacDougald, and Erica L. Scheller.</p></p>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:13px; text-align: center; color: #666666; padding:4px; margin-bottom:2px;"></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
<p><strong>This information is taken from free public RSS feeds published by each organization for the purpose of public distribution. Readers are linked back to the article content on each organization's website. This email is an unaffiliated unofficial redistribution of this freely provided content from the publishers. </strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p><s><small><a href="#" style="color:#ffffff;"><a href='https://blogtrottr.com/unsubscribe/565/DY9DKf'>unsubscribe from this feed</a></a></small></s></p>