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<td><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:20px;font-weight:bold;">PsyPost – Psychology News</span></td>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/the-biological-roots-behind-the-chills-you-get-from-music-and-art-2026-03-19/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">The biological roots behind the chills you get from music and art</a>
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<p><p>New research reveals that the tendency to feel a shiver down the spine when listening to a beautiful song or looking at a striking painting is partly tied to a person’s DNA. The findings suggest that the intense physical and emotional responses people have to different forms of art share a common biological foundation. The study was published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1012002">PLOS Genetics</a></em>.</p>
<p>For centuries, writers and philosophers have described the intense physical reactions that art can produce. Charles Darwin wrote about shivering from pleasure while listening to a choir in a grand chapel. Other thinkers have described a telltale tingle that signals a work of genius. These physical reactions are commonly known as aesthetic chills.</p>
<p>A chill in this context refers to a sudden wave of strong emotion that often triggers physical changes. People describe these moments as feeling a shiver along the back or suddenly developing goosebumps. In biological terms, this response involves the brain’s reward centers. This brain activation parallels the processes seen when humans encounter basic biological needs like food, but here it is triggered by abstract cultural creations.</p>
<p>Experiencing chills offers a distinct and measurable way to study human emotional responses. They connect a subjective feeling of pleasure to an automatic physical reaction. Not everyone experiences these sensations in the same way or with the same intensity.</p>
<p>Past research involving families and twins suggested that the tendency to feel chills from art is partly inherited. Studies comparing identical and fraternal twins indicated a genetic component to these reactions. Yet those earlier projects relied on mathematical models of family inheritance rather than actual molecular data.</p>
<p>Relying purely on family trees leaves lingering questions about the exact biological mechanisms at play. Family members share childhood environments alongside their genes. This shared environment can make it difficult to determine whether similarities stem from biological inheritance or from growing up in the same household.</p>
<p>Twin designs also rely on assumptions about how families share their environments. These models generally assume that identical twins experience the same level of environmental similarity as fraternal twins. If this assumption is incorrect, the models might overestimate the role of genetics.</p>
<p>To investigate the biological roots of these responses directly, a research team set out to analyze actual variations in human DNA. The investigators wanted to see if specific genetic markers could explain why some people are more prone to these intense reactions. They also aimed to determine if the genetic roots of music induced chills overlap with those triggered by visual art or poetry.</p>
<p>Giacomo Bignardi, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, led the study. He collaborated with colleagues Danielle Admiraal, Else Eising, and Simon E. Fisher. The team sought to bridge the gap between subjective cultural experiences and modern genomic science.</p>
<p>The researchers utilized data from a large health and genetics project in the Netherlands called Lifelines. This project collects medical, genetic, and lifestyle information from generations of families living in the northern region of the country. For this specific analysis, the team gathered self-reported survey data from more than 15,000 adult participants.</p>
<p>Participants answered questions about their emotional reactions to different types of media. They rated how often they felt waves of excitement or chills when reading poetry, looking at visual art, or listening to music. The researchers then paired these survey responses with genetic information extracted from the participants’ biological samples.</p>
<p>To hunt for genetic patterns, the team looked at common variations in the participants’ genetic code. These variations are small differences in the building blocks of DNA that occur naturally across populations. By comparing the complete genetic profiles of the participants, the researchers could measure how genetically similar any two people in the study were.</p>
<p>The team employed a statistical method to compare genetic similarity with trait similarity. If people who share more DNA variations also share similar tendencies to experience art induced chills, it indicates a distinct genetic association with the trait. They applied this method across a mix of closely related family members, distant relatives, and completely unrelated individuals.</p>
<p>The researchers estimated that up to 29 percent of the variation in how frequently people experience chills is linked to family relatedness. When looking specifically at the common DNA variations tracked by standard genetic testing, they found that these specific markers accounted for about a quarter of that family effect. This shows that measurable differences in DNA are directly linked to how intensely people react to art.</p>
<p>The scientists noted that the specific DNA markers they tracked explained only a portion of the total genetic effect seen within families. This gap is common in genetic research and happens for a variety of reasons. The laboratory equipment used to scan DNA primarily picks up common genetic differences, potentially missing rare mutations that might influence subjective traits.</p>
<p>Next, the team investigated whether the genetic factors involving musical chills are the same as those involving visual art and poetry chills. They calculated a metric called a genetic correlation to see how much the biological bases of these traits overlap. The analysis revealed a moderate overlap between the two categories.</p>
<p>This moderate correlation means that many of the genetic variations associated with a sensitivity to painted or written art also increase the likelihood of responding strongly to music. The correlation was not absolute, which indicates that some genetic factors are unique to a specific art form. The biological machinery that makes someone respond strongly to a painting is related to, but distinct from, the machinery that makes them shiver at a symphony.</p>
<p>The researchers also explored whether the genetic tendency to feel chills is part of a broader psychological framework. They turned to the concept of openness to experience, a dimension of personality that includes having a highly active imagination and a general interest in the arts. Taking data from a completely separate study of over 200,000 people, they created a genetic index representing this personality trait.</p>
<p>The team applied this genetic index back to their current study participants in the Netherlands. They found that individuals with genetic profiles linked to high openness were more likely to report experiencing chills from music, art, and poetry. The genetic index only accounted for a fraction of a percent of the total variation, but the association was clear.</p>
<p>These findings suggest that a general biological predisposition toward certain personality types shapes our momentary bodily reactions to cultural products. The tendency to seek out and appreciate art seems to share biological pathways with the physical thrill of experiencing it. Our personalities and our physical reflexes are intertwined down to the cellular level.</p>
<p>To ensure the accuracy of their models, the team checked for a phenomenon where people choose partners with similar traits. If people who get chills from art tend to form relationships with one another, it can skew the mathematical models and make a trait appear more strictly governed by genetics than it actually is. Examining data from more than three thousand romantic partners in the biobank, they found only a very weak correlation. This gave them confidence that their genetic estimates were not heavily biased.</p>
