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<td><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:20px;font-weight:bold;">PsyPost – Psychology News</span></td>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/new-study-reveals-how-political-bias-conditions-the-impact-of-conspiracy-thinking/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">New study reveals how political bias conditions the impact of conspiracy thinking</a>
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<p><p>A recent study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.70131" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Political Psychology</a></em> suggests that a person’s general tendency to believe in conspiracies strongly predicts their endorsement of specific political rumors, but mostly when those rumors attack their political rivals. The research provides evidence that psychological traits and political loyalties work together to shape what people are willing to believe. These findings help explain how political divisions feed into the spread of misinformation.</p>
<p>Previous work has identified two separate predictors of these beliefs. First, people have varying levels of “conspiracy thinking,” which is a general psychological tendency to assume that secret, sinister forces control world events.</p>
<p>Second, people tend to favor their own political groups. They usually accept theories that blame their political rivals and reject theories that accuse their own side. The researchers designed this study to see if these two separate factors actually interact with one another.</p>
<p>The scientists suspected that general conspiracy thinking might have a stronger effect when a rumor aligns with a person’s political bias. People naturally want to protect the reputation of their own group while assuming the worst about their opponents. Because of this natural bias, the researchers expected that people who are highly prone to conspiratorial thinking would eagerly accept rumors about their rivals.</p>
<p>“I am a political scientist who is interested in conspiracy theories, mainly partisan conspiracy theories involving parties/politicians/ideological groups,” said study author Omer Yair, a research Fellow at the Institute for Liberty and Responsibility at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy at Reichman University.</p>
<p>“And over the last few years I have read many articles showing that both political preferences, such as party identification, and “conspiracy thinking” (AKA conspiracy mentality), i.e., people’s tendency to believe in conspiracy theories, independently explain belief in partisan conspiracy theories.</p>
<p>“I was wondering whether a combination, i.e., an interaction, of these two important predictors of belief in conspiracy theories, would help better explain who the people most likely to believe in these partisan conspiracy theories are. A short search in the literature found no empirical support for such an interaction, so we gathered data from several surveys and found consistent support for our interaction hypothesis.”</p>
<p>To investigate this, the scientists analyzed survey data from six different studies. Two of these studies took place in the United States, and four took place in Israel. In total, the combined sample included 10,765 adult participants.</p>
<p>The surveys asked participants about 61 different conspiracy theories. Thirty of these theories were political in nature, meaning they accused specific political figures or parties of secret plots. The other 31 theories were non-political, such as rumors about hidden information regarding aliens or secret cures for diseases.</p>
<p>The first United States survey included 2,021 adults and was conducted in the spring of 2021. It asked participants about 12 political theories and 27 non-political theories. The sample was designed to be representative of the American adult population in terms of age, gender, race, and income.</p>
<p>The political items featured rumors such as the idea that Republicans stole previous presidential elections or that Barack Obama faked his citizenship to become president. The non-political items covered ideas that did not target a specific political party. These included rumors that an elite one percent controls the economy or that the dangers of genetically modified foods are being kept secret from the public.</p>
<p>The second United States survey included 2,765 adults and was conducted in July 2024. This survey focused specifically on two political theories regarding the recent assassination attempt on presidential candidate Donald Trump.</p>
<p>In Israel, the four original surveys included a combined 5,979 adults and were conducted between February 2023 and April 2025. These surveys asked participants about 16 political theories and four non-political theories.</p>
<p>The Israeli theories focused on the political rivalry between supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and supporters of the opposing political group. For example, one theory suggested that security officials intentionally hid information about the October 7 Hamas attacks from the Prime Minister.</p>
<p>In all six studies, the scientists measured participants’ general conspiracy thinking using a standard four-question scale. Participants rated their agreement with statements suggesting that unknown people secretly control the country or that major events are the result of hidden plots.</p>
<p>The researchers also measured how strongly participants believed specific theories. They pooled the responses together to test the statistical relationship between a person’s general conspiratorial mindset, their political identity, and their belief in specific rumors.</p>
<p>The researchers found that general conspiracy thinking strongly predicts belief in political conspiracy theories, but this relationship depends heavily on political alignment. When a theory accused a person’s political rivals of wrongdoing, their underlying tendency to believe in conspiracies strongly activated. In these situations, highly conspiratorial individuals were very likely to believe the rumor.</p>
<p>When a theory accused a person’s own political group of a secret plot, the effect of conspiracy thinking was much weaker. Even people with a high tendency to believe in hidden plots were much less likely to believe a rumor if it made their own side look bad.</p>
<p>The researchers noted that the strongest interaction occurred during the 2024 United States election, a time when political tensions were especially high.</p>
<p>“Our results show an interesting combination or marriage of psychological predispositions and political preferences. That is, it’s not <em>just</em> people’s politics or <em>just</em> people’s psychological tendencies that affect their endorsement of partisan conspiracy theories – it’s a combination,” Yair told PsyPost.</p>
<p>“I think that the most extreme example we have in our data concerns the belief in a conspiracy theory according to which Democratic operatives were behind the assassination attempt against Donald Trump in July 2024 in Pennsylvania. Based on our analysis, less than 10 percent of Republicans with the lowest levels of conspiracism in the data endorsed this conspiracy theory, while almost 80 percent of Republicans with the highest levels of conspiracism endorsed it.”</p>
<p>The scientists also found that this interaction only applies to political rumors. When looking at non-political theories, like hidden information about unidentified flying objects or genetically modified foods, political affiliation did not change the impact of conspiracy thinking. A highly conspiratorial Republican and a highly conspiratorial Democrat were equally likely to believe these neutral rumors.</p>
<p>The data also revealed some geographic differences between the two countries. “We had data from both the United States and Israel, and I was a bit surprised to find the specific differences we had between the two countries,” Yair said. “We found that the effect of conspiracy thinking on conspiracy beliefs was consistently stronger in the United States, while the conspiracy theories in Israel were more ‘politicized’ in the sense that the baseline partisan differences (i.e., among partisans, from the rival groups, who had the lowest levels of conspiracy thinking) were consistently stronger in Israel. As an Israeli, it was quite surprising.”</p>
<p>“I think there are two main takeaways: First, even people who are ‘conspiratorial’ and tend to believe in many conspiracy theories will likely not react similarly to conspiracy theories that accuse their political rival and conspiracy theories that accuse their own political group. Rather, they are likely to believe in conspiracy theories that accuse the opposition more than conspiracy theories that accuse their political in-group.”</p>
<p>“Second, not all members of a partisan/ideological group are likely to believe in conspiracy theories that accuse their political rivals,” Yair explained. “Rather, group members who are ‘conspiratorial’ and tend to believe in those conspiracy theories are most likely to believe such conspiracy theories; other group members – less or even much less.”</p>
<p>While the research provides evidence for this psychological and political interaction, the scientists noted a few limitations. The data comes from only two countries, so it is possible that these patterns might look different in other parts of the world.</p>
<p>Additionally, the observational nature of the surveys means researchers cannot completely rule out reverse causality. It is possible that believing in specific rumors might cause a person’s general conspiracy thinking to increase, though the researchers view this as unlikely.</p>
<p>The boundary between political and non-political theories can also be blurry. A rumor that seems totally unconnected to politics today might become deeply tied to a specific political party tomorrow, making it difficult to categorize these beliefs perfectly.</p>
<p>Future research, Yair said, could test these ideas in other social contexts, such as group conflicts based on race, gender, or nationality. Experimental studies that alter how a rumor is presented could also help confirm these findings.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.70131" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Conspiracy thinking and belief in partisan conspiracy theories: A moderating effect of partisan congruence?</a>“, was authored by Omer Yair, Shira Hebel-Sela, Amnon Cavari, and Asif Efrat.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/cognition-might-emerge-from-embodied-grip-with-the-world-rather-than-abstract-mental-processes/" 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;">Cognition might emerge from embodied “grip” with the world rather than abstract mental processes</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 19th 2026, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>A new article published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678261422777"><em>Journal of Humanistic Psychology</em></a> argues that cognition is not something that happens inside the head as abstract information processing, but emerges through an embodied person’s ongoing engagement with the world–a process the author describes as achieving an “optimal grip” on one’s environment.</p>
<p>Traditional cognitive science has treated the mind as a kind of information-processing system, emphasizing internal representations and computations. This perspective gained traction during the cognitive revolution, when advances in artificial intelligence and formal modeling suggested that intelligent behavior could be explained through symbolic manipulation.</p>
<p>However, as <a href="https://garrihovha.ca/clinical-background">Garri Hovhannisyan</a> points out, this approach struggles to account for something more basic: how organisms perceive and navigate the world in real time. For example, it has proven easier to design machines that outperform humans in chess than to build ones capable of holding an egg without breaking it.</p>
<p>Hovhannisyan’s <a href="https://www.psypost.org/individualizing-personality-assessments-through-humanistic-trait-based-interventions/">work</a> builds on the <a href="https://youtu.be/PjknxljepKA">phenomenological</a> tradition, which shifts the focus from abstract mental content to lived experience. Rather than asking how the mind represents a pre-given world, phenomenology examines how the world is disclosed through embodied perception. This tradition, associated with thinkers such as Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, emphasizes that perception is not passive but actively shaped by the individual’s bodily capacities, goals, and situation.</p>
