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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-secret-joy-of-revenge-why-we-smile-when-a-rival-suffers-2026-03-26/" 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 psychology of schadenfreude: an opponent’s suffering triggers a spontaneous smile</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 5th 2026, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>People naturally experience a quiet sense of joy when witnessing a disliked rival suffer a sudden misfortune. A recent psychological experiment confirms that individuals spontaneously smile when watching an aggressive opponent experience physical pain, provided the observer feels personally provoked. These physical facial reactions, documented in a study published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2025.2515235">Cognition and Emotion</a>, reveal that perceiving someone as a wrongdoer acts as a primary trigger for feelings of dark satisfaction.</p>
<p>Psychologists use the German term schadenfreude to describe the distinct pleasure derived from another person’s misery. People typically experience this emotion when they believe the suffering individual deserves a harsh punishment. It frequently surfaces during competitive situations, such as watching a rival athletic team lose a championship game. It also appears regularly in interpersonal conflicts when someone feels deeply wronged by an acquaintance.</p>
<p>Witnessing a transgressor suffer can help restore a sense of justice or alleviate a feeling of personal inferiority. Research shows that expressing schadenfreude decreases the social dominance of the resented individual. This reaction rebalances the power dynamics between two people. When individuals feel inferior due to social comparisons, seeing the other person fail provides a potent emotional reward.</p>
<p>A heavily competitive environment often reduces a person’s natural empathetic response to pain. Observers sometimes react to an opponent’s physical distress with subtle displays of happiness rather than sympathy. A zero-sum game, where one player’s victory guarantees the other player’s defeat, strongly encourages these counter-empathetic reactions.</p>
<p>Karolina Dyduch-Hazar, a psychology researcher at the Julius-Maximilians-University of Würzburg, wanted to understand exactly when and why these spontaneous facial reactions occur. She and her colleagues, Vanessa Mitschke and Andreas B. Eder, set out to measure the physical hallmarks of schadenfreude in a controlled environment. They focused specifically on vengeful social interactions rather than basic competition.</p>
<p>Prior experiments demonstrated that people feel intense pleasure when they personally administer a retaliatory punishment to someone who provoked them. Most humans possess a strong aversion to physically harming others, making direct retaliation a complicated emotional experience. Dyduch-Hazar and her team designed a scenario to see if people would exhibit the same facial signs of joy when simply observing an aggressor suffer a punishment given by an impartial computer.</p>
<p>The research team used a technique called facial electromyography to capture spontaneous emotional reactions. This method involves placing small electronic sensors on a participant’s facial skin to measure the electrical activity of specific muscle groups. The sensors detect slight movements of the cheek and eye muscles pulling the face into a smile. They also monitor the brow muscles pulling the face into a frown.</p>
<p>This precise measurement tool allows researchers to record genuine emotional responses before a person has a chance to consciously hide them. A true smile of enjoyment involves a coordinated flex of the cheek and eye area alongside a relaxed brow. A grimace of distress, conversely, involves a tightened brow.</p>
<p>The team recruited college students to participate in a fast-paced reaction time game. The participants believed they were competing against eight other students through a live video feed on their computer monitors. The game required them to click a mouse button as quickly as possible when a glowing circle on the screen turned green.</p>
<p>The slower player in each round would lose and hear a loud burst of static noise through their laboratory headphones. Unbeknownst to the participants, the computer program completely rigged the outcomes of the game. Everyone lost exactly half of their rounds regardless of their actual reaction speed. The opponents on the video feed were actually pre-recorded clips of male actors.</p>
<p>During half of the game blocks, the participant faced a highly aggressive opponent. When the participant lost against these rivals, they received painful, high-volume noise blasts designed to provoke intense feelings of anger. In the alternating game blocks, the participants faced mild-mannered opponents who possessed a friendlier demeanor. These rivals delivered relatively quiet, non-provoking noise blasts.</p>
<p>When a participant won a round, the computer randomly selected a harsh noise blast to deliver to the defeated opponent. The participant then watched a quick video clip of their rival receiving the punishment. In some trials, the antagonist grimaced in clear pain, tightly shutting his eyes and furrowing his brow. In other trials, the rival maintained a completely blank and neutral facial expression despite the noise.</p>
<p>The researchers continuously monitored the participants’ facial muscles during these moments of observation. They found a distinct pattern of physical reactions that depended entirely on how the opponent had behaved earlier in the session. Participants reacted completely differently to the physical suffering of a provoking rival compared to a non-provoking one.</p>
<p>When participants watched an aggressive, provocative competitor grimace in pain, their cheek and eye muscles flexed while their brow muscles relaxed. This specific pattern of muscle activation indicates a genuine smile of pleasure. The reaction only occurred when the provocateur visibly suffered. The participant needed to see signs of physical distress to experience a feeling of joy.</p>
<p>The participants did not show this physical sign of enjoyment when the provoking rival remained calm during the noise blast. Winning the game against an aggressive opponent was not enough to trigger a smile on its own. The visual cue of the rival’s pain acted as the solitary catalyst for schadenfreude.</p>