<p>The study relies entirely on self-reported survey answers, which introduces a margin of error. People may interpret questions about their own feelings differently from day to day or year to year. This subjective variation likely causes the mathematical models to underestimate the true extent of genetic influence.</p>
<p>Another limitation is that the genetic analysis focused exclusively on participants of European descent. Genetic variation differs broadly across global populations, and cultural attitudes toward music and art also vary widely. Future research will need to include more diverse demographics to see if these biological patterns hold true across different cultures.</p>
<p>The current data cannot reveal exactly how DNA variations change a person’s physical biology to produce a chill. The physical mechanism of goosebumps, which involves tiny muscles contracting near hair follicles, often accompanies emotional chills but can occur independently. More research is needed to trace the path from genetic code to brain activity and physical skin reactions.</p>
<p>Future investigations might utilize larger genetic databases and more advanced physiological measurements. Comparing these physical responses across different age groups and geographic regions could show how human biology varies naturally over time. For now, the research provides a new way to think about why a favorite song or painting can feel physically moving.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1012002">Genetic underpinnings of chills from art and music</a>,” was authored by Giacomo Bignardi, Danielle Admiraal, Else Eising, and Simon E. Fisher.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/lab-grown-brain-models-reveal-unique-electrical-patterns-in-different-types-of-autism/" 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;">Lab-grown brain models reveal unique electrical patterns in different types of autism</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 22nd 2026, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-026-03890-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Translational Psychiatry</a></em> suggests that miniature, lab-grown brain models can reveal distinct electrical activity patterns in different types of autism. By analyzing brain tissues grown from patient urine samples, scientists provide evidence that these models can accurately distinguish between neurotypical individuals and those with various autism profiles. These findings tend to offer a new way to understand the biological roots of autism and test personalized treatments.</p>
<p>Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by differences in social communication and restricted, repetitive behaviors. While some cases are linked to specific genetic mutations, known as syndromic autism, most cases have unknown origins and are classified as idiopathic.</p>
<p>Traditional animal models often struggle to replicate the complex features of the human brain. This makes it difficult to study how specific genetic changes affect human brain function. Patient-derived brain organoids offer a biological solution to this problem.</p>
<p>Brain organoids are tiny, three-dimensional clusters of brain cells grown in a laboratory that mimic early human brain development. Because they are grown from a patient’s own cells, they retain that individual’s unique genetic makeup. This allows scientists to study human brain networks in a highly personalized way.</p>
<p>“During my PhD in neuroscience, I studied new methods for drug development and delivery to neurological and psychiatric disorders, with a focus on autism spectrum disorders,” said study author <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nisimperets/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nisim Perets</a>, the CEO and co-founder of <a href="https://itayandbeyond.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Itay&Beyond</a>.</p>
<p>“I published several papers on the use of nanoparticles (exosomes) as a therapeutic and delivery potential for autism. These papers became well known in this field, and one day, I was approached by a high-tech entrepreneur with a son who was diagnosed with low-functioning autism. Together, we established Itay&Beyond and decided to start with a ‘simulation’ of the patient’s brain to develop and test a new generation of drugs and compounds based on the patient’s biology, rather than animal models.”</p>
<p>To conduct the study, the researchers collected urine samples from 15 participants. This group included 11 individuals diagnosed with autism and four neurotypical controls. Among the participants with autism, ten had syndromic autism linked to five specific genetic mutations, and one had idiopathic autism.</p>
<p>The specific genetic conditions studied included variations in the SHANK3, PPP2R5D, SCN2A, GRIN2B, and STXBP1 genes. These genes are known to play distinct roles in how brain cells develop, send signals, and form neural connections. The researchers extracted epithelial cells, which are cells that line the urinary tract, from the urine.</p>
<p>They then reprogrammed these cells into induced pluripotent stem cells. These are a special type of cell that can be guided to become almost any cell type in the human body. The scientists directed these stem cells to develop into more than 400 individual brain organoids over the course of about 60 days.</p>
<p>Once the organoids matured, the researchers placed them on multi-electrode arrays. These are small microchips equipped with sensors that can record the electrical signals sent between neurons. Neurons are the primary cells in the brain responsible for sending and receiving information.</p>
<p>The scientists recorded the resting electrical activity of the organoids for five minutes. They then applied a brief electrical stimulation and recorded the activity for another five minutes. This procedure allowed them to measure 18 different electrical features.</p>
<p>These features included the firing rate of the neurons, the frequency of synchronized bursts of activity, and the overall connectivity of the neural network. To make sense of this complex data, the researchers used a mathematical technique called principal component analysis. This method compresses complex data into a simplified visual map, allowing researchers to group similar electrical patterns together.</p>
<p>The scientists found distinct differences in the electrical activity of organoids derived from autistic individuals compared to the control group. The organoids from the four neurotypical controls displayed highly consistent electrical patterns. They clustered closely together in the data analysis, showing low variability.</p>
<p>“Some of the results were better than expected,” Perets said. “Our first question was whether there was any difference in organoid activity between patients with autism and controls, but when we started analyzing the data, we saw interesting differentiation also between the sub-populations of the patients with autism spectrum disorder. ”</p>
<p>The organoids from the individual with idiopathic autism tended to exhibit reduced electrical activity. These samples showed significantly lower firing rates and fewer bursts of activity than the control samples.</p>
<p>Most organoids derived from patients with syndromic autism provided evidence of hyperactivity. For example, the samples linked to STXBP1, PPP2R5D, and GRIN2B mutations demonstrated significantly increased firing rates. The SCN2A samples showed mixed firing rates but had noticeably reduced electrical signal amplitudes compared to controls.</p>
<p>The researchers also observed differences in how the neural networks responded to electrical stimulation. This part of the experiment measured short-term synaptic plasticity. Synaptic plasticity is the ability of a neural network to adapt by strengthening or weakening the connections between neurons over short periods.</p>