<p>“I was trained in the phenomenological tradition throughout my graduate education, where I was introduced to a radically different way of understanding cognition than what we’re typically accustomed to in the sciences of mind. Phenomenology shows us that cognition is to be found not in the world of abstract mental content, but in the dance between an embodied mind and its world.”</p>
<p>“When we look closely at how cognition actually unfolds in lived experience, we find that it is not something we simply have in our heads but something we actively do out in the world. It is less like solving logical or mathematical problems, and more like effectively playing a song on an instrument or taking a shot on goal—an active, skillful adjustment to the situation at hand.”</p>
<p>“From this perspective, to have a mind is not to process information like a computer, but to achieve a kind of ‘grip’ on the world as it is encountered in perception. The concept of optimal grip refers to our ability to do this well, to become better attuned, more responsive, and more effectively situated in our engagement with the world.”</p>
<p>“A helpful way to understand ‘grip’ is by analogy to biological fitness. Fitness is not something an organism possesses entirely on its own, nor something imposed entirely by the environment—it is a real relational property that emerges from how organism and environment fit together.</p>
<p>Grip works in a similar way. It refers to how well an embodied mind is able to fit itself to the situation it finds itself in. When grip is good, this fit is smooth, responsive, and effective; when it is poor, the fit breaks down. In this sense, cognition is not just happening inside the head, but in the ongoing process of skillful attunement to the demands of the world.”</p>
<p>The article traces this idea back to phenomenology, particularly Husserl’s analysis of lived experience and Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on the body’s role in perception. These frameworks suggest that the world is not encountered as a collection of neutral objects, but as a field of possibilities for action—what ecological psychologists later termed “affordances.” A cup, for example, is perceived not only as an object with physical properties, but as something to grasp, hold, or drink from.</p>
<p>Building on this foundation, the paper connects the concept of optimal grip to contemporary cognitive science, including enactivist and ecological approaches. These perspectives emphasize that cognition involves maintaining a dynamic balance between expectations and sensory input, allowing individuals to act effectively in uncertain environments. Rather than striving for perfect prediction, the goal is to remain flexibly attuned to changing conditions over time.</p>
<p>“The phenomenological approach foregrounds the role of the body and perception in any cognitive act. It shows that how we see and make sense of the world depends on the skillful capacities of our embodied engagement, which vary from person to person. For example, a smile may appear to a layperson as a simple gesture of friendliness, but to a dentist it becomes an opportunity to notice subtle issues with someone’s bite or early signs of decay. Similarly, a lecture hall might present itself to a child as a space for climbing and play, while to a university student it appears as a setting that demands sustained focus, often accompanied by strain but also learning.”</p>
<p>“What this highlights is that the world we experience is not simply ‘given’ in the same way to everyone. It is, in an important sense, <em>enacted</em>—brought forth through our ways of engaging, shaped by our skills, concerns, and projects. This is something traditional models struggle to capture when they focus primarily on internal information processing.”</p>
<p>Hovhannisyan extends these ideas into the domain of personality. He proposes that <a href="https://www.psypost.org/the-new-enactivist-big-five-theory-of-personality-could-provide-unique-insights-into-human-psychology/">personality traits</a> can be understood as <a href="https://www.psypost.org/new-research-proposes-individualizing-psychological-assessment-using-the-five-factor-model-of-personality/">“styles of grip,”</a> enduring patterns in how individuals engage with and interpret their environments. According to this framework, traits such as extraversion or neuroticism are not merely internal dispositions, but ways of structuring perception and action over time.</p>
<p>“A natural tendency toward ‘optimal grip’ also means that grip can be lost. My work focuses on how different forms of psychopathology can be understood as breakdowns in the relationship between an embodied self and its world, expressed at the level of personality traits.”</p>
<p>“No one has a ‘perfect’ personality. Each of us is well-suited to certain contexts, and less so to others. As situations change, they can exceed our adaptive reach, leading to a loss of grip. This can happen when a situation demands more of a trait than a person can bring to bear, or less than they tend to express.”</p>
<p>“One promising direction for empirical research is to study these recurring mismatches between traits and situations. Doing so may help explain the stable problematic patterns people find themselves stuck in, and provide a more dynamic way of understanding the role of personality in psychopathology.”</p>
<p>Notably, this article appears as part of a special issue honoring the work of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_Robbins">Brent Dean Robbins</a>, whose work has been central to advancing humanistic and phenomenological approaches within psychology. Hovhannisyan explicitly draws on Robbins’ extension of optimal grip into the interpersonal domain, highlighting Robbins’ proposal that <em>agapic</em> love can be understood as a form of optimal attunement in social relations, an orientation that allows individuals to remain open to others in a way that supports their development and flourishing.</p>
<p>“One of the main challenges is that ‘optimal grip’ originates in phenomenology, a philosophical tradition, and concepts from philosophy do not always translate easily into empirical science. They tend to be rich and nuanced, but not immediately operationalized in ways that allow for straightforward measurement or testing,” Hovhannisyan explained.</p>
<p>“A related challenge is preserving the meaning of the concept as it is translated. There is a risk that, in trying to make it measurable, we oversimplify it and lose what makes it valuable in the first place; namely, its ability to capture the lived, qualitative structure of experience. Finally, there is the broader challenge of integration. The aim is not to replace existing cognitive models, but to complement and extend them in a way that is both philosophically faithful and empirically rigorous.”</p>
<p>The article calls for a shift in how psychologists conceptualize the mind. By framing cognition as a matter of “grip,” the article advances an embodied, relational account of mind that highlights how perception, action, and meaning arise through ongoing attunement between person and world, while opening the door for extending this framework into areas such as personality and psychological functioning.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678261422777">Embodied Cognition is a Matter of Grip: Humanistic Cognitive Science and the Phenomenology of Attunement</a>” was authored by Garri Hovhannisyan.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/men-and-women-show-different-relative-cognitive-strengths-across-their-lifespans/" 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;">Men and women show different relative cognitive strengths across their lifespans</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 19th 2026, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study published in the <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence14010012" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Journal of Intelligence</a></em> provides evidence that men and women tend to possess different relative cognitive strengths, which may help explain why women remain underrepresented in certain scientific and technical fields. The research suggests that when comparing an individual’s skills against their own personal average, women generally show a relative strength in reading, while men show a relative strength in math. These patterns remain consistent across different countries and age groups, offering a new way to understand career choices.</p>
<p>Scientists <a href="https://www.marcobalducci.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Marco Balducci</a> and Waseem Haider conducted the study to explore why the gender gap persists in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers. Past research on cognitive abilities has typically focused on average test scores, which calculate how well men or women perform compared to each other.</p>
<p>These average differences tend to be very small and fail to explain why large disparities exist in technical professions. Because of this, the researchers wanted to look at a different metric called intraindividual strengths.</p>
<p>Intraindividual strengths measure a person’s abilities compared to their own overall performance, rather than comparing them to the general population. For example, a person might be good at both math and reading, but if their math score is higher than their personal average across all subjects, math is their primary intraindividual strength.</p>
<p>This concept is grounded in expectancy-value theory, a psychological framework suggesting that people choose careers based on what they expect to be best at. According to this idea, a student whose personal best subject is math will likely pursue a technical field, while someone whose personal best is reading might choose an interpersonal profession.</p>
<p>“In my previous research, I analyzed sex differences in intraindividual strengths in high school students, finding very interesting patterns. Overall, girls had an intraindividual strengths in reading while boys had strengths in mathematics or science. However, it remained unclear whether the findings were limited to this specific age group or if they persisted across the lifespan,” explained Balducci, a senior researcher at the University of Turku.</p>
<p>For their new study, the scientists analyzed data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies. This large international survey evaluates the cognitive and workplace skills of adults in everyday situations.</p>
<p>The researchers used a final sample of exactly 157,189 individuals from 30 different countries. They divided these participants into five specific age groups: 16 to 24, 25 to 34, 35 to 44, 45 to 54, and 55 and older.</p>
<p>The survey measured skills in three main areas. Literacy evaluated text interpretation and comprehension, while numeracy assessed the capacity to interpret and use mathematical information. Finally, problem-solving measured the ability to use digital tools to perform practical tasks.</p>
<p>The scientists first calculated the average scores for men and women across these three domains. They then calculated the intraindividual strengths by finding each person’s overall average score across all three tests. They subtracted this personal baseline from each specific subject score to see which domain stood out as a relative advantage.</p>
<p>When looking at the standard average scores, the researchers found almost no differences between men and women in literacy and problem-solving. Men performed slightly better in numeracy on average, but the difference was very small.</p>
<p>However, when looking at intraindividual strengths, a completely different pattern emerged. Women consistently demonstrated an intraindividual strength in literacy, while men demonstrated a strength in numeracy. These differences in personal strengths were about twice as large as the differences found in standard average scores. They were also remarkably consistent across all 30 countries analyzed in the dataset.</p>
<p>“We had anticipated the general direction of the findings based on previous research, but the results were still striking,” Balducci told PsyPost. “The disparity between sex differences in mean scores and those in intraindividual strengths was even more pronounced than in our previous analyses.”</p>