<p>Observing the suffering of a non-provoking competitor produced an entirely different physical profile. When participants watched a mild-mannered rival grimace in pain, their brow muscles tensed up while their cheek and eye muscles relaxed. This pattern indicates a frown, reflecting a strong sense of empathetic concern or distress for the likable opponent.</p>
<p>Following the game, the participants filled out surveys rating their emotional states. They reported feeling angrier and less dominant after completing the blocks featuring the provocative opponents. They also felt that the aggressive rivals treated them much less fairly than the mild-mannered opponents.</p>
<p>These physical and emotional reactions occurred even though the participants did not choose the intensity of the noise blast themselves. Simply watching a computer punish an aggressive antagonist caused participants to smile in quiet satisfaction. The findings imply that human beings derive enjoyment from witnessing karma in action. A person does not need to inflict the punishment themselves to feel a sense of vindication.</p>
<p>The experiment provides clear experimental evidence of spontaneous emotional reactions, but the study does feature a few limitations. The pre-recorded video clips exclusively featured male opponents, while the vast majority of the study participants were female volunteers. Men and women often display varying levels of empathy toward pain displays. This gender discrepancy could have influenced the severity of the observed facial responses.</p>
<p>Some participants may have also harbored suspicions about the true authenticity of the live video feed. The researchers noted that even if some individuals doubted the setup, they still reported genuine emotional shifts after facing the provocative opponents. The simulated social interaction proved realistic enough to alter the participants’ personal well-being.</p>
<p>Psychologists will need to explore whether gender differences play a larger role in how people react to an opponent’s pain. Future researchers might also investigate if the joy of witnessing computer-administered retaliation accurately matches the satisfaction of delivering the punishment personally. Comparing these different scenarios could shed more light on the inherent human desire for cosmic balance and justice.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2025.2515235" target="_blank">Smiling after witnessing provocateur’s suffering: a facial electromyography study</a>,” was authored by Karolina Dyduch-Hazar, Vanessa Mitschke, and Andreas B. Eder.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/the-four-types-of-dementia-most-people-dont-know-exist/" 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 four types of dementia most people don’t know exist</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 5th 2026, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>What most people think of when they hear the word “dementia” is memory problems and forgetfulness. But what people often don’t know is that dementia can cause many different symptoms – affecting speech, behaviour, sleep, motor function and more.</p>
<p>In fact, <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/dementia-283">dementia</a> is an umbrella term. There are estimated to be more than <a href="https://www.alzint.org/about/dementia-facts-figures/types-of-dementia/">100 types of dementia</a>. <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/alzheimers-disease">Alzheimer’s disease</a> is the most common subtype of dementia, affecting approximately 60% of all cases. Memory loss in one of the most common symptoms of this type of dementia.</p>
<p>But <a href="https://dementiastatistics.org/about-dementia/subtypes/">approximately 40%</a> of all dementia cases are considered to be different, rarer types. Unfortunately, having a rarer subtype of dementia often makes diagnosis <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-024-02245-w">more difficult and requires more complex care</a>.</p>
<p>Although most people might be aware of some types of dementia – including Lewy Body, Parkinson’s disease dementia and frontotemporal dementia – awareness of other rarer types is low.</p>
<p>Knowing how to spot the signs of these rarer types of dementia early could be crucial in ensuring loved ones get the support they need.</p>
<h2>Posterior cortical atrophy</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.dementiauk.org/information-and-support/types-of-dementia/posterior-cortical-atrophy-pca">Posterior cortical atrophy</a> (PCA) affects mostly visual and spatial functioning. Memory is not as badly affected early on as it is in Alzheimer’s disease.</p>
<p>People with PCA can struggle with visual hallucinations and spatial navigation. This can become apparent when reading or judging depth and space on a staircase – making it difficult to judge where the next step is, for example. Symptoms commonly start appearing between the ages of 55 and 65.</p>
<p>There’s still much we don’t know about PCA because of how rare it is. Researchers are still trying to figure out whether PCA is a <a href="https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/what-is-dementia/types-of-dementia/posterior-cortical-atrophy">distinct subtype of dementia</a> or whether it’s an atypical form of Alzheimer’s disease. This is because the brain changes that occur in people with PCA closely resemble those that occur in people with Alzheimer’s disease, although the symptoms are different. It’s also estimated that between <a href="https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/what-is-dementia/types-of-dementia/posterior-cortical-atrophy">5% to 15% of people with Alzheimer’s</a> have PCA.</p>
<h2>Creutzfeld-Jakob disease</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/what-is-dementia/types-of-dementia/creutzfeldt-jakob-disease">Creutzfeld-Jakob disease</a> is a particularly rare form of dementia, affecting about one in 1 million people worldwide.</p>
<p>Creutzfeld-Jakob disease is a prion disease. These diseases involve prion proteins which, for unknown reasons, suddenly change into a three-dimensional shape. The function of <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms23031232">healthy prions</a> remains unknown, but they appear to play some role in protecting nerves and brain cells and keeping the body’s circadian rhythm functioning (the natural, 24-hour cycle our body follows that controls everything from sleep, digestions and immunity).</p>