<p>The scientists specifically looked at short-term depression and short-term potentiation. Short-term depression involves a temporary decrease in neural communication, while short-term potentiation involves a temporary increase. The data suggests that specific genetic mutations severely alter this natural balance.</p>
<p>For instance, organoids with STXBP1 and SHANK3 mutations showed significantly reduced short-term potentiation and increased short-term depression compared to controls. In the control organoids, the networks maintained a relatively stable functional size and density after being stimulated. Many of the autism-derived organoids displayed altered structural responses to this electrical input.</p>
<p>Organoids with STXBP1 mutations exhibited a pronounced and early collapse in network connectivity after stimulation. The samples linked to PPP2R5D mutations maintained high connectivity before stimulation but experienced a sharp drop immediately after. This suggests an underlying network fragility or an impaired ability to recover from external inputs.</p>
<p>The researchers noted that even organoids from patients with the exact same genetic mutation sometimes displayed different electrical profiles. For example, abnormal rhythmic bursting was seen in a sample from a patient with a history of seizures, but not in all samples from that genetic group. This observation aligns with the fact that individuals with the exact same genetic diagnosis can exhibit very different daily symptoms.</p>
<p>“We successfully showed that our technology is not only non-invasive but can also differentiate between lab-grown brain tissues from patients with autism spectrum disorder and control patients; moreover, the data show that the system can differentiate between different autism subpopulations based on the electrophysiological activity of the lab-grown brain tissues,” Perets told PsyPost.</p>
<p>While these models provide detailed insights into neural activity, the scientists caution against overstating the current capabilities of the technology. Brain organoids are still in the developmental stages of research. They do not simulate the complete structure or complex anatomy of a fully formed human brain.</p>
<p>The organoid networks are simplified models. This means they cannot capture every aspect of how a whole, mature brain functions or experiences the world. Future research aims to use this technology to develop and test new medications for various psychiatric and neurological conditions.</p>
<p>“Itay&Beyond aims to develop and test a new generation of drugs for neurological and psychiatric disorders, including autism, epilepsy, dementia, schizophrenia, and more, and to produce patient-based functional readout for the efficacy and safety of drugs,” Perets added.</p>
<p>“Our technology is already being used to test drugs and compounds for pharma companies and academic institutions, and to help them with their studies. We also test and develop our own proprietary drugs for the subpopulation of autism and other disorders.</p>
<p>“Excitingly, our technology is a platform for human-brain computer interaction and can extend far beyond drug development and testing. Some of our collaborations are not in the field of medicine and drug development, but in deep technologies and new models for brain-computer interfaces, such as biological neuronal networks and computational, energy-efficient models for AI.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-026-03890-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Patient-derived brain organoids reveal divergent neuronal activity across subpopulations of autism spectrum disorder</a>,” was authored by Nisim Perets, Liya Kerem, Nir Waiskopf, Noa Horesh, Itay Goldman, Jasmine Avichzer, Doron Bril, William Tobelaim, Milcah Barashi, Liat David, and Ariel Tenenbaum.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/efforts-to-make-ai-inclusive-accidentally-create-bizarre-new-gender-biases-new-research-suggests/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Efforts to make AI inclusive accidentally create bizarre new gender biases, new research suggests</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 22nd 2026, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>New research published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbr.2024.100533" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Computers in Human Behavior Reports</a></em> suggests that efforts to make artificial intelligence more inclusive can sometimes create unexpected new biases. The scientists found that popular artificial intelligence models tend to overattribute stereotypically masculine behaviors to female characters and judge violence against women as significantly more objectionable than violence against men. These findings provide evidence that programming models to be sensitive to gender equity might accidentally introduce extreme ethical inconsistencies.</p>
<p>Scientists initiated this research to better understand how artificial intelligence systems handle gender and morality after their initial training. During development, these models undergo a refinement process based on human feedback. This process involves human reviewers grading the system’s answers to teach it preferred behaviors, like avoiding offensive language or promoting inclusivity.</p>
<p>The scientists suspected that this human feedback phase might teach the models to be highly sensitive to specific cultural priorities. Specifically, they thought the models might focus heavily on including women in traditionally male spaces and protecting women from harm.</p>
<p>“There has been a growing public debate about whether AI chatbots can develop unexpected biases, especially after post-training efforts meant to make them safer and more inclusive. Much of that discussion, however, has been anecdotal. We wanted to move beyond isolated examples and test the issue systematically,” said study author Valerio Capraro, an associate professor at the University of Milan Bicocca.</p>
<p>To test these ideas, the researchers conducted two main sets of experiments using different versions of the ChatGPT system, specifically GPT-3.5 Turbo, GPT-4, and GPT-4o.</p>
<p>“In this study, we focused on one of the most widely used chatbots at the time and asked whether it displayed surprising gender biases in two very different contexts,” Capraro said. “The goal was not just to document bias, but to understand whether attempts to reduce some biases can unintentionally produce new ones.”</p>
<p>In the first set of four experiments, the scientists examined how the systems assign gender to everyday statements. They prompted the systems using the standard public web interface to maintain realistic user conditions.</p>
<p>The researchers presented the artificial intelligence with twenty pairs of short phrases written in the style of elementary school students. Three pairs were control phrases that explicitly stated a gender. The remaining seventeen pairs contained traditional gender stereotypes regarding toys, movies, and future careers.</p>
<p>Half of these experimental phrases contained traditionally feminine stereotypes, like loving the color pink or wanting to be a nurse. The other half contained traditionally masculine stereotypes, like playing hockey or wanting to be a firefighter. The scientists asked the system to imagine the writer of the phrase and assign them a name, age, and gender, repeating this process ten times for each phrase pair to generate 400 responses per study.</p>
<p>The responses demonstrated a massive asymmetry in how the artificial intelligence applies gender assumptions. For phrases with stereotypically feminine activities, the models consistently assigned a female writer almost every single time. For phrases with stereotypically masculine activities, the models frequently assigned a female writer as well.</p>
<p>For instance, the models constantly attributed a sentence about loving football and practicing with a cousin to a female writer. The researchers suggest this happens because the refinement process strongly emphasizes placing women in traditionally masculine roles. At the same time, this programming lacks an equivalent push to place men in traditionally feminine roles, creating a persistent gender bias.</p>