<p>The researchers also discovered that these patterns did not change as people grew older. From young adulthood to the age of 55 and beyond, women consistently maintained their relative advantage in literacy, and men maintained theirs in numeracy.</p>
<p>There were no significant differences between men and women when it came to problem-solving as a personal strength. The researchers noted a strong connection at the country level, finding that larger relative literacy strengths in women matched larger relative numeracy strengths in men.</p>
<p>“Sex differences are significantly more pronounced when measured as intraindividual strengths rather than using traditional mean scores,” Balducci summarized. “While differences in mean scores tend to be smaller and highly variable, intraindividual strengths are generally two to three times larger and remarkably consistent across both countries and age groups.”</p>
<p>“In practice, our study reinforces the argument that we should also explore sex differences through the lens of intraindividual strengths rather than limiting analysis to traditional mean scores. Shifting to this perspective could have profound implications for understanding modern phenomena, such as the persistent underrepresentation of women in STEM fields.”</p>
<p>While these patterns provide evidence for a potential factor behind the gender gap in technical fields, the researchers caution against certain misinterpretations. The most common mistake is assuming that group-level trends apply to every single individual.</p>
<p>Although women tend to have personal strengths in literacy at the population level, many individual women possess strong personal strengths in math. The scientists warn against using these findings to stereotype individual abilities or career potential.</p>
<p>“I would urge readers to always remain mindful of the specific level of analysis and avoid attributing group-level trends to individuals,” Balducci said.</p>
<p>The study also comes with limitations related to how the skills were measured. The literacy assessment only evaluated reading comprehension and did not include a writing component, which might involve different cognitive processes. Because the test was relatively low stakes, participants might not have put in their maximum effort, which could influence the results.</p>
<p>The researchers plan to expand on this line of research. “Building on the results of this and other studies, I intend to extend the concept of intraindividual strengths to broader cognitive domains,” Balducci said. “This would help determine whether the patterns we found are a widespread phenomenon across human abilities or are strictly limited to academic skills.”</p>
<p>“This study draws on data from over 157,000 individuals across 30 countries, which we believe gives particular weight to the consistency of the findings. More broadly, this is an area of research that would benefit from being evaluated on empirical grounds, and we hope the scientific conversation around these questions can, at some point, be driven more by data rather than prior ideological assumptions, from any direction.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence14010012" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Beyond Mean Scores: Sex Differences in Literacy, Numeracy, and Problem-Solving as Intraindividual Strengths Across Age Groups</a>,” was authored by Marco Balducci and Waseem Haider.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/early-exposure-to-forever-chemicals-linked-to-altered-brain-genes-and-impulsive-behavior-in-rats/" 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;">Early exposure to forever chemicals linked to altered brain genes and impulsive behavior in rats</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 18th 2026, 22:00</div>
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<p><p>A study on rats found that exposure to perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) altered gene expression in the nucleus accumbens, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex regions of the brain of their offspring. In turn, this may have led to impaired cognitive performance and more impulsive decision-making. The paper was published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoenv.2025.119648">Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety</a>.</p>
<p>Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a group of synthetic chemicals widely used in industrial processes and consumer products due to their resistance to heat, water, and oil. One of these chemicals is perfluorooctanesulfonic acid, or PFOS, a legacy substance that was used for decades in products such as firefighting foams and stain-resistant coatings, as well as in certain manufacturing processes. It is often called a “forever chemical” because it breaks down extremely slowly and can remain in the environment for a very long time.</p>
<p>Although the use of PFOS was largely discontinued in the early years of the 21st century, PFOS remains widely present in both the environment and the human body. PFOS resists metabolic breakdown, resulting in prolonged accumulation in the body. Although the overall levels of PFAS in the environment have declined in recent years, PFOS continues to be the most frequently detected PFAS in human blood. Humans are primarily exposed to PFOS through contaminated water, food, dust, and consumer products.</p>
<p>Studies have indicated that PFOS exposure has adverse effects on the human body, including changes to cholesterol levels, liver-related measures, immune responses, and some pregnancy-related outcomes. Because of these concerns, PFOS production and use have been heavily restricted or phased out in many places around the world.</p>
<p>Study author Shiwen Li and colleagues wanted to explore how prenatal PFOS exposure affects gene expression in three key regions of the brain: the nucleus accumbens, the hippocampus, and the prefrontal cortex. These three regions were chosen because the nucleus accumbens is central to motivation and action, the hippocampus is critical for learning and memory, and the prefrontal cortex is essential for executive function and working memory. The authors also wanted to know whether any changes in gene expression in these three areas are associated with changes in behavior in the PFOS-exposed rats.</p>
<p>The study was conducted on Long-Evans rats. Pregnant female rats were involved in the study starting from day 12 of embryonic development and delivered their pups naturally. The rats had free access to food and water.</p>
<p>The pregnant female rats were divided into two groups of six. One group was exposed to PFOS through drinking water that contained 15mg of PFOS per liter alongside a small amount of Tween 20 (a chemical used as a mixing agent). The control group drank water with Tween 20 only and no PFOS. The exposure started on the 12th day of the rats’ pregnancies and continued until weaning, which occurred 21 days after the rat pups were born.</p>
<p>Once the offspring reached adulthood, they completed a series of behavioral tests, including an extradimensional set-shifting task (switching from a direction cue to a visual cue) and a delay discounting task. After these tests, the study authors conducted RNA sequencing on the brain tissues of the adult male rats and analyzed gene expression in the three focal brain regions.</p>
<p>The results showed that there were 62 genes with differential expression in the nucleus accumbens tissues of the rats exposed to PFOS. The number of differentially expressed genes in the hippocampus was 34, and there were 59 differentially expressed genes in the prefrontal cortex. Differential expression of genes means that those genes were more or less active in the PFOS-exposed group compared to the control group. These alterations can change how the affected cells function, respond, and develop.</p>
<p>Specifically, the researchers observed changes to genes involved in extracellular matrix interaction—the structural support system of the brain—within the nucleus accumbens. In the prefrontal cortex, PFOS exposure disrupted genes responsible for glutathione metabolism, a critical biological pathway the brain uses to clear out harmful oxidative stress and toxins.</p>
<p>Statistical analyses showed that the differential expression of some of these genes might be mediating the link between PFOS exposure and the outcomes of the behavioral tests. While the rats did not show significant impairments in cognitive flexibility, the results indicated that specific gene alterations were strongly associated with more impulsive decision-making. For example, the PFOS-exposed rats showed a lower preference for a large, delayed reward compared to a small, immediate one, and they gave up more frequently as wait times increased.</p>
<p>“Developmental PFOS exposure may alter gene expression in the nucleus accumbens and prefrontal cortex and was associated with impaired cognitive flexibility and impulsive decision-making,” the study authors concluded in their abstract.</p>
<p>The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the effects of PFOS on the developing nervous system. However, it should be noted that this study was conducted on rats, not on humans. While rats and humans share many physiological similarities, they are still different species, and results in humans may differ. Additionally, the study used a single dosage of the chemical, so it remains unclear how higher or lower environmental doses might alter the severity of the outcomes.</p>
<p>The paper, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoenv.2025.119648">Developmental perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) exposure alters gene expression in nucleus accumbens and prefrontal cortex and impairs cognition in rats: A transcriptomic and mediation analysis</a>,” was authored by Shiwen Li, Hongxu Wang, Ana C. Maretti-Mira, Tomas K. D. Manea, Shaun Y. Kim, Lida Chatzi, Jesse A. Goodrich, Tanya L. Alderete, Nathan Young, Ruth I. Wood, and Max T. Aung.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/soft-brain-implants-outperform-rigid-silicon-in-long-term-safety-study/" 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;">Soft brain implants outperform rigid silicon in long-term safety study</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 18th 2026, 20:00</div>
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<p><p>Brain implants offer incredible promise for treating medical conditions and restoring lost senses, but the rigid materials often used to make them can cause long-term damage to delicate neural tissue. A recent study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202600028" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Advanced Science</a></em> revealed that making these devices out of a soft, flexible plastic rather than stiff silicon drastically reduces scarring and preserves healthy brain cells. These results provide a practical guide for designing the next generation of safer, longer-lasting neural interfaces.</p>
<p>For many years, medical engineers have relied on tiny electronic devices to interface with the nervous system. These microelectrode arrays can record electrical signals from brain cells and deliver mild currents to stimulate them. This technology has successfully helped retrieve motor commands for paralyzed patients and could eventually help restore vision to blind individuals.</p>
<p>Most commercially available brain implants are made from rigid silicon. Because the brain pulses and shifts slightly inside the skull, a stiff piece of silicon can scrape against the surrounding tissue. This constant rubbing triggers a steady immune response that degrades the local environment.</p>
<p>When the brain detects a foreign object, specialized cells rush to the site. Microglia, which act as the brain’s first responders, initially react to the injury. Later, star-shaped cells called astrocytes form a protective scar around the implant.</p>
<p>This scar tissue creates a physical barrier between the implant and healthy neurons. As the distance between the electrodes and the brain cells increases, the device stops working properly. The signals become muffled, and higher electrical currents are needed to stimulate the tissue.</p>
<p>In a clinical context where patients have few alternatives, that trade-off might be acceptable. But for something like a visual prosthesis intended to improve the quality of life over decades, the equipment must remain reliable. Researchers needed a way to place a foreign object in the brain without waking up the local immune system.</p>