<p>The misfolding of prion proteins in Creutzfeld-Jakob disease causes a very rapid and severe form of dementia, progressing much more quickly than Alzheimer’s disease or Lewy Body dementia, for example. Besides the notably quick nature of progression, people with Creutzfeld-Jakob disease struggle with memory and movement, including sudden jerky movements.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(19)30615-2/abstract">Risk factors</a> for this subtype of dementia include old age and genetics (occurring in 10-15% of cases). In very rare cases, it can also develop as a <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/creutzfeldt-jakob-disease/symptoms-causes/syc-2037122">result of contamination</a> – such as from eating beef from cattle infected with mad cow disease.</p>
<h2>FTD-MND</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.ftdtalk.org/factsheets/mnd/">FTD-MND</a> is a form of frontotemporal dementia that occurs alongside motor neurone disease.</p>
<p>Frontotemporal dementia refers to subtypes of the disease that cause gradual brain tissue loss in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/motor-neurone-disease/">Motor neurone disease</a>, on the other hand, is a rapidly progressing neurological condition which can lead to difficulties breathing, movement and paralysis. Although it affects the brain and nerves, it is not itself a form of dementia.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics11030509">Approximately 10-15%</a> of people with frontotemporal dementia also develop motor neurone disease. This co-occurence seems to be linked to a mutation in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2011.09.010">C9orf72 gene</a>. Because of this genetic link, FTD-MND can <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/bpa.70057">run in families</a>.</p>
<p>People with FTD-MND experience several muscle-related issues, including muscle waste, stiffness and problems with swallowing. These are things you would not normally associate with dementia and memory problems.</p>
<p>It’s currently not clear whether frontotemporal dementia develops first and then motor neurone disease, or if it’s the other way around.</p>
<h2>Progressive supranuclear palsy</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/about-dementia/types-dementia/progressive-supranuclear-palsy">Progressive supranuclear palsy</a> (PSP) is a rare neurological condition that causes both dementia and problems with movement.</p>
<p>It’s estimated to affect approximately <a href="https://www.dementiasplatform.uk/news-and-media/blog/progressive-supranuclear-palsy-a-type-of-dementia-affecting-movement">4,000 people in the UK</a>. PSP is difficult to diagnosis as it overlaps with many other conditions – including Parkinson’s disease.</p>
<p>PSP primarily leads to damage in subcortical brain regions, specifically the brainstem and basal ganglia. These areas are linked to vision and movement.</p>
<p>As such, people with PSP struggle using their eyes and can thus often fall and experience <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gaitpost.2014.07.005">difficulties moving around</a>. People with PSP can also struggle concentrating and <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00702-019-02065-1">problem solving</a>.</p>
<h2>Dementia support</h2>
<p>As with all dementia subtypes, there is <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/dementia/about-dementia/cure/">no cure yet</a>. While there are medications that can delay symptoms, these only work in cases of <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/dementia/about-dementia/treatment/">Alzheimer’s disease</a>.</p>
<p>As such, we still need to find ways to support people with other subtypes of dementia as best as possible.</p>
<p>One way of doing this is by properly understanding their condition and their subtype. Knowing that someone might particularly struggle with walking and movement as opposed to memory is important to put the right care in place in advance.</p>
<p>It is just as important to be able to spot the signs early on. Dementia doesn’t just affect memory. Changes in behaviour, problems seeing or falling more frequently, walking or moving differently or difficulty speaking can all be early signs of dementia.</p>
<p>Better understanding dementia’s many forms will hopefully lead to better ways of managing and treating this complex disease.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img decoding="async" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/278124/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1"><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p>
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<p><em>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-four-types-of-dementia-most-people-dont-know-exist-278124">original article</a>.</em></p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/are-women-more-likely-to-regret-one-night-stands-only-when-they-sleep-with-men/" 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;">Are women more likely to regret one-night stands? Only when they sleep with men</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 5th 2026, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>An international online survey found that women regret one-night stands more than men and that this difference is strongly associated with their ability to achieve an orgasm. Additionally, participants tended to report more regret when their levels of intoxication were higher. The paper was published in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-025-03380-3"><em>Archives of Sexual Behavior</em></a>.</p>
<p>Casual sexual relationships and experiences, commonly known as hook-ups, are intimate relationships that involve sexual activity without a commitment to a long-term romantic partnership. These dynamics have most often been investigated among North American university students, who experience casual sex so frequently that such experiences are considered an essential part of college culture by some authors.</p>
<p>However, in recent decades, these sexual behaviors have become more common among the broader population thanks to online apps specifically designed for finding casual sex partners. In spite of this, social and cultural attitudes toward casual sex vary widely across societies.</p>
<p>People generally engage in casual sexual relationships for physical satisfaction, exploration, or companionship without expectations of exclusivity. Casual sexual experiences can include one-time encounters or ongoing arrangements.</p>
<p>Emotional outcomes can differ, with some individuals remaining detached while others develop feelings for their casual partners. But while many people enjoy these encounters, individuals often experience regret after engaging in casual sex. Historically, psychological research has shown that this regret is significantly more common among women.</p>
<p>Study authors Christina Sagioglou and Maximilian Dick conducted a study exploring the factors that could explain these gender differences. They were particularly interested in seeing how participants evaluated their most recent one-night stand—defined as a single sexual encounter between people who do not expect an ongoing romantic or sexual relationship afterward.</p>
<p>The study participants consisted of 1,075 individuals who reported having had at least one one-night stand in their life. The study authors recruited them by posting invites across various online forums looking for individuals with such experience. Of the participants, 651 were women, and the average age was 25 years. Regarding nationalities, 349 participants were German, 348 were Austrian, and the remaining participants were from the U.S., Italy, and Great Britain. The survey was available in German and English.</p>
<p>The survey asked participants to report how many one-night stands they had in total, the date of their latest one-night stand, their relationship status at the time, and the sexual activities they engaged in (given oral sex, received oral sex, vaginal sex, anal sex, or other). It also asked for details regarding the occurrence of the one-night stand (e.g., after a date, after a party, or a random encounter), the prior relationship with the partner (e.g., met that same day, dating partner, distant acquaintance, or ex-partner), and the partner’s gender.</p>
<p>Participants also reported whether they were under the influence of psychoactive substances at the time and how strong that influence was. They evaluated their experiences with their latest one-night stand, reporting sexual satisfaction, regret, worry about pregnancy, physical disgust toward the event, how much they felt pressured to engage in it, and any moral concerns they had. The last part of the survey contained a personality assessment (the Ten-Item Personality Inventory).</p>
<p>Results showed that almost 79% of women and 77% of men reported being single at the time of their last one-night stand. Just 6.2% of women and 12.4% of men were in a relationship, while 13.1% of women and 10.1% of men said that they had recently broken up.</p>
<p>Seventy-five percent of participants reported being under the influence of psychoactive substances when making the decision to engage in the one-night stand. For 99% of those participants, the substance was alcohol. However, 17% of participants reported that they had consumed cannabis, 3% reported consuming cocaine, 2% reported MDMA, and 1% consumed amphetamines.</p>
<p>More than half of the study participants reported that they had met their one-night stand partner on that same day, while 34% stated that they had known them for a while. Twenty percent of participants reported having 10 or more one-night stands in their lives.</p>
<p>Contrary to popular belief, most participants evaluated their one-night stands neutrally or positively, and levels of overall regret were generally low. Forty-seven percent of participants reported no regret at all.</p>
<p>However, as expected, women tended to report stronger regret than men—but only in heterosexual one-night stands.</p>
<p>There were no gender differences in regret when the one-night stand was with a same-sex partner. The researchers note that this finding challenges the evolutionary theory that women are biologically hardwired to regret casual sex; if that were true, women would regret the encounters regardless of who they slept with. Instead, the finding suggests that the higher regret experienced by women is driven by the specific dynamics of heterosexual interactions.</p>
<p>Further analyses found that the factor most strongly mediating the regret gap between heterosexual genders was sexual satisfaction. Specifically, the strongest driver of this gap was whether the participant achieved an orgasm during the sexual encounter. Because men in heterosexual encounters had much higher rates of orgasm and satisfaction, their regret was lower. Women in heterosexual encounters reported much lower rates of satisfaction and orgasm, leading to higher regret.</p>
<p>Other factors that contributed to higher regret for women in heterosexual encounters included feeling subtle pressure to engage in the sex (decision heteronomy), worrying about their reputation, and intoxication.</p>
<p>Interestingly, researchers found that alcohol had a “U-shaped” effect on regret. A little bit of alcohol didn’t cause much regret, but getting very drunk caused a massive spike in regret for both genders, likely because heavy drinking lowers sexual performance and decision-making ability.</p>
<p>“The results indicate that enhancing experiential quality through mutual satisfaction and autonomous decision-making offers the most promising path toward enhancing the positive outcomes of single sexual encounters,” the study authors concluded.</p>
<p>The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the psychological processes related to casual sexual encounters. However, the data used in the study were collected using retrospective self-reports, leaving room for reporting bias or memory degradation to have affected the results. Additionally, the cross-sectional design of the study does not allow any definitive causal inferences to be derived from the results.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-025-03380-3">The Gender Gap in One‑Night Stand Regret: Evidence from Heterosexual and Same‑Sex Encounters,</a>” was authored by Christina Sagioglou and Maximilian Dick.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/higher-testosterone-linked-to-increased-suicide-risk-in-depressed-teenage-boys-2026-03-26/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Higher testosterone linked to increased suicide risk in depressed teenage boys</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 4th 2026, 16:00</div>
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<p><p>Higher testosterone levels in male teenagers suffering from depression are linked to an increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors according to recent research. The findings suggest that blood tests evaluating hormone levels might one day help doctors identify which teenage boys are at the greatest risk of self-harm. The research was published in the journal <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-025-07098-3">BMC Psychiatry</a>.</p>
<p>Rates of depression and suicide among teenagers have been climbing steadily over the past decade. The problem presents a major public health challenge because doctors currently lack objective biological markers to predict which young people are most likely to consider or attempt suicide. Medical professionals typically rely on interviews, questionnaires, and self-reported symptoms to assess safety. These subjective methods can sometimes miss hidden warning signs if a patient is reluctant to share their true feelings.</p>
<p>Researchers have long debated whether sex hormones might play a role in the biology of depression and suicide. Evaluating testosterone levels has produced mixed results over years of scientific inquiry. Many past investigations grouped adults and teenagers together or did not account for the drastic differences between male and female biology. Hormone levels naturally vary across a person’s lifespan, meaning a single average measurement across all ages can obscure important details.</p>
<p>Adolescence is a sensitive period marked by rapid physical development and the emergence of secondary sexual characteristics. During this time, the bodies of teenage boys experience vast increases in testosterone production. These sudden shifts can heavily influence emotional regulation. The developing teenage brain often experiences a mismatch in maturity between the prefrontal cortex, which controls logic and planning, and the limbic system, which processes emotions.</p>
<p>Poor emotional regulation can easily lead to impulsivity and aggression. Researchers suspect that high testosterone levels might interact with the developing adolescent brain in ways that increase impulsive behavior through heightened activity in the emotional centers of the brain. Han Wang of Capital Medical University in Beijing and a team of colleagues set out to explore this dynamic. They designed a study to see if testosterone levels could be linked to suicidal tendencies specifically in teenagers diagnosed with major depressive disorder.</p>
<p>The research team created a project using electronic health records from Beijing Anding Hospital. They gathered data on 1,227 teenagers between the ages of 10 and 19 who had been hospitalized for major depressive disorder from 2013 to 2020. The investigators excluded patients who had other conditions like schizophrenia or autism, severe physical illnesses, or issues with substance abuse. They divided the remaining teenagers into two categories based on whether they had expressed suicidal thoughts or engaged in suicidal behaviors at the time of their hospital admission.</p>
<p>The researchers collected demographic information, clinical histories, and the results of blood tests taken shortly after the patients arrived at the hospital. These blood tests provided a measure of each teenager’s serum testosterone levels. The scientists analyzed the data separately for male and female patients to account for natural differences in hormone profiles. They adjusted their mathematical models to balance out the effects of other variables like age, tobacco use, alcohol consumption, and the duration of the patient’s illness.</p>
<p>The health records revealed a clear pattern among the male patients. Teenage boys who displayed suicidal thoughts or behaviors had higher testosterone levels compared to boys who did not exhibit these tendencies. This correlation persisted even after the researchers accounted for other variables that might alter the results. The presence of higher testosterone pointed consistently toward an elevated risk for self-harm in the male demographic.</p>
<p>The results for female patients were entirely different. The researchers found no statistical difference in testosterone levels between girls who experienced suicidal ideation and those who did not. Female patients in the study were more likely overall to report suicidal thoughts compared to the male patients, but their testosterone levels did not relate to this risk. The researchers note that other hormones, such as estrogen and progesterone, might be more relevant for depression and emotional regulation in teenage girls.</p>
<p>The researchers point out that male suicide is frequently linked to extreme forms of inward-directed aggression and impulsivity. Medications that lower impulsivity and aggression have been shown to reduce suicide risk in the past. It is possible that elevated testosterone fuels this impulsivity pathway in young men. The researchers also noted that genetic variations affecting how testosterone crosses into the brain have been connected to suicide in prior scientific literature.</p>
<p>To ensure their initial observations were robust, the research team conducted a second round of analysis using a separate set of hospital records. This validation dataset included 579 different teenagers hospitalized for major depressive disorder between 2022 and 2023. The investigators applied the exact same criteria and statistical models to this new group of patients. They also incorporated body mass index data into the second analysis to evaluate whether a patient’s physical weight influenced the outcomes.</p>
<p>The second analysis completely backed up the results of the primary dataset. Once again, male teenagers with suicidal thoughts or behaviors exhibited higher testosterone levels than their peers who did not show suicidal tendencies. The correlation remained strong after adjusting for the new set of demographic variables. Just as before, the female patients in the validation group showed no relationship between their testosterone levels and suicidal behavior.</p>
<p>The study provides a detailed look at the biology of mental health, but the authors acknowledge several limitations. Because the research relied entirely on searching through past medical records, the scientists could only observe correlations. They cannot prove that high testosterone causes suicidal behavior. It is entirely possible that the severe stress of a suicidal crisis activates the body’s hormonal response, causing a sudden spike in testosterone production after the fact.</p>
<p>The scientists specify that their study only included teenagers who were experiencing depression severe enough to require hospitalization. The results might not apply to young people with milder forms of depression who receive treatment in outpatient clinics or at home. The study also did not account for lifestyle variables like sleep disorders or daily physical activity levels, which are known to alter a person’s natural hormone balance. The data also did not separate teenagers who only had thoughts of suicide from those who actually attempted suicide.</p>
<p>Future investigations will need to track groups of teenagers over an extended period to see if rising testosterone levels truly precede suicidal thoughts. Researchers also hope to measure hormone levels at multiple points during a patient’s recovery to monitor how these chemicals fluctuate as mental health stabilizes. For female patients, future studies could track the menstrual cycle and measure a wider array of hormones to map their specific biological risk factors. In the meantime, the study acts as a reminder that male and female depression may operate through very different biological pathways.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-025-07098-3" target="_blank">High testosterone levels associated with elevated suicidal risk in male adolescents with depression</a>,” was authored by Han Wang, Nan Lyu, Juan Huang, Bingbing Fu, Lili Shang, Fan Yang, Ling Zhang, and Qian Zhao.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/brain-scans-reveal-how-a-woman-voluntarily-enters-a-psychedelic-like-trance-without-drugs/" 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;">Brain scans reveal how a woman voluntarily enters a psychedelic-like trance without drugs</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 4th 2026, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>A neuroimaging study investigated the brain activity of an individual capable of voluntarily entering a transcendental visionary state—a rare, non-ordinary state of consciousness. The researchers found that the participant’s brain connectivity fundamentally reorganized during this state: her visual and somatosensory connections decreased, while connectivity in the frontoparietal control regions of the brain increased. The paper was published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2026.121784" target="_blank">NeuroImage</a></em>.</p>
<p>Non-ordinary states of consciousness refer to mental states that differ significantly from normal waking awareness in terms of perception, cognition, emotion, and sense of self. These states can arise through various means, including meditation, sensory deprivation, extreme stress, sleep, or the use of psychoactive substances (like psychedelics). They typically involve alterations in time perception, intensified imagery, and a reduced sense of the boundaries between the self and the environment. Some non-ordinary states are considered pathological, while others are culturally valued or deliberately cultivated for spiritual purposes.</p>
<p>One specific type of non-ordinary state of consciousness is the transcendental visionary state. This state is characterized by vivid, often symbolic or archetypal imagery and a strong sense of insight or revelation. Individuals in such states frequently report experiencing a reality that feels more meaningful or “truer” than ordinary perception. These experiences may include visions of entities, landscapes, or abstract patterns, often accompanied by intense emotions such as awe or unity. In many religious and mystical traditions, transcendental visionary states are interpreted as encounters with a higher reality or divine presence.</p>
<p>Studying these states scientifically has historically been challenging. Psychedelics or anesthesia can induce altered states, but they chemically alter the brain, making it difficult to isolate the pure mechanics of the experience from the drug itself. Furthermore, drug-induced states are often chaotic and unpredictable.</p>
<p>Study author Gabriel Della Bella and his colleagues conducted a case study to bypass these limitations. They used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the brain activity of a self-taught participant capable of intentionally entering a transcendental visionary state on command, without drugs. This person was able to reliably reproduce this state across multiple scanning sessions, reporting features akin to those found in psychedelic, hypnotic, and trance states, such as visual imagery, altered embodiment, shifts in time perception, and ego attenuation.</p>
<p>The study participant (referred to as AVP) is a 37-year-old woman, who is also listed as one of the authors of the study due to her extensive introspective reporting. She described experiencing vivid internal imagery, alteration of her body schema, changes in agency, and a deep sense of unity. Crucially, she retained a high degree of voluntary control and temporal stability during the self-induced trance.</p>
<p>“In AVP [the participant], this trajectory [of self-inducing the transcendental visionary state] unfolds spontaneously and reproducibly across sessions: it begins with intricate geometric and luminous imagery and culminates in a lucid, expansive state of unity and serenity… At the time of data collection, she was not involved in the study design, hypothesis formulation, data analysis, or interpretation. She was blinded to the specific aims of the study and participated solely as a volunteer,” the study authors explained.</p>
<p>The participant never received formal training in techniques for inducing non-ordinary states of consciousness. Her practice developed intuitively and independently from early adolescence. At age 24, she experienced a spontaneous visual phenomenon that she later learned to reproduce voluntarily. Over time, she gradually refined this ability through reasoning and introspection. (She also reports stable, lifelong associations between letters, numbers, and colors, consistent with mild grapheme-color synesthesia).</p>
<p>For the study, AVP was interviewed multiple times using micro-phenomenological methods and completed 20 fMRI sessions over a period of five months. To ensure the observed brain changes were unique to the trance state, the researchers also scanned a control group of 10 matched women who were simply instructed to close their eyes and imagine vivid visual scenes.</p>
<p>The results showed a clear, repeatable trajectory. At the beginning of each session (the Baseline phase), the participant entered the scanner in an ordinary mental mode, engaging in everyday thoughts. She then intentionally relaxed, scanning her body, loosening her muscles, and allowing herself to feel progressively lighter. This was followed by a Transition phase that was effortful, unstable, and required active attention.</p>
<p>During the Transition, she reported the emergence of a violet coloration replacing her dark visual field, followed by the gradual appearance of a yellow-violet hexagonal lattice that she perceived as a structured pattern floating “in the air” around her. She emphasized a distinct sense of “double consciousness”: she was fully aware of being in the MRI scanner, but also felt connected to a broader field of experience characterized by serenity, unity, and a reduced fragmentation of time.</p>
<p>After crossing the threshold into the fully developed transcendental visionary state, her experience stabilized. She reported profound calmness, spatial expansion, and attenuated bodily boundaries. She described an “eternal present”—a continuous temporal flow with minimal segmentation. The hexagonal network coupled with rhythmic violet pulses remained the most stable phenomenological motif across all 20 sessions.</p>
<p>The neuroimaging data mirrored these subjective reports. During the Transition phase, brain connectivity became highly variable, indicating a temporary destabilization of her normal network organization. Once she entered the transcendental visionary state, overall connectivity between distinct brain networks decreased broadly. Her visual cortex showed severely reduced coupling with the auditory, sensorimotor, orbitofrontal, thalamic, and cerebellar regions, effectively isolating her visual processing from the outside world and allowing internal imagery to dominate. Similarly, her somatomotor-dorsal brain network disengaged from auditory and language cortices, matching her reports of losing the sensation of her physical body.</p>
<p>However, while sensory networks disconnected, her frontoparietal and salience networks—which govern internal focus, cognitive control, and interoception—showed increased coupling with the precuneus/posterior cingulate and multimodal temporal cortex. This aligns with her subjective reports of sustained inward-directed attention, stable absorption, and remaining fully lucid and in control. Furthermore, her brain activity during the trance shifted toward lower entropy (less random noise) and higher statistical complexity (highly structured, rich patterns) before returning to baseline levels once the session ended.</p>
<p>None of these profound network reorganizations were observed in the control group who simply imagined visual scenes.</p>
<p>“This study demonstrates how a self-induced NOC [non-ordinary state of consciousness] can be characterized as a coherent yet reorganized mode of conscious experience, with reproducible large-scale signatures tightly aligned with a phenomenological sequence,” the study authors concluded.</p>
<p>The study provides an extremely valuable contribution to the understanding of non-ordinary states of consciousness, proving that the human brain can radically reorganize its large-scale networks to create a deeply altered, psychedelic-like reality without any pharmacological intervention.</p>
<p>However, this was an in-depth case study involving only a single participant with a highly unique neurocognitive profile (including her synesthesia). While this is justified by the fact that individuals able to voluntarily enter non-ordinary states of consciousness on command are extremely rare, further studies involving diverse participants are needed to determine which of the observed changes in brain activity are a general feature of such states and which are specific to this one individual.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2026.121784" target="_blank">The Neurophenomenology of a Self-Induced Transcendental Visionary State: A Case Study</a>,” was authored by Gabriel Della Bella, Agustina Velez Picatto, Dante Sebastian Galvan Rial, Sebastian Cukier, Gustavo Foa Torres, Magaly Catanzariti, Diego Mateos, Pedro Lamberti, Etzel Cardena, and Pablo Barttfeld.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/the-hidden-mental-cost-of-emotional-rigidity-in-young-adults/" 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 hidden mental cost of emotional rigidity in young adults</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 4th 2026, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>Young adults often face daily challenges with focus, emotional regulation, and planning. A recent study published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00332941251415326">Psychological Reports</a> reveals that a rigid mindset might bridge the gap between certain personality traits and these everyday cognitive hiccups. The findings suggest that psychological inflexibility plays a mediating role in how feelings of anxiety or goal-orientation relate to a person’s perceived mental efficiency.</p>
<p>The human brain undergoes continuous development well into a person’s twenties. During this time, the prefrontal cortex is still maturing. This brain area is responsible for executive functions, which are advanced mental skills that allow people to navigate complex environments. These functions include planning future actions, prioritizing tasks, ignoring distractions, and keeping emotional outbursts under control.</p>
<p>When these prefrontal systems operate below peak efficiency, people might experience what psychologists term prefrontal symptomatology. In everyday life, these symptoms manifest as ordinary mental errors rather than severe clinical deficits. A person might forget an appointment, struggle to initiate a difficult academic assignment, or snap at a friend out of sudden frustration. They represent natural variations in how well people manage the high demands placed on their cognitive resources.</p>
<p>Most individuals notice these occasional lapses, but some people report them more frequently and experience greater frustration as a result. Researchers wanted to know why some young adults seem highly sensitive to these mental slips while others navigate stress more smoothly. Past investigations hinted that individual differences in personality matter, but the exact cognitive mechanisms remained vague.</p>
<p>Daniela Batallas, a researcher at the University of Valencia in Spain, led a new investigation to map out these connections. Batallas collaborated with scientists from universities in Spain and Ecuador. They proposed that the way a person mentally handles internal distress might act as the missing link between personality and everyday mental performance. They grounded their work in a specific theory of personality that separates biologically based temperaments from learned character traits.</p>
<p>The team focused on two specific personality dimensions. First, they looked at harm avoidance, which acts as a basic temperament trait. This dimension describes a fundamental sensitivity to threat, punishment, and potential danger. People with high harm avoidance often fear uncertainty, exhibit heightened vigilance, and spend excessive energy anticipating negative outcomes.</p>
<p>Second, the researchers examined self-directedness. Unlike harm avoidance, self-directedness is considered a character trait shaped by experience and learning. It represents goal orientation, self-reliance, and the ability to adapt personal behavior to fit a given situation. High self-directedness generally protects individuals against excessive stress by fostering a sense of personal responsibility.</p>
<p>To understand the pathway between these traits and cognitive lapses, the researchers evaluated psychological inflexibility. Psychological inflexibility describes a rigid, avoidance-based response pattern to negative thoughts and emotions. Instead of accepting uncomfortable feelings and moving forward, mathematically rigid individuals try to suppress or escape them. This emotional avoidance demands heavy cognitive effort and often distracts a person from their actual goals.</p>
<p>The researchers recruited 501 undergraduate students attending universities in Loja, Ecuador. The participants, who averaged exactly 21 years of age, completed a supervised session containing several standardized questionnaires. The surveys asked them to rate their agreement with statements describing their personal habits, their emotional reactions, and their recent mental errors.</p>
<p>To measure personality, the participants completed an inventory that asked about their tendencies to worry and their ability to stay focused on long-term objectives. Another survey measured psychological inflexibility by asking how often negative emotions disrupted their daily lives. Finally, the researchers used a symptom inventory that tracked how frequently participants experienced memory problems, impulsive reactions, or struggles with decision-making.</p>
<p>By using specialized statistical models, the researchers looked for indirect pathways among the survey responses. They tested whether psychological inflexibility acted as an intermediate stepping stone between a person’s base personality and their everyday mental performance. The analysis controlled for gender differences, ensuring that any differing baselines between men and women did not skew the final results.</p>
<p>The association between harm avoidance and cognitive struggles operated just as the researchers suspected. Participants who scored high in harm avoidance generally reported much more psychological inflexibility. In turn, that higher level of inflexibility mathematically predicted a greater rate of everyday executive function complaints.</p>
<p>A contrasting pattern emerged for the trait of self-directedness. Participants who were highly self-directed exhibited much lower levels of psychological inflexibility. Their mental adaptability then predicted fewer daily cognitive lapses and a better subjective sense of emotional control.</p>
<p>The statistical models confirmed that psychological inflexibility served as a partial mediator in both scenarios. A partial mediator acts like a primary channel through which one variable influences another, though it does not account for the entire relationship. Emotional rigidity bridges a large part of the distance between basic personality and subjective cognitive performance.</p>
<p>This relationship aligns neatly with theories about how the brain manages stress and attention. If a person spends large amounts of mental energy suppressing anxiety, their prefrontal cortex has fewer resources available for staying organized. A rigid refusal to accept negative emotions acts like a background program draining a computer’s operating memory. Over time, the mental system stutters, leading to the exact memory slips and impulsive decisions measured in the study.</p>
<p>The researchers noted that their findings carry highly practical implications for young people. Core personality traits like harm avoidance are notoriously difficult to change and remain relatively stable over a lifetime. Psychological flexibility, on the other hand, operates as a trainable set of cognitive skills.</p>
<p>Clinicians already use targeted interventions, like Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, to improve mental adaptability in patients. These therapies teach people to tolerate emotional discomfort without letting it derail their actions. By learning to accept stressful feelings instead of fighting them, young adults might free up important cognitive resources.</p>
<p>This shift in perspective could improve academic performance and general resilience during the challenging developmental period of young adulthood. The study suggests that directly treating a person’s mental rigidity might indirectly alleviate their problems with focus, planning, and emotional regulation.</p>
<p>There are some limitations to consider when interpreting these results. The study relied entirely on self-reported questionnaires. People might overstate or underestimate their own cognitive failures depending on their current mood. Adding behavioral tests could provide an objective measure of attention and memory in future studies.</p>
<p>The cross-sectional design of the research also warrants caution regarding causality. All data in the study was collected at a single point in time. Because of this, the researchers cannot definitively prove a direct chain of cause and effect. It remains possible that struggling with cognitive tasks makes a person more psychologically inflexible and anxious over time.</p>
<p>To confirm the direction of these relationships, scientists will need to conduct long-term research. Tracking young adults over several years would reveal how changes in mental flexibility precede changes in executive functioning. Exploring biological markers, such as heart rate variability, could also provide physical evidence of how emotional rigidity taxes the body. These tools would give researchers a clearer picture of how the struggle to avoid negative thoughts impairs the prefrontal cortex in real time.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00332941251415326" target="_blank">The Psychological Cost of Rigidity: Exploring the Mediation of Psychological Inflexibility Between Personality and Prefrontal Functioning</a>,” was authored by Daniela Batallas, Víctor López-Guerra, Marco Jiménez, Vanesa Hidalgo, and Alicia Salvador.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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