<p>The second set of four experiments tested how these gender asymmetries affect high-stakes moral decisions. The scientists asked GPT-4 to rate its agreement with different violent actions required to prevent a hypothetical nuclear apocalypse. The system used a scale from one to seven, where one meant “strongly disagree” and seven meant “strongly agree.”</p>
<p>In the first moral experiment, the scientists asked the system fifty times about the acceptability of harassing a woman, harassing a man, or sacrificing a person’s life to stop the apocalypse. GPT-4 consistently gave the lowest possible score for harassing a woman, averaging a perfect one. In contrast, the system gave an average score of 3.34 for harassing a man and 3.61 for sacrificing a life, showing it views harassing a woman as much worse than killing a random person.</p>
<p>To see if this pattern held true across different types of harm, the researchers conducted another experiment focusing on abuse and torture. They asked the system twenty times each about abusing or torturing a man or a woman to stop the apocalypse. The system strongly disagreed with abusing a woman but was much more open to abusing a man, averaging a score of 4.2. On the other hand, the system viewed torturing a man and torturing a woman as equally acceptable.</p>
<p>“What surprised me most was how strong and consistent some of these effects were,” Capraro told PsyPost. “In one experiment, we asked GPT-4 fifty times whether it was acceptable to harass a woman to prevent a nuclear apocalypse, and every single time it responded ‘strongly disagree.'”</p>
<p>“By contrast, when we asked about torturing a woman, the answers were much more variable and on average much closer to the midpoint of the scales, which is a very unusual ordering if you think in terms of objective severity of harm. This suggests the model may be especially sensitive to certain categories of harm that are socially and politically salient, rather than simply responding to severity in a consistent way.”</p>
<p>In other words, this unexpected pattern might happen because torture is less central to modern gender equity debates than abuse. The models have likely been trained to flag and condemn harassment against women specifically.</p>
<p>The researchers then investigated whether these biases were explicit or hidden. They directly asked GPT-4 to rank the severity of these different moral violations twenty times. When asked directly, the system ranked the violations based on objective physical harm, placing sacrifice as the worst, followed by torture, abuse, and harassment. It explicitly stated that gender did not matter, revealing that its biased judgments in the previous scenarios were entirely implicit.</p>
<p>“That matters because it suggests that evaluating AI systems only through direct, explicit questioning may miss important biases that show up in applied decision-making,” Capraro explained.</p>
<p>A final experiment tested a complex scenario involving mixed-gender violence. The researchers asked the system eighty times about a situation where a bomb disposal expert must physically harm an innocent person to get a biological code to stop an explosion.</p>
<p>When the expert was a woman and the victim was a man, the system highly approved of the violence, giving it an average score of 6.4 out of 7. When the expert was a man and the victim was a woman, the system strongly condemned the exact same action, giving it an average score of 1.75. The gender of the characters drastically altered the system’s moral compass.</p>
<p>“The main takeaway is that reducing bias in AI is not simple,” Capraro said. “Efforts to make models more inclusive can sometimes introduce new asymmetries or amplify certain moral sensitivities in unexpected ways.”</p>
<p>“So the broader lesson is that people should be cautious about treating AI systems as neutral or objective. These models do not just reflect patterns in their training data; they may also reflect the values and priorities introduced during fine-tuning and human feedback. In some cases, that can lead to judgments that are not just biased, but surprisingly extreme.”</p>
<p>But the researchers caution that users should avoid interpreting these specific results as a permanent feature of all artificial intelligence systems. These programs receive constant updates, meaning future versions might process these exact prompts differently. “The paper should not be read as claiming that today’s models necessarily behave in exactly the same way,” Capraro noted.</p>
<p>“Our broader point is not that these exact biases will always appear, but that post-training interventions can create unintended distortions. In other words, the paper is less about one specific model and more about a general warning for both developers and users. Developers should be aware that trying to correct one problem can sometimes create another. Users should remember that confident-looking outputs can still reflect hidden biases.”</p>
<p>“One important next step is to study whether similar biases appear in more realistic and socially consequential settings, such as résumé screening, hiring recommendations, or other decision-support contexts,” Capraro continued. “Those are the domains where bias matters a lot in practice.”</p>
<p>“More broadly, I think AI has enormous potential, but that potential will only be socially beneficial if the systems are developed and deployed in a way that distributes benefits fairly. So my long-term goal is to better understand how bias enters these models, how it changes across model versions and prompting styles, and how we can reduce harmful distortions without simply replacing them with new ones.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbr.2024.100533" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Surprising gender biases in GPT</a>,” was authored by Raluca Alexandra Fulgu and Valerio Capraro.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/political-ideology-shapes-views-on-acceptable-civilian-casualties-in-war-2026-03-19/" 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;">Political ideology shapes views on acceptable civilian casualties in war</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 21st 2026, 18:00</div>
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<p><p>Across different types of military conflicts, people who hold conservative political views are more willing to accept unintended civilian deaths than people with liberal views. This ideological divide remains consistent whether the war features real adversaries, strategic partners, or entirely fictional nations. The findings were recently published in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.3154">European Journal of Social Psychology</a>. </p>
<p>Public opinion plays a major role in how governments wage war and handle international conflicts. Tolerance for civilian casualties can influence diplomacy, military strategy, and humanitarian aid. Researchers wanted to understand what drives the deep political divisions often seen in public polling about wartime casualties. They questioned whether this divide was tied to specific real-world conflicts or if it reflected a deeper psychological difference between political groups.</p>
<p>The research team was led by Julia Elad-Strenger, a researcher at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. She worked alongside Daniel Statman from the University of Haifa and Thomas Kessler from Friedrich Schiller University Jena in Germany. They designed a series of experimental surveys to isolate the moral dimensions of wartime decision-making. Specifically, they wanted to see if right-leaning individuals generally tolerate more civilian deaths than left-leaning individuals across varied situations.</p>
<p>The researchers designed the study to solve a specific problem found in previous polling data. Past surveys often blurred the lines between whether a war itself is justified and whether specific actions within that war are justified. By setting all their scenarios strictly as wars of self-defense, the team held the initial justification for war constant. This isolated the participants’ views entirely on the actions taken during the combat itself.</p>
<p>To explain why these differences might exist, the team looked at a psychological framework known as moral foundations theory. This theory suggests that human morality is built on a few basic pillars. Some are considered individualizing foundations, which focus heavily on protecting individuals from harm and ensuring absolute fairness across the board. Others are known as binding foundations, which emphasize maintaining group loyalty, prioritizing respect for authority, and protecting social purity. </p>
<p>The researchers conducted six separate studies involving thousands of participants from Israel and the United States. In most of the experiments, participants read a short text describing a war of self-defense. In the story, one nation is attacked and prepares to strike the enemy’s military headquarters, which is located in a populated civilian area. To isolate pure ethical judgments from practical military realities, the team also measured how many casualties participants thought were strictly unavoidable to achieve the military goal.</p>
<p>After reading the scenarios, participants were asked to state the absolute maximum number of unintended civilian deaths they would consider morally acceptable. To ensure their results were not just tied to single real-world events, the researchers changed the identities of the warring groups across experiments. Israeli participants read scenarios involving actual adversaries like the Palestinians or Iran, as well as a strategic partner like Egypt. American participants were given identical scenarios but featuring North Korea as an active rival and Iraq as a strategic partner. </p>
<p>In other versions of the survey, the researchers used entirely made-up countries to remove any preexisting historical biases. They also changed the perspective of the participants within these fictional scenarios. In some cases, participants were asked to imagine they were a citizen of the country conducting the military strike. In others, they acted as neutral, outside observers watching the conflict unfold. This allowed the researchers to separate basic nationalism from underlying moral judgments.</p>
<p>The results remained remarkably consistent across all the variations. Right-leaning participants regularly reported a much higher acceptable number of civilian casualties than left-leaning participants. This ideological gap appeared when evaluating current enemies, strategic allies, and completely fictional nations. It also persisted whether the participants imagined themselves as members of the attacking nation or as unaffiliated observers.</p>
<p>When investigating the reasons behind this divide, the researchers found that individualizing moral foundations provided the strongest explanation. Left-leaning individuals scored much higher on measures of harm avoidance and fairness. This strong focus on protecting individual welfare regardless of group identity was directly linked to lower acceptance of civilian casualties. </p>
<p>On the other hand, the researchers looked at binding moral foundations, which prioritize group loyalty and security. While right-leaning individuals did score higher on these group-focused values, this difference did not entirely explain their higher tolerance for civilian deaths. The ideological gap was driven primarily by differing levels of concern for individual harm, rather than differing levels of group loyalty.</p>
<p>The researchers also tested whether people were simply following the expected norms of their political parties. While perceived political norms did play a role in some of the hypothetical scenarios, individual moral values remained the strongest and most consistent factor. To test this in reality, the researchers conducted one of their studies during the actual outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in late 2023. Even in the midst of a real-life crisis with high national solidarity, the difference between left and right persisted, driven again by individualizing moral values rather than group consensus.</p>
<p>In their final experiment, the researchers attempted to manipulate these perceived group norms directly. They showed participants data suggesting that their own political group either strongly opposed or largely accepted civilian casualties. While this successfully changed what participants believed their political peers thought, it did not alter their personal judgments about acceptable casualty levels. This reinforced the idea that deeply held personal values dictate these views.</p>
<p>While the results span multiple contexts, the researchers note a few limitations to their work. The real-world scenarios used in the studies involved foreign rivals that are generally perceived as less democratic than the participants’ own nations. This specific dynamic might increase the perceived justification for military action and shape the results in ways that a conflict between two similar allied democracies would not. </p>
<p>Additionally, asking people to estimate acceptable casualty numbers in hypothetical scenarios might not perfectly capture how they process real-time news about wartime deaths. Exploring how people react to casualties inflicted by an allied country could reveal different psychological patterns. The dynamic could also shift entirely if researchers asked participants about casualties inflicted upon their own nation by a foreign power.</p>
<p>Future studies are needed to see if these patterns hold in countries with lower levels of political polarization. The researchers also suggest looking into longitudinal data to track how these moral judgments might shift over a person’s lifetime. They hope to eventually test whether exposing people to different moral frameworks can temporarily alter their acceptance of civilian harm during times of war.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.3154" target="_blank">Left-Right Ideological Differences in Moral Judgments: The Case of Acceptance of Collateral Civilian Killings in War</a>,” was authored by Julia Elad-Strenger, Daniel Statman, and Thomas Kessler.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/parental-acceptance-and-trauma-resilience-are-linked-to-faster-brain-development-in-9-13-year-olds/" 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;">Parental acceptance and trauma resilience are linked to faster brain development in 9-13-year-olds</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 21st 2026, 16:00</div>
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<p><p>An analysis of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study data showed that children accepted by their parents and more resilient to trauma tend to have an accelerated pace of cortical thinning, an indicator of brain development. In contrast, children exposed to household abuse tended to show slower microstructural development of the brain. The paper was published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291725102651"><em>Psychological Medicine</em></a>.</p>
<p>As children grow, the cerebral cortex undergoes major structural and physiological changes that support increasingly complex thinking and behavior. In early childhood**,** the brain produces a very large number of synaptic connections between neurons, a process known as synaptogenesis. This overproduction makes the young brain highly plastic and responsive to environmental experiences and learning.</p>
<p>As development progresses, many of these connections are gradually removed through synaptic pruning, strengthening frequently used neural pathways while eliminating less efficient ones. One visible consequence of this process is cortical thinning, where the thickness of the gray matter in the cortex decreases as redundant synapses are pruned and neural circuits become more efficient.</p>
<p>At the same time, axons become increasingly wrapped in myelin, a fatty insulating layer that speeds up communication between brain regions. While increasing myelination is heavily associated with the volume of white matter in the brain, this insulating process also occurs within the gray matter, altering its microstructure as children and adolescents develop.</p>
<p>Different cortical regions mature at different rates, with sensory and motor areas developing earlier than regions responsible for higher cognitive functions. The prefrontal cortex, which supports planning, impulse control, and decision-making, develops particularly slowly and continues maturing into early adulthood.</p>
<p>Study author Anders Lillevik Thorsen and his colleagues investigated whether experiencing early life adversity influences brain development during adolescence. More specifically, they investigated whether cortical thickness, volumes of subcortical structures, cortical surface area, and microstructural properties of the brain tissue (T1w/T2w ratio) are associated with early life adversity experiences. </p>
<p>Early life adversity involves experiencing trauma, deprivation, and threats during childhood and adolescence. Study authors hypothesized that children exposed to household abuse would show faster maturation of their brains.</p>
<p>They analyzed data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, a longitudinal study that follows participants from ages 9-11 to 19-21. This study investigates how the brain develops through this formative period and how biological and environmental factors impact the development of the brain. The study recruited participants from 21 sites across the U.S., largely through schools.</p>
<p>While the larger ABCD dataset includes nearly 12,000 children, the data used in this specific analysis came from 8,059 participants who had complete, high-quality magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of their brains when they were 9-11 years of age. </p>
<p>For longitudinal analyses, researchers utilized follow-up MRI scans taken when 1,923 of these participants were 11-13 years old. The analyses also used data on participants’ experiences of early life adversity (as a combination of trauma exposure, family conflict / abuse**,** and emotional neglect), resilience to trauma, and socioeconomic status.</p>
<p>Results showed that, at ages 9-11, higher levels of parental acceptance, higher exposure to trauma, and being trauma resilient were associated with lower levels of cortical thickness**,** i.e., faster brain development. Children susceptible to trauma tended to have lower volumes of the hippocampus and a smaller cortical surface area. </p>
<p>Longitudinally, more parental acceptance reported at the start of the study was associated with more cortical thinning between ages 9-11 and 11-13, indicating a faster pace of brain development. On the other hand, more household abuse was associated with slower microstructural development of the brain (i.e., less change in the T1w/T2w ratio over time).</p>
<p>“Parental acceptance and trauma resilience are linked to accelerated pace of apparent cortical thinning in youth aged 9–13 years, while household abuse is associated with slower microstructural development, as reflected by smaller longitudinal changes in the T1w/T2w ratio,” study authors concluded.</p>
<p>The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the links between childhood experiences and brain development. However, it should be noted that the design of the study does not allow any causal inferences to be derived from the results.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291725102651">Associations between early life adversity and the development of gray matter macrostructure and microstructure,</a>” was authored by Anders Lillevik Thorsen, Florence Friederike Boehmisch, Dag Alnæs, Andreas Dahl, Lars T. Westlye, and Olga Therese Ousdal.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/schizophrenia-symptom-profiles-are-reflected-in-patients-written-language/" 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;">Schizophrenia symptom profiles are reflected in patients’ written language</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 21st 2026, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>Recent research published in the <em>Journal of Writing Research</em> suggests that the written language of people with schizophrenia provides evidence about their specific symptom profiles. The study indicates that analyzing how these individuals summarize a story can reveal distinct patterns in their writing, depending on whether they experience predominantly positive or negative symptoms. These findings highlight the potential of using writing tasks to monitor clinical changes and tailor therapy interventions for people with schizophrenia.</p>
<p>Schizophrenia is a severe mental health condition that affects thinking, emotion, and behavior. The condition tends to be divided into two main categories of symptoms. Positive symptoms involve an excess of abnormal experiences, such as hallucinations or delusions, which are fixed false beliefs. Negative symptoms involve a decrease in typical behaviors, such as a lack of motivation, emotional flatness, and reduced speech.</p>
<p>Scientists recognize that schizophrenia often disrupts how a person uses and understands language. This disruption typically affects the social and practical use of language, making effective communication difficult. While speech difficulties are well documented, writing is an area that has received less attention from researchers. The new study sought to better understand how the specific language deficits seen in verbal communication might translate into written form.</p>
<p>“Mental health has been a prominent part of my family context, and from the beginning of my training I knew I wanted to orient my career toward this field. As I delved into the linguistic characteristics of schizophrenia, I noticed that most of the literature focuses on spoken language,” said study author Alfonso Martínez Cano, a doctor of medical Sciences and faculty member at the University of Castilla–La Mancha.</p>
<p>“However, it is reasonable to expect that linguistic alterations are also expressed in reading and writing, which can directly affect academic performance, employment, everyday bureaucratic demands, and overall functional outcomes. We therefore designed a study to examine whether the deficits described in speech are also present in writing and, if so, whether they mirror oral-language profiles or show a distinct pattern.”</p>
<p>To explore this, the researchers designed a study involving 41 adults diagnosed with schizophrenia. The participants ranged in age from 20 to 79 years old, with an average age of about 53. Of this group, 24 individuals primarily exhibited positive symptoms, while 17 primarily exhibited negative symptoms.</p>
<p>All participants were native Spanish speakers and completed the same reading and writing task. The researchers asked each participant to read a short, two-page story called The Tale of Landolfo Rufolo, which contains 530 words. Participants were allowed to read the story twice and ask for definitions of any unfamiliar words.</p>
<p>After reading, they were instructed to write a summary of the story by hand. They were given no time or space limits and were encouraged to include all the details they could remember. Four researchers then evaluated the handwritten summaries across three different levels of language production.</p>
<p>The first level looked at the overall structure and coherence of the text. This involved checking if the participants included the main ideas and maintained the chronological order of the story. The second level examined cohesion at the sentence and word level.</p>
<p>This second level of analysis included examining vocabulary variety and counting the use of specific verb tenses. The scientists also tallied the use of function words, such as articles and conjunctions, as well as content words, such as nouns and verbs. The third level focused on basic writing and spelling skills.</p>
<p>For this third level, the researchers looked for punctuation use, capital letters, spelling mistakes, and illegible words. They then compared the scores across all these areas between the participants with positive symptoms and those with negative symptoms. The analysis revealed several distinct patterns in how the participants wrote.</p>
<p>Overall, the summaries tended to maintain the basic timeline of the story, showing that the participants understood the core plot. The participants also demonstrated a correct use of past tense verbs, indicating that basic grammar rules remained intact. </p>
<p>However, the researchers noticed that participants frequently recalled minor details better than the central themes of the narrative. For example, they were more likely to remember that the main character became a pirate than to remember the main plot point of a woman helping him. </p>
<p>“One striking finding was that, in some cases, participants recalled secondary ideas from a text better than the main ideas, particularly among those with a greater predominance of positive symptoms,” Martínez Cano told PsyPost. “We were also surprised that, despite distortions in content or narrative, many texts preserved central elements and a degree of chronological coherence, suggesting partial preservation of discourse-level functioning.”</p>
<p>The written texts also showed low vocabulary variation, a reliance on simple sentence structures, and a high number of spelling mistakes. </p>
<p>“Linguistically, we observed relatively preserved morphology (e.g., verb variety and functional use of tense) alongside a tendency toward less complex syntax (simpler sentence structures),” Martínez Cano said. “At present, we cannot determine whether this reflects a primary linguistic impairment or a broader cognitive contribution. We also observed reduced lexical flexibility, with increased repetition across both shorter and longer texts.”</p>
<p>When comparing the two symptom groups, the researchers found significant differences. Individuals with predominantly positive symptoms tended to write longer summaries that contained more ideas. These texts were often less connected and contained more distorted information. Their writing also showed a higher overall word count, more repetitions, and a greater use of words related to paranoia.</p>
<p>Individuals with predominantly negative symptoms demonstrated a different writing profile. They produced shorter summaries that contained fewer ideas, but these ideas tended to be more concrete and central to the story. Their writing showed less vocabulary variation, indicating a more rigid use of language.</p>
<p>Additionally, this negative symptom group exhibited more basic writing difficulties. For instance, they had a tendency to combine separate words together incorrectly and used fewer punctuation marks. A somewhat unexpected finding was that delusional thinking did not strongly interfere with the basic functionality of the writing.</p>
<p>Most of the written summaries did not contain obvious delusional content. The scientists suggest that the structured nature of the summarizing task might help individuals focus and inhibit irrelevant or disorganized thoughts. </p>
<p>Martínez Cano highlighted three key takeaways from the study:</p>
<p>“Writing can provide clinically meaningful information. Certain indicators in written production appear to relate to symptom profiles (e.g., predominance of positive vs. negative symptoms), suggesting potential value for monitoring clinical course and change over time.”</p>
<p>“Language difficulties are not confined to speech. The linguistic deficits described in oral language tend to be reflected in writing as well, which may contribute to academic, occupational, and broader functional difficulties.”</p>
<p>“More applied evidence is needed. Further research—especially well-designed intervention trials—is required to determine whether targeted language rehabilitation improves these skills and whether such improvements translate into meaningful gains in real-world functioning.”</p>
<p>While the study provides evidence linking writing patterns to schizophrenia symptoms, there are a few potential misinterpretations to keep in mind. One limitation is the lack of a healthy control group for direct comparison. </p>
<p>The researchers also point out that standard cognitive assessments, which measure attention and memory, were not included in the study. Without these measures, it is difficult to know if the writing differences stem directly from language impairments or from broader cognitive challenges.</p>
<p>Medication is another factor that could influence the results. Different symptom profiles often require different medication types and dosages, which can affect a person’s cognitive and physical functioning. </p>
<p>“Accordingly, the findings should be interpreted cautiously, and future studies should more systematically control for these variables,” Martínez Cano said.</p>
<p>The scientists plan to explore whether these linguistic variables can act as early warning signs for individuals at high risk for developing psychosis. They also hope to test specific language therapy interventions to see if improving writing skills can translate into better social integration and daily functioning for people with schizophrenia.</p>
<p>“Overall, this work suggests that written language may constitute a valuable source of clinical and functional information,” Martínez Cano told PsyPost. “The immediate priority, however, is to replicate these findings in larger samples with tighter control of key variables (cognition, medication, educational level) and with longitudinal designs, in order to evaluate clinical utility with greater rigor.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.17239/jowr-2025.17.02.04" target="_blank">Macrotextual, microtextual and writing analysis of texts written by people with schizophrenia differentiated by their symptoms</a>,” was authored by Alfonso Martínez-Cano, Alberto Martínez-Lorca, Juan José Criado Álvarez, and Manuela Martínez-Lorca.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/swapping-animal-fats-for-vegetable-oils-is-linked-to-a-lower-risk-of-dementia-2026-03-20/" 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;">Swapping animal fats for vegetable oils is linked to a lower risk of dementia</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 21st 2026, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>Swapping animal-based fats for vegetable oils is associated with a lower risk of developing dementia in older adults. Based on a long-term analysis of dietary habits, researchers found that the specific types of fat a person consumes correlate with their cognitive health later in life. The research was published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajcnut.2025.09.028">The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition</a>.</p>
<p>Dementia is a progressive neurological condition characterized by a decline in memory, thinking, and reasoning skills. With global dementia cases expected to rise sharply in the coming decades, identifying ways to prevent or delay its onset is a high priority for public health. Because there are currently no treatments that can cure dementia, medical professionals frequently look to modifiable lifestyle factors to help preserve cognitive function.</p>
<p>Diet is one of the most prominent of these factors, but the relationship between dietary fat intake and dementia has remained unclear. Fat is an essential nutrient for the human body, particularly for the brain, which is composed largely of fatty tissue. Certain fats are needed to build cellular membranes, clear away harmful proteins, and manage inflammation. However, previous studies exploring how fat consumption affects the brain have yielded inconsistent results.</p>
<p>Many past analyses did not account for total daily energy intake or failed to evaluate what happens when one type of dietary fat is swapped for another. This concept, known as an isocaloric substitution model, looks at the health effects of keeping a person’s total daily calories the same while trading the source of those calories. To provide a clearer picture of how specific fats influence cognitive decline, a research team initiated a new observational study.</p>
<p>The research was led by Minyu Wu and Changzheng Yuan at the Zhejiang University School of Medicine in China, alongside collaborators from institutions in the United States and Denmark. They wanted to determine if substituting saturated fats with healthier alternatives could serve as a practical strategy for dementia prevention.</p>
<p>The research team analyzed data from the Health and Retirement Study, a large and ongoing survey of older adults in the United States. They identified 5,944 participants who were completely free of dementia when the dietary data was collected in 2013. At the beginning of the observation period, the participants had an average age of 68 years, and nearly 60 percent of the group was female.</p>
<p>To understand what the participants ate, the researchers used a food frequency questionnaire containing 164 specific food items. This allowed the team to calculate each person’s intake of various types of fats. The researchers categorized the dietary fat according to its source, separating animal fat from vegetable fat.</p>
<p>The food questionnaire asked participants to report how often they ate certain items across a typical year. This included everything from cooking oils and butter to specific kinds of meat, nuts, and dairy products. Using established nutritional databases, the researchers translated these dietary reports into estimated daily percentages of total fat intake.</p>
<p>They also categorized the fat by its chemical structure. This included saturated fats, which are typically solid at room temperature and found in meat and dairy. They also measured monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, which are usually liquid oils derived from plants or fish. Finally, they accounted for trans fats, which are synthetically modified oils often used in processed foods.</p>
<p>Over a median observation period of six years, the researchers tracked the participants’ cognitive health. They used a combination of self-reported diagnoses, memory tests, and interviews with proxy respondents like family members. The cognitive tests assessed memory through word recall tasks, as well as attention and calculation abilities by asking participants to count backward.</p>
<p>By the end of the tracking period, 444 participants had developed dementia. When examining total fat consumption alone as a percentage of a person’s daily diet, the researchers did not find an association with dementia risk. However, breaking the fat intake down by source and type revealed distinct dietary patterns.</p>
<p>Participants who consumed the highest amounts of vegetable fat had a 31 percent lower risk of developing dementia compared to those who consumed the least. The median intake for this top tier was about 23.5 percent of their total daily calories coming from vegetable fats. In contrast, total animal fat intake on its own did not show a statistically significant relationship with dementia.</p>
<p>The benefits of vegetable fat became even more apparent when the researchers ran their statistical models simulating dietary changes. Replacing just 5 percent of a person’s total daily calories from animal fat with an equivalent amount of vegetable fat was linked to a 15 percent reduction in dementia risk. Replacing 5 percent of daily calories from carbohydrates with vegetable fat also corresponded to a lower risk.</p>
<p>When looking at the chemical structures of the fats, diets high in saturated fat were associated with negative outcomes. Participants in the top fifth of saturated fat intake had a 56 percent higher risk of dementia compared to those in the bottom fifth. Conversely, consuming higher amounts of monounsaturated fats showed an inverse relationship with cognitive decline. This means higher consumption of monounsaturated fats was tied to a lower likelihood of developing the condition.</p>
<p>The isocaloric substitution models reinforced these associations. Replacing 5 percent of daily calories from saturated fat with monounsaturated fat corresponded to a 48 percent lower risk of dementia. Swapping that same amount of saturated fat for polyunsaturated fat was linked to a 33 percent lower risk.</p>
<p>Why might saturated fat be harmful while monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats appear helpful? Saturated fats can contribute to increased inflammation and problems with blood vessel function. The brain relies on a vast network of very small blood vessels to deliver oxygen and nutrients. Damage or restrictions to this vascular network can starve brain cells.</p>
<p>On the other hand, unsaturated fats are essential components of the structural membranes of neurons. Plant-based oils and fats contain high levels of these unsaturated fats along with other beneficial plant compounds. These additional compounds act as antioxidants in the human body. </p>
<p>Antioxidants help protect brain cells from oxidative stress, a biological process where unstable molecules damage the cellular structural fats. By providing both the structural building blocks and the defensive antioxidants, diets rich in vegetable oils may create a safer environment for neurons to thrive as a person ages.</p>
<p>The researchers noted that the protective patterns of vegetable fat were particularly strong among individuals who did not have a history of depression and those who never consumed alcohol. Conditions like depression can impair how the body processes fats or increase inflammation in the brain. This might cancel out the neurological benefits of dietary plant compounds, though the research team noted more study is needed to understand this connection.</p>
<p>The results remained consistent across various demographic groups. The protective association of vegetable fats did not change regardless of age, sex, race, or a prior history of cardiovascular disease. The researchers also accounted for genetic components by controlling for specific inherited genetic markers tied to Alzheimer’s disease risk. Controlling for these inherited traits slightly reduced the estimated effect sizes, but the overall trends pointing to the benefits of plant-based fats persisted.</p>
<p>Despite the large sample size and detailed dietary tracking, the study is observational and cannot prove that eating vegetable fat directly prevents dementia. Other unmeasured health behaviors or underlying metabolic conditions might explain parts of the association. People who consume heavily plant-based diets might also exercise more or have access to better healthcare, though the researchers adjusted for physical activity, income, and education levels in their models.</p>
<p>Additionally, the dietary data relied on questionnaires that depend on the participants’ memory. Recalling food habits over long periods can introduce some errors in reporting. To ensure early stages of cognitive decline were not causing participants to change their diets in ways that skewed the results, the researchers ran tests that excluded people diagnosed with dementia in the earliest years of the study. This lessened some of the statistical strength, but the general trends held steady.</p>
<p>The study also treated all forms of dementia as a single outcome rather than distinguishing between specific types, such as Alzheimer’s disease or vascular dementia. Because vascular dementia is highly tied to cardiovascular health and saturated fat intake, the physiological impact might be stronger for some forms of cognitive decline than others. The researchers noted that future studies are needed to confirm these dietary patterns in other populations and to isolate the exact biological mechanisms that make plant fats protective for the brain.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajcnut.2025.09.028" target="_blank">Association between dietary fat intake and long-term risk of dementia: a prospective cohort study</a>,” was authored by Minyu Wu, Liyan Huang, Yuhui Huang, Jie Shen, Hui Chen, Binghan Wang, Geng Zong, Marta Guasch-Ferre, Shuang Rong, Xiaoran Liu, and Changzheng Yuan.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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