<p>To solve this problem, manufacturers have started testing highly flexible plastics, such as polyimide. Because polyimide is soft, it can bend and move with the tissue. While researchers suspected that flexible implants would cause less damage, no one had performed a head-to-head comparison to see exactly which design choices mattered most.</p>
<p>Corinne Orlemann, a researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, led a team to investigate this problem. Orlemann and her colleagues set out to map exactly how the brain reacts to different materials, sizes, and surgical techniques over an extended period. The team included Roxana N. Kooijmans, a histology expert, and Pieter R. Roelfsema, an innovator in neural prosthetics.</p>
<p>The researchers implanted over one hundred tiny, comb-shaped devices into the outer layer of the brain, or cerebral cortex, of thirty-two mice. They tested both stiff silicon devices and flexible polyimide devices. The team also varied the thickness and the width of the individual prongs on the combs to see if physical size altered the biological outcome.</p>
<p>They left the devices in place for six to twelve months to observe the long-term effects. Half of the implants were anchored securely to the skull, a method known as tethering. The other half were left floating freely in the brain tissue, covered only by a protective metal cap.</p>
<p>After the implantation period, the team examined extremely thin slices of the brain tissue under a microscope. Previous studies often sliced the brain in ways that obscured important depth changes. By rethinking how the tissue was analyzed, the researchers built a highly accurate, quantitative map of the cellular damage.</p>
<p>They used specific chemical markers to stain the cells, allowing them to calculate the density of surviving neurons. They also measured the amount of raw tissue lost to the surgical insertion. Finally, they recorded the intensity of the immune response from both microglia and astrocytes.</p>
<p>The results showed that flexible polyimide implants performed much better than rigid silicon ones. The soft plastic devices caused fewer physical lesions in the brain and allowed a higher density of healthy neurons to survive near the implantation site. The polyimide implants also triggered a weaker immune reaction than the silicon implants.</p>
<p>To see if this improved tissue health translated to better performance, the team recorded electrical activity from a subset of mice. The animals viewed a reversing checkerboard pattern on a screen while the implants recorded the resulting brain activity. They calculated a signal-to-noise ratio to figure out exactly how well the electronics were picking up the visual information.</p>
<p>Just as the tissue analysis predicted, the flexible polyimide devices captured clearer, more reliable signals. Over a twenty-four-week testing period, both materials slowly degraded in quality, but the polyimide held on to its recording capabilities much better.</p>
<p>The researchers also mapped the immune response along the entire vertical length of the implants. They noticed a distinct pattern, with the most severe reactions happening in two specific areas. The first area was at the very surface of the brain, where the device initially broke through the outer membranes.</p>
<p>The second area of heavy immune activity occurred at the boundary between the gray matter and the underlying white matter. Gray matter mostly contains the bodies of nerve cells, while white matter consists of the long connecting cables that link different brain regions. Disturbing this boundary caused a strong reaction, sending a wave of defensive immune cells into the nearby tissue.</p>
<p>Making the implants extremely thin or narrow did not improve the outcome very much. The width and thickness of the devices had only a minor influence on tissue health compared to the material itself. A slightly thicker polyimide device caused about the same amount of tissue reaction as an ultra-thin one.</p>
<p>Orlemann explained that while polyimide works better, it is not a miracle cure. The flexible plastic still provokes a mild response from the brain, but it is a manageable reaction. “If you make them very thin, implantation gets harder and harder,” Orlemann noted. “But now that we know there is no real point, we can bypass that aim and increase our surgery success.”</p>
<p>The team also discovered that the free-floating implants caused more damage than the ones anchored to the skull. This was unexpected, as a free-floating device should theoretically move more naturally with the brain. The researchers noted that this outcome was likely due to the surgical procedure itself.</p>
<p>Placing a free-floating implant required drilling a much larger hole in the mouse’s skull than placing a tethered implant. The larger opening exposed more tissue and caused more initial trauma. This initial surgical footprint outweighed the potential benefits of letting the device float freely inside the tissue.</p>
<p>These results help clarify exactly what engineers should focus on when designing new medical devices. Because the physical dimensions of the flexible implants had little effect on the brain’s reaction, manufacturers do not need to push for the thinnest possible designs. This is a practical advantage, as ultra-thin devices are incredibly fragile and difficult for surgeons to insert without breaking.</p>
<p>A slightly thicker, sturdier plastic implant is easier to manufacture and safer to handle in the operating room. “This study is a bit of a guidebook of reasonable compromises,” Orlemann explained. By recognizing that flexible materials are the primary driver of success, engineers can save time and resources by ignoring dead-end design variables.</p>
<p>There are some limitations to relying entirely on flexible plastics. Rigid silicon is still much better suited for integrating advanced, computer-like processing chips directly onto the implant. Because silicon holds electrical circuits so well, completely abandoning the material might limit the capabilities of future neural interfaces.</p>
<p>Future research will likely focus on hybrid designs. Engineers could embed small, rigid electronic components inside a soft, flexible plastic shell. This would combine the processing power of silicon with the tissue-friendly nature of polyimide.</p>
<p>The team also suggests that surgeons should try to avoid pushing implants deep enough to hit the white matter boundary. Keeping the devices entirely within the gray matter could prevent the strongest immune reactions from starting in the first place. As researchers continue to refine these designs, long-lasting visual prostheses and reliable neural implants edge closer to becoming a daily reality for patients.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202600028" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Friend, Not Foe: Lowered Tissue Reactivity to Long-Term Polyimide Implants</a>,” was authored by Corinne Orlemann, Laura M. De Santis, Paul Neering, Christian Boehler, Kirti Sharma, Arno Aarts, Tobias Holzhammer, Rik J. J. van Daal, Patrick Ruther, Maria Asplund, Roxana N. Kooijmans, Pieter R. Roelfsema.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/disclosing-autism-to-ai-chatbots-prompts-overly-cautious-stereotypical-advice/" 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;">Disclosing autism to AI chatbots prompts overly cautious, stereotypical advice</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 18th 2026, 18:00</div>
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<p><p>When autistic people ask artificial intelligence programs for life advice, mentioning their diagnosis prompts these systems to recommend highly conservative choices like skipping social events or avoiding romance. This shift in advice reveals a hidden tension where the technology relies heavily on stereotypes, leaving users torn between feeling safely supported and frustratingly infantilized. <a href="https://arxiv.org/html/2601.12690v1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">These findings</a> were published at the April 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.</p>
<p>Many autistic individuals face stigma in their daily lives, which can lead to social isolation and communication barriers. To find support without the fear of judgment, some turn to artificial intelligence chatbots. These text-based programs, often called large language models, are trained on massive amounts of internet text to predict and generate human-like writing.</p>
<p>Autistic people often ask these programs for help navigating relationships, workplace conflicts, and personal decisions. Users sometimes reveal their autism to the chatbot, hoping the system will tailor its advice to their specific needs. This expectation reflects a broader trend of consumers wanting customized interactions with their digital tools.</p>
<p>Virginia Tech computer science doctoral student Caleb Wohn led a team of researchers to investigate what happens behind the scenes during these interactions. Wohn and his colleagues wanted to see if disclosing an autism diagnosis led to better advice or simply activated the biases baked into the system’s training data.</p>
<p>“I was thinking about my experiences growing up with autism,” Wohn said. “It would have been very tempting for me, at certain times, to want to just be able to talk with something that’s not a person that seems objective and feel like I’m getting objective advice.”</p>
<p>Wohn worried that young people or those without technical backgrounds might not grasp how a simple disclosure could alter the responses they receive. “For someone like me as a kid, or someone who isn’t in AI and doesn’t have all this technical knowledge, I wanted to know: How are its responses going to change if I disclose autism?” Caleb said.</p>
<p>Eugenia H. Rho, an assistant professor of computer science at Virginia Tech, guided the research team. Her previous work established that autistic individuals frequently use text-based artificial intelligence for emotional support. “People are really looking to personalize LLMs,” Rho said. “But if a user tells the model that they’re autistic, or a woman, or any other self-identification, what assumptions will it make?”</p>
<p>Other Virginia Tech contributors included computer science doctoral students Buse Çarık and Xiaohan Ding, along with Associate Professor Sang Won Lee. Young-Ho Kim, a research scientist at the South Korea-based NAVER Corporation, also contributed to the project. They aimed to measure exactly how these models altered their guidance based on identity disclosures.</p>
<p>To test the models, the research team created a specialized evaluation pipeline. They started by identifying twelve common stereotypes about autistic people from existing literature. These stereotypes included assumptions that autistic individuals are introverted, obsessive, emotionally detached, dangerous, or uninterested in romance.</p>
<p>The researchers then designed hundreds of everyday decision-making scenarios based on these stereotypes. Each scenario was framed as a user asking the artificial intelligence for advice, prompting the system to choose between two distinct actions. For example, a scenario might ask if the user should go out for drinks with coworkers or stay home to rest.</p>
<p>They fed these scenarios into six popular artificial intelligence models. These included widely used systems like GPT-4o-mini and Claude-3.5 Haiku, as well as Gemini-2.0-flash, Llama-4-Scout, Qwen-3 235B, and DeepSeek-V3. The researchers generated 345,000 separate responses across different experimental conditions to see how the software behaved.</p>
<p>First, the team tested the models by explicitly describing the user with a stereotypical trait, like stating the user had poor social skills. This step confirmed that the scenarios accurately triggered the models to favor one piece of advice over the other. The models reliably adjusted their advice when given a direct description of a trait.</p>
<p>Next, the researchers ran the same scenarios but only changed whether the prompt included a simple statement of an autism diagnosis. The models no longer received direct descriptions of personality traits. The researchers then compared the advice generated when autism was disclosed against the advice given when no diagnosis was mentioned.</p>
<p>The differences in the recommendations were immediate and highly consistent across the board. When users disclosed an autism diagnosis, the models disproportionately pushed them toward avoidance and risk aversion. Across the majority of the models, the software advised autistic users to avoid socializing, avoid trying new things, and stay out of romantic relationships.</p>
<p>The systems also frequently advised users to avoid workplace confrontations. This advice aligned with stereotypical assumptions that autistic people are either potentially dangerous or incapable of handling conflict gracefully. The sheer scale of these changes surprised the research team.</p>
<p>In one scenario involving a social invitation, a model told the user to decline the event nearly 75 percent of the time when autism was disclosed. When autism was not mentioned, the same model recommended declining only about 15 percent of the time. In dating scenarios, another model advised avoiding romance nearly 70 percent of the time after an autism disclosure.</p>
<p>The researchers then showed these results to eleven autistic adults in a series of interview sessions. The participants read both the statistical charts and the open-ended text responses generated by the artificial intelligence. Their reactions were highly varied, exposing a deep tension in how different people interpret computerized advice.</p>
<p>Some participants felt the system was relying on insulting caricatures of their community. Reacting to a particularly cold and mechanical response, one participant asked, “Are we writing an advice column for Spock here?” Others described the conservative advice as restrictive, patronizing, or infantilizing.</p>
<p>Conversely, other participants appreciated the cautious nature of the artificial intelligence. They felt that advice warning them to avoid overstimulation was protective and affirming. To these users, the system seemed to understand the very real risks of social burnout and exhaustion.</p>
<p>This division in the participants’ reactions revealed what the researchers called a safety-opportunity paradox. What one person experiences as harmful stereotyping that limits their growth, another experiences as supportive personalization that honors their boundaries. “One user’s bias could be another user’s personalization,” Rho said.</p>
<p>Wohn found this ambiguity deeply concerning, especially given how convincingly the software presents its answers. “AI is very good at seeming reliable,” he said. “Its responses are very clean and professional, and they sound right. But when you think about it being deployed systematically, when you think about the kind of systematic biases that are actually shaping its responses, that’s when it starts to get a lot more concerning.”</p>
<p>During the interviews, participants also highlighted the desire to retain agency over their data. One participant noted that it would be better to have manual control over how the machine learns. As they told the researchers: “I want to have control over how my identity is used.”</p>
<p>The study does have some limitations that the researchers plan to address in future work. The researchers used synthetic, highly structured prompts that forced the models to pick between two predetermined choices. While this approach was necessary to measure the stereotypes mathematically, it does not perfectly mirror how a real person types out a messy, complicated request for help.</p>
<p>Additionally, the experiment relied on a very blunt form of disclosure, simply stating an autism diagnosis in one sentence. In reality, users might explain their specific sensory needs or communication preferences in much greater detail. Future research will need to gather actual prompts from autistic users to see how nuanced disclosures affect the tone and structure of the generated advice.</p>
<p>The team hopes these findings will encourage developers to build transparency features into artificial intelligence platforms. They suggest giving users explicit controls to dial up or dial down how much their identity influences the system’s responses. Such features could help ensure that customized technology actually serves the varied, individual needs of its users.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://arxiv.org/html/2601.12690v1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">‘Are we writing an advice column for Spock here?’ Understanding Stereotypes in AI Advice for Autistic Users</a>,” was authored by Caleb Wohn, Buse Çarık, Xiaohan Ding, Sang Won Lee, Young-Ho Kim, and Eugenia H. Rho.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/can-choking-during-sex-cause-brain-damage-emerging-evidence-points-to-hidden-neurological-risks/" 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;">Can choking during sex cause brain damage? Emerging evidence points to hidden neurological risks</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 18th 2026, 16:00</div>
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<p><p>“Choking” is a term commonly used to describe applying pressure to a partner’s neck during intimacy. In medical contexts, however, choking refers to an internal blockage of the airway, like swallowing a foreign object. The clinical term for applying external force to the neck is strangulation.</p>
<p>Strangulation restricts the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain. Over the past decade, this practice has transitioned from niche circles into mainstream sexual encounters. Medical professionals are beginning to investigate the potential neurological consequences of this behavior.</p>
<p>A growing body of scientific literature suggests that these encounters provide evidence of hidden physiological strain. Scientists are now asking if consensual neck compression could lead to lasting brain damage. To answer this, researchers are looking at everything from basic anatomy to advanced brain imaging.</p>
<h2>The Biology of Neck Compression</h2>
<p>To understand the risks, it helps to examine the anatomy of the neck. The neck contains the jugular veins, which carry oxygen-depleted blood away from the brain, and the carotid arteries, which supply the brain with fresh oxygen. It also houses the trachea, or windpipe, which allows air into the lungs. Applying pressure to these structures disrupts the central nervous system.</p>
<p>Scientific literature identifies four specific ways neck compression causes harm. First, compressing the jugular veins prevents blood from leaving the head, which increases pressure inside the skull and limits new blood from entering. Second, compressing the carotid arteries directly stops oxygenated blood from reaching brain tissue. Third, blocking the airway stops oxygen from entering the bloodstream entirely.</p>
<p>Finally, putting pressure on nerve clusters called carotid bodies can cause sudden, dangerous drops in heart rate. When the brain is deprived of oxygen, a condition known as hypoxia, brain cells begin to suffer quickly. A complete lack of blood flow, called ischemia, is even more destructive to the surrounding tissue.</p>
<p>Histological studies, which examine tissue at a microscopic level, show that brain cell damage can begin within hours of oxygen deprivation. Some cells experience delayed death, a process called apoptosis, days after the initial event. Certain areas of the brain are highly sensitive to these disruptions.</p>
<p>The hippocampus, a region responsible for memory, contains specific neurons that are highly vulnerable to oxygen loss. The cerebellum, which coordinates movement, also contains specialized cells that tend to sustain damage quickly. These microscopic injuries might not be immediately visible, but they present a risk of long-term cognitive and emotional changes.</p>
<h2>A Cultural Shift in Sexual Behavior</h2>
<p>To understand how common this practice has become, researchers analyzed responses from a nationally representative survey of adults in the United States. The study, published in the <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-024-03000-0">Archives of Sexual Behavior</a></em>, examined the prevalence of various aggressive sexual behaviors. The methodology involved collecting data from over 9,000 individuals ranging in age from eighteen to ninety-four. The scientists adjusted the data with statistical weights to reflect the broader population.</p>
<p>The findings indicate that these behaviors are highly prevalent, particularly among younger generations. Approximately forty-eight percent of women and sixty-one percent of men reported enacting at least one aggressive behavior on a partner. Transgender and gender nonbinary individuals reported the highest rates of participation.</p>
<p>Neck compression was frequently reported, with a distinct age divide showing that younger adults engage in the practice far more often than older adults. Bisexual and pansexual women were significantly more likely to report being on the receiving end of these behaviors compared to heterosexual women. The researchers noted that while the study offers an expansive look at modern habits, the reliance on self-reported data presents a limitation, as memory recall errors might affect the accuracy of the statistics.</p>
<p>A separate literature review published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11930-023-00364-3">Current Sexual Health Reports</a> </em>provides evidence regarding why young adults participate in this activity. The review suggests that the normalization of neck compression is largely driven by mainstream media, pornography, and social media platforms. Young adults often learn about the practice from internet memes, which tend to romanticize the behavior while minimizing the physical risks.</p>
<p>Some individuals report engaging in the practice because the temporary restriction of oxygen can produce a fleeting sense of euphoria. Others participate to please a partner, explore power dynamics, or mimic scenes they have viewed online. The scientists note a limitation in this area of research is a lack of long-term tracking to see how media consumption directly alters individual behavior over time.</p>
<h2>Immediate Physical and Emotional Responses</h2>
<p>To measure how the body responds to oxygen deprivation in the short term, scientists conducted a randomized crossover study. The research, published in<em> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jsxmed/qdaf356">The Journal of Sexual Medicine</a></em>, involved thirty-one young adult women. All participants had engaged in both neck compression and standard sexual intercourse within the previous month.</p>
<p>The methodology required each participant to attend three laboratory visits. The first was a baseline assessment after twenty-four hours of sexual abstinence. The subsequent visits occurred within twenty-four hours after a sexual encounter involving neck compression, and within twenty-four hours after an encounter without it. This crossover design allowed the scientists to compare how the same individual reacted to different scenarios.</p>
<p>During these visits, the researchers measured the near point of convergence. This is a clinical test that determines how close an object can get to a person’s face before their eyes lose focus and see double. Because the eyes rely on complex neurological pathways, this test helps detect mild neurological disruptions. The findings indicate that the participants’ visual focus worsened after both types of sexual encounters.</p>
<p>The visual impairment was significantly more pronounced following encounters that involved neck compression. The participants’ visual convergence distance increased by nearly twenty percent after neck compression, compared to an eight percent increase after standard intercourse. About one-third of the participants also reported experiencing a “head rush,” and some noted blurry vision or watery eyes.</p>
<p>The scientists also tracked changes in mental health using standardized questionnaires. Symptoms of depression tended to decrease following standard sexual encounters, which aligns with the known mood-boosting effects of intimacy. This emotional benefit did not occur following encounters involving neck compression. At the same time, the participants reported temporary reductions in anxiety following the encounters with neck compression.</p>
<p>The study has notable limitations, as the sample size was relatively small. The scientists relied on the participants to self-report the intensity of the encounters. Because the follow-up period was short, it remains unknown how long the visual impairments and mood alterations last.</p>
<h2>Searching the Blood for Signs of Injury</h2>
<p>Beyond immediate physical symptoms, researchers are looking for microscopic evidence of brain strain using blood tests. Another study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jsxmed/qdaf036">The Journal of Sexual Medicine</a></em> evaluated thirty-two young adult women. The scientists compared a group of women who experienced frequent sexual strangulation with a group who had no history of the practice.</p>
<p>The methodology involved drawing blood samples to look for specific proteins that leak out of the brain when brain cells are damaged or inflamed. One of the primary targets was a protein known as S100B. This protein is heavily concentrated inside astrocytes, which are star-shaped support cells that maintain the health of brain tissue.</p>
<p>When the brain experiences a lack of oxygen or a restriction of blood flow, these support cells become stressed. The distressed astrocytes release S100B into the bloodstream, making it a useful marker for detecting neuroinflammation or cellular distress. The scientists also tested for other proteins that typically indicate the physical tearing of nerve fibers.</p>
<p>The laboratory analysis revealed that the women who frequently engaged in sexual strangulation had significantly higher levels of S100B in their blood. The scientists did not find differences in the structural proteins that indicate blunt-force nerve damage. This suggests that the repetitive acts of oxygen deprivation might be provoking a localized inflammatory response rather than causing structural tearing.</p>
<p>While these findings provide evidence of physiological strain, the research carries specific limitations. The cross-sectional design of the study means that researchers only looked at a single snapshot in time. It is impossible to definitively prove that the sexual encounters caused the elevated protein levels, and the small sample size restricts the ability to generalize the findings to broader populations.</p>
<h2>Mapping the Resting Brain</h2>
<p>To see how the brain operates following repetitive periods of oxygen deprivation, scientists turned to advanced imaging technology. A study published in the<em> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1089/neu.2022.0146">Journal of Neurotrauma</a></em> utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brains of forty-one young women. Twenty of the participants reported a recent history of frequent sexual strangulation, while twenty-one participants had never experienced the practice.</p>
<p>The methodology focused on scanning the participants while they rested quietly. This approach allowed the researchers to measure the spontaneous fluctuations of blood flow in the brain without the distraction of a specific task. The scientists analyzed the density of these neurological signals and evaluated how well neighboring brain regions synchronized their activity.</p>
<p>The results indicated a distinct imbalance between the two sides of the brain among those who frequently experienced neck compression. The researchers observed lower neurological activity and reduced synchronization in the left hemisphere of the brain. At the same time, they observed unusually high activity and synchronization in the right hemisphere.</p>
<p>This type of inter-hemispheric imbalance is frequently documented in medical literature among patients suffering from mood disorders or depressive symptoms. The brain scans also revealed hyperactivity originating from a region known as the angular gyrus. This specific brain region acts as a major hub for processing sensory information, regulating emotions, and maintaining conscious awareness.</p>
<p>The scientists suggest that the angular gyrus may be working in overdrive to compensate for irregular signals caused by repeated episodes of restricted blood flow. However, the study relies on observational data, meaning researchers cannot rule out the possibility that these brain patterns existed before the participants engaged in the behavior. The two groups of women also had slight age differences, requiring the researchers to mathematically adjust their models.</p>
<h2>The Illusion of Safety</h2>
<p>Despite the mounting evidence of physiological strain, many people who practice sexual strangulation believe they are doing so in a harmless manner. A qualitative study published in the <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-025-00000-0">Archives of Sexual Behavior</a></em> explored how young adults perceive the risks associated with this behavior. The scientists gathered open-ended survey responses from Australian adults between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five.</p>
<p>The methodology involved analyzing thousands of text responses to identify common themes regarding harm reduction and personal responsibility. Many respondents expressed a belief that the practice can be perfectly harmless if the participants employ specific precautions. A prominent theme was the idea that applying light pressure to the sides of the neck to restrict blood flow is much safer than pressing on the front of the neck to restrict airflow.</p>
<p>Medical experts suggest this belief is a dangerous misconception. The veins and arteries on the sides of the neck are highly vulnerable to mild pressure. Restricting blood circulation can actually cause unconsciousness faster than restricting the airway.</p>
<p>Participants also heavily emphasized that mutual consent, deep interpersonal trust, and constant communication act as primary safety mechanisms. Some respondents noted that they would only perform the act with a long-term partner, believing that familiarity reduces the risk of physical injury. While continuous communication promotes emotional security, providing consent does not physically protect brain cells from the effects of oxygen deprivation.</p>
<p>The researchers note that the qualitative nature of the text responses presents certain limitations. Brief written answers may not capture the full depth of a person’s understanding. Individuals might also behave differently in private than they claim to in an anonymous survey.</p>
<h2>The Intersection with Interpersonal Violence</h2>
<p>While the current cultural conversation often focuses on consensual sexual exploration, it is impossible to separate the act of strangulation from its history in domestic abuse. A study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci15050524">Brain Sciences</a></em> shifts the focus to survivors of intimate partner violence. The researchers sought to understand the cumulative neurological burden placed on individuals who endure violent attacks.</p>
<p>The methodology involved detailed, semi-structured interviews with forty-seven survivors seeking assistance at community organizations in Ohio. The researchers categorized the injuries into two types. Traumatic brain injuries are caused by blunt force to the head, while hypoxic-anoxic brain injuries are caused by oxygen deprivation from strangulation.</p>
<p>The findings suggest that an overwhelming majority of the survivors had experienced both types of injuries over their lifetimes. Nearly half of the participants reported experiencing both blunt force head trauma and strangulation during the exact same violent episode. Over sixty percent of the participants reported losing consciousness during an attack, which serves as a standard diagnostic indicator for a probable brain injury.</p>
<p>Many participants reported experiencing severely altered states of consciousness, such as seeing stars, experiencing memory loss, or feeling intensely disoriented. The researchers propose the term “partner-inflicted brain injury” to describe this unique combination of physical trauma and oxygen deprivation. These injuries occur within an environment of chronic psychological terror, which complicates the healing process.</p>
<p>The researchers developed the Connect, Acknowledge, Respond, Evaluate framework to help community organizations accommodate survivors living with these hidden injuries. The study acknowledges limitations, including a reliance on the survivors’ ability to recall highly traumatic events from their past. The sample was also restricted to individuals actively seeking help, which may not represent the experiences of survivors who remain hidden.</p>
<h2>When Neck Compression Turns Fatal</h2>
<p>In the most extreme cases, applying pressure to the neck results in death. To understand the exact circumstances surrounding these fatalities, researchers analyzed data from an Australian coronial database. The study, published in the <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/08862605251321001">Journal of Interpersonal Violence</a></em>, reviewed nearly two hundred closed cases of fatal interpersonal strangulation spanning two decades.</p>
<p>The methodology involved extracting detailed information from police narratives, autopsy reports, and toxicology screenings. The data show that the vast majority of these fatalities were homicides perpetrated by men against women they knew intimately. In many of these cases, the victims had documented histories of surviving previous domestic violence incidents.</p>
<p>A small but notable minority of the cases involved accidental deaths occurring during consensual sexual activity. The researchers observed that even when participants attempt to practice what they believe is safe behavior, the physiological mechanisms of the human body can fail unpredictably. In these accidental deaths, the cause of death often involved complex cardiac complications or sudden strokes triggered by the external pressure on the neck.</p>
<p>The researchers pointed out that a reliance on historical records inherently limits the study. Important details regarding the victims’ sexual orientation or the exact sequence of events leading up to the deaths were frequently missing from the official files. The data highlight how narrow the margin of error is when dealing with the vital structures of the respiratory and circulatory systems.</p>
<h2>Navigating the Unknown Risks</h2>
<p>As the popularity of sexual neck compression continues to rise, the scientific community is working to understand the long-term implications. The available evidence suggests that this practice poses hidden physiological risks. Even in consensual and carefully negotiated environments, interrupting the flow of blood and oxygen appears to provoke neuroinflammation and disrupt basic neurological functions.</p>
<p>Science has yet to definitively prove that occasional, low-force neck compression causes permanent brain damage. Still, the early indicators warrant caution. The brain is an incredibly sensitive organ that relies on a constant, uninterrupted supply of cellular fuel to survive. Repeated episodes of localized starvation may force the brain to adapt in ways that negatively impact mental health and cognitive efficiency.</p>
<p>Medical professionals and public health advocates face a massive challenge in educating the public about these risks. Misinformation spread through social media and adult entertainment platforms has convinced many young adults that the risks can be entirely mitigated through interpersonal trust. Bridging the gap between cultural perceptions and anatomical realities remains an ongoing task for the scientific community.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/how-a-boom-in-college-degrees-rewrote-the-rules-of-modern-romance/" 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 decline of hypergamy: How a surge in university degrees changed marriage in the US and France</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 18th 2026, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>Over the past fifty years, a surge in college attendance and a shift in the gender balance of graduates have altered the educational makeup of romantic couples. An analysis published in <i><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2025.101044">Research in Social Stratification and Mobility</a></i> reveals that the overall growth in education levels holds just as much sway over marriage patterns as the fact that women now outpace men in higher education.</p>
<p>For decades, societal norms and structural barriers resulted in partner matching where husbands often had more formal schooling than their wives. Sociologists refer to this dynamic as hypergamy. The opposite scenario, where a wife has more formal education than her husband, is known as hypogamy. When partners share the same level of educational attainment, the relationship is described as homogamous.</p>
<p>Demographic shifts in marital sorting carry real-world consequences for nations. The ways in which partners match up can heavily influence a society’s total economic inequality. When highly educated, high-earning individuals strictly marry each other, household wealth gaps between different social classes naturally tend to widen.</p>
<p>In the second half of the twentieth century, the educational landscape transformed dramatically in many Western nations. The total number of people attending university expanded globally. At the same time, the traditional gender divide reversed. Women began completing university degrees at higher rates than men, fundamentally shifting the pool of candidates available for young adults looking for partners.</p>
<p>Previous demographic research suggested that this reversing gender gap was the primary reason behind a reported rise in hypogamous relationships and a distinct drop in hypergamous ones. Julia Leesch of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research and Jan Skopek of Trinity College Dublin designed a study to test this narrative. They wanted to separate the individual effects of the reversing gender gap from the effects of general educational expansion.</p>
<p>To provide a comprehensive comparison, the researchers analyzed data from two countries with vastly different public schooling histories. In the United States, a decentralized, demand-driven system led to a massive expansion of secondary education early in the twentieth century. France relies on a formally stratified and highly centralized educational structure. Mass education expanded broadly across the French population much later, primarily after the Second World War.</p>
<p>The researchers analyzed census and survey records spanning from 1962 to 2011 for France and from 1960 to 2015 for the United States. They focused their analysis on the demographic group of partnered women aged 25 to 34. This specific age range was selected to capture statistical trends in first-time unions. The team divided educational attainment into three straightforward categories for comparison: lower secondary schooling or less, complete secondary schooling, and complete university education.</p>
<p>To disentangle the overlapping trends of expanding degree programs and a changing gender balance, the researchers used a statistical approach called counterfactual decomposition. This analytical tool relies on mathematical “what-if” scenarios. Leesch and Skopek computed hypothetical marriage outcomes by holding certain variables rigidly constant while mathematically letting others alter over time.</p>
<p>For example, their models estimated what marriage patterns would look like if the statistical association between gender and education had remained frozen in the 1960s, but general educational attainment still increased. This method allowed the authors to isolate how much of a shift in romantic partnerships was linked to the sheer volume of college degrees versus the specific influx of female graduates.</p>
<p>The study highlighted several distinct dynamics between the two countries. In the United States, about 62 percent of young women possessed the exact same educational level as their partners in 1960. By the year 2000, this rate of homogamy had grown to nearly 71 percent, stabilizing in the following years.</p>
<p>This American trend was driven heavily by changes in the association between gender and education, alongside shifts in how people deliberately matched with available candidates. The structural expansion of education actually created a canceling effect in the background. As fewer Americans stopped their schooling at a basic secondary level, unions between two less-educated individuals dropped heavily. This mathematical decline was offset perfectly by a proportional rise in unions between two highly educated individuals.</p>
<p>France exhibited a different statistical pattern for couples with matching education levels. The rate of homogamous unions in France showed a U-shaped trend over the fifty-year observation window. It dipped initially in the late twentieth century before steadily rising again in later decades.</p>
<p>The researchers found that the general expansion of education in France acted as the primary driver of this U-shaped curve. A steep initial decline in marriages between two individuals with low education outnumbered the slow early growth in marriages between college graduates. By the 1990s, the surging number of highly educated couples finally overtook the losses at the lower end, pulling the aggregate rate back up.</p>
<p>When looking closely at relationships with unequal education levels, the researchers observed further nuances. In the United States, the proportion of women who were more educated than their partners followed an inverted trajectory. This rate dipped until the 1980s before climbing again toward the present day. At the same time, the percentage of women with less education than their partners started falling markedly after the 1970s.</p>
<p>In both surveyed countries, the reversal of the gender gap directly contributed to the overall decline of hypergamy. Less-educated women became less likely to partner with more-educated men simply because of the altering availability of such candidates. However, the simulation models revealed that generalized educational expansion acted as a competing force against these trends.</p>
<p>According to the calculated estimations, if overall educational attainment had increased in the United States without any historic changes to the gender balance, the country would have actually seen a structural decline in hypogamy. The sheer volume of available degrees mathematically pulled the trend downward. The specific increase in female graduates simultaneously pulled it upward. These two divergent demographic currents frequently functioned in total opposition.</p>
<p>To ensure the reliability of these numbers, the demographic team ran several sensitivity analyses. They expanded the simulated dating pool to include men up to age 39, aiming to account for larger relationship age gaps. They also tested a more granular, four-tier classification system for formal degrees. In every alternative test, the primary conclusions remained statistically unchanged.</p>
<p>The authors noted that shifting structural opportunities in the dating market do not operate in a social vacuum. Changing cultural preferences, shifts in gender pay disparities, and expanding corporate inequality also play a combined role in how modern couples select each other. Factors like the modern rise of online dating have drastically changed how strangers interact, altering the geographic bounds of the typical partner market.</p>
<p>While the utilized models accounted for existing assortative mating patterns, ordinary people continually adapt their behavior as the immediate dating pool transforms. One limitation of the research framework involves the basic assumption that individuals continuously search for partners within a relatively narrow age bracket.</p>
<p>If a person finds a sudden shortage of potential spouses with matching schooling backgrounds, they might permanently expand their search criteria to older or younger demographics. Future demographic studies will need to map precisely how adults creatively adjust their search parameters across different generations in response to shifting candidate pools.</p>
<p>Additionally, individuals might choose to postpone moving in together or marrying entirely until they find an ideal match. Since this published study solely looked at a specific snapshot of women, a widespread delay in union formation could eventually shift the apparent metrics of married couples outside of the analyzed age window. Researchers noted that changes in international migration also influence the pool of local singles.</p>
<p>Separating the influences of degree expansion from the shifting gender gap remains a theoretical social exercise, as both historical events occurred in tandem. Still, the statistical tools deployed in this analysis offer an objective window to decode the foundational mathematics operating behind modern romantic partnerships. The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2025.101044">Five decades of marital sorting in France and the United States – The role of educational expansion and the changing gender imbalance in education</a>,” was authored by Julia Leesch and Jan Skopek.</p>
<h2>Headline options</h2>
<ul>
<li>How education trends shape who we decide to marry</li>
<li>The hidden math behind fifty years of modern relationship records</li>
<li>Do college degrees change the dating pool for young adults?</li>
<li>How a surge in female graduates transformed the partner market</li>
<li>Why couples still tend to match on educational backgrounds</li>
<li>Tracking five decades of shifting demographics and romantic partnerships</li>
<li>Unpacking the link between secondary schooling and modern marriages</li>
<li>The structural data driving who we pick as a spouse</li>
<li>How the reversing gender gap in education influences modern dating</li>
<li>Revealing the demographic forces that govern the dating market</li>
</ul></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/new-research-finds-a-persistent-and-growing-leftward-tilt-in-the-social-sciences/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">New research finds a persistent and growing leftward tilt in the social sciences</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 18th 2026, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-026-09690-2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Theory and Society</a></em> suggests that published research in the social sciences has leaned consistently to the political left for more than six decades. The findings indicate that this leftward tilt has grown stronger over time, particularly regarding social and cultural issues. This provides evidence that the academic publishing environment has grown increasingly uniform in its political orientation.</p>
<p>Past surveys have consistently shown that college and university faculty in the United States tend to identify with left-leaning political views. James Manzi, a researcher at the University of Oxford, wanted to know if this political preference actually appears in the published academic work itself. Prior to recent technological advances, analyzing the political content of hundreds of thousands of scientific texts was too expensive and time-consuming for human readers to accomplish.</p>
<p>Manzi decided to use artificial intelligence to read and code these massive amounts of text to see how academic outputs have shifted over a 65-year period. Looking at published output provides a stable way to see what disciplines consider important and how they frame problems. Instead of asking how individual scientists vote, this approach evaluates the actual ideas making their way into the scientific record.</p>
<p>The researcher collected exactly 599,194 English-language abstracts from social science articles published between 1960 and 2024. Abstracts are short summaries of research papers that appear at the beginning of an academic article. The text came from 367 academic journals representing eleven different disciplines, including economics, sociology, and political science.</p>
<p>To process this massive dataset, Manzi used a large language model, which is an artificial intelligence program that recognizes patterns in vast amounts of text, to act as a digital reader. To ensure the program evaluated every abstract consistently, the researcher provided a strict rubric based on the United States political spectrum as it existed in the year 2025. The program rated each abstract on a scale from zero to ten, where zero represented the far right, five was politically neutral, and ten represented the far left.</p>
<p>To help the program understand these ratings, the scientist gave it specific, modern political anchors. The instructions linked each number on the scale to the contemporary policy positions of recognizable political figures and think tanks. Using this rubric, the program answered specific questions about each abstract, including whether its claims were relevant to modern political debates and where its ideas would fall on today’s economic and cultural spectrums.</p>
<p>Out of the entire sample, the program identified 180,311 abstracts that directly discussed current political or social debates, and the scientist focused the main analysis on this subset.</p>
<p>Before running the main analysis, the researcher validated the artificial intelligence by having it score summaries of articles published by known political organizations. The computer program successfully placed these organizations on the correct side of the political spectrum. The researcher also tested the tool on theoretical mathematics papers, which correctly yielded no politically relevant results.</p>
<p>The main data showed that roughly 90 percent of the politically relevant social science articles leaned to the left. The average political stance of every single social science discipline remained left of center for every year during the entire measured period. The consistently left-leaning averages were driven largely by a near absence of right-leaning works in most disciplines.</p>
<p>Different academic fields did follow slightly different paths over time. Disciplines closely tied to public policy, such as economics and political science, showed a slight moderation toward the right during the 1970s and 1980s. After 1990, these policy-focused fields shifted back toward the left.</p>
<p>In contrast, disciplines focused on identity and culture, such as sociology and gender studies, showed a continuous leftward shift over the entire time frame. Around the year 2010, the leftward movement in several of these fields began to accelerate. The researcher noted that this acceleration looks like a continuation of a long-running trend rather than a sudden break from the past.</p>
<p>The scientist also observed that fields with stronger leftward orientations tended to have less political diversity among their published works. Over time, the social sciences became more ideologically uniform. As disciplines drifted further left, the variety of political viewpoints found in their abstracts shrank.</p>
<p>To understand the source of this ideological drift, the scientist looked at whether individuals were changing their minds or if the fields were simply bringing in different people. The data indicates that the leftward trajectory is primarily driven by new contributors entering the field with more progressive views. Older academics changing their views over the course of their careers played a much smaller role in the overall shift.</p>
<p>The analysis also split the ratings between economic issues and sociocultural issues. The artificial intelligence consistently rated abstracts as further left on social and cultural topics than on economic topics. This gap widened significantly over the decades.</p>
<p>This suggests that scientists grew increasingly progressive on cultural issues even when their economic views remained slightly closer to the center. It mirrors a broader societal trend where highly educated professionals often hold moderate economic views alongside progressive social ideals.</p>
<p>Readers should avoid misinterpreting these patterns as direct proof of intentional bias or the deliberate suppression of right-leaning views. The study measures the political tone of the final published work, but it does not explain why that tone exists. It is highly possible that scientists are increasingly studying topics like climate change or racial justice, which the artificial intelligence might naturally code as left-leaning.</p>
<p>The artificial intelligence also only looked at the short abstracts, not the full text of every scientific paper. Scientists often use abstracts as promotional summaries to catch the attention of journal editors. Researchers might rely on trendy political buzzwords to increase their chances of publication. This means the abstracts might sound more ideological than the actual data and methods found inside the full papers.</p>
<p>The study also applied a strict United States political framework to all English language abstracts. Because science is a global enterprise, a researcher in the United Kingdom or Australia might use concepts that read as progressive in America but are considered politically moderate in their home countries.</p>
<p>Finally, large language models carry their own biases based on the internet data used to train them. This internal programming might influence how the software defines political neutrality or interprets nuanced academic arguments.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-026-09690-2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The ideological orientation of academic social science research 1960–2024</a>,” was authored by James Manzi.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/how-a-year-of-regular-exercise-alters-the-biology-of-stress/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">How a year of regular exercise alters the biology of stress</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 18th 2026, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>A new year-long study reveals that engaging in regular aerobic exercise lowers long-term levels of a major stress hormone, which might help protect against heart disease and mood disorders. Published in the <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jshs.2026.101135" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Journal of Sport and Health Science</a></em>, the clinical trial demonstrates how meeting standard physical activity guidelines benefits our underlying stress biology. These results suggest that breaking a sweat provides lasting physiological relief from chronic stress.</p>
<p>Peter Gianaros, a psychology researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, led the investigation alongside a team of health and neuroscience specialists. The research team wanted to understand if training the body to handle physical exertion also trains the brain and body to handle mental pressure. They designed a trial to observe these biological adaptations over an entire year.</p>
<p>When a person works out, their heart rate rises and their body experiences a temporary form of physical stress. Over time, regular exercise makes the cardiovascular system more efficient at handling this physical load. Researchers have proposed a concept called the cross-stressor adaptation hypothesis to explain how this works.</p>
<p>This hypothesis suggests that the biological upgrades gained from regular physical activity might cross over to help the body manage emotional and psychological stress. A fitter cardiovascular system might react less intensely to an argument at work or a frustrating traffic jam. The research team set out to test this idea by looking at several biological markers, including cortisol.</p>
<p>The cross-stressor adaptation hypothesis also suggests that working out changes the physical structure of the brain. Regular physical activity might induce neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to rewire itself. This rewiring could stabilize brain circuits that control the autonomic nervous system.</p>
<p>The autonomic nervous system acts as the control center for our unconscious bodily functions, including heart rate and digestion. By improving the efficiency of this system, aerobic fitness could theoretically calm our biological reactions to negative emotions.</p>
<p>Cortisol is the primary stress hormone in humans. It plays a role in regulating metabolism, immune responses, sleep cycles, and overall mood. High levels of long-term cortisol exposure are linked to a higher risk of heart disease and metabolic disorders.</p>
<p>Most physiological tests measure cortisol in saliva or blood plasma. These methods only capture a brief snapshot of stress at a specific moment in time. However, cortisol also accumulates in human hair as the hair grows out of the scalp.</p>
<p>Testing hair clippings allows researchers to measure systemic cortisol exposure over several months. This retrospective measure gives scientists a much broader picture of a person’s chronic stress load. Gianaros and his team used this technique to see if physical training altered this long-term hormone accumulation.</p>
<p>The clinical trial involved 130 healthy adults between the ages of 26 and 58. Before the trial began, none of the participants exercised regularly. The researchers divided these participants into two distinct groups using a randomized process.</p>
<p>One group was assigned to complete 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise every week for an entire year. This routine included brisk walking, jogging, or using stationary bikes. Participants attended supervised workout sessions and wore heart rate monitors to track their physical exertion.</p>
<p>To monitor their progress, the participants in the exercise group utilized wearable heart rate sensors. During the first six weeks, they aimed to keep their heart rates at a moderate intensity. After this initial adjustment period, they were encouraged to increase their workout intensity to a more vigorous level. Certified trainers checked in regularly to ensure everyone was exercising safely.</p>
<p>The second group served as a health information control group. These individuals received general educational materials about blood pressure and body composition. They were asked not to change their normal physical activity habits over the course of the year.</p>
<p>Throughout the year, the investigators tracked multiple biological and psychological markers in a laboratory setting. They drew fasting blood samples to check for systemic inflammation, blood sugar levels, and cholesterol. They also measured arterial stiffness by tracking how fast a pulse wave traveled from the heart to the calf.</p>
<p>The researchers also monitored heart rate variability, which tracks the tiny time differences between consecutive heartbeats. A higher heart rate variability usually indicates a relaxed, adaptable nervous system. A lower variability often points to elevated physical or emotional stress.</p>
<p>In addition to these cardiovascular checks, the participants underwent testing inside a magnetic resonance imaging machine. While inside the brain scanner, they completed frustrating psychological tasks to provoke a temporary stress response. These tasks involved processing conflicting information and receiving negative feedback while under a strict time limit.</p>
<p>During another scanner task, the participants viewed upsetting images chosen from a standardized psychological database. They were asked to actively try to change how they felt about the images by reframing the negative scenes into something more positive. This allowed the research team to monitor real-time brain activity, blood pressure changes, and emotion regulation skills during moments of mental strain.</p>
<p>After a year of observation, the researchers found a clear difference in the collected hair samples. Participants who completed the weekly aerobic exercise routines showed a drop in their accumulated hair cortisol compared to the control group. A year of brisk walking and jogging successfully reduced their overall systemic exposure to this stress hormone.</p>
<p>Gianaros explained the potential importance of this biological change. He stated, “The effect of exercise on long-term cortisol levels could be one of the mechanisms or benefits of exercise that protect against several diseases and some mental health conditions, but more research is needed to fully explore this possibility.”</p>
<p>The rest of the biological and psychological markers did not show obvious improvements. The exercise group did not experience notable changes in their cholesterol, blood sugar, or markers of systemic inflammation. Any minor shifts in these specific variables were not statistically significant.</p>
<p>During the brain scan tasks, the differences in mental stress reactions between the exercise group and the control group were also not statistically significant. A year of aerobic training did not seem to alter how the participants’ brains and blood pressure reacted to sudden, acute stressors. Their self-reported emotional reactions to the negative images remained largely the same as before the trial.</p>
<p>The research team noted a few reasons why the physical activity routine might not have improved all the measured health markers. One primary factor was the study’s strict enrollment criteria. To ensure safety, the investigators only selected adults who were remarkably healthy and free of underlying medical conditions.</p>
<p>Because the participants were already in good health, their biological markers might not have had much room to improve. This ceiling effect often makes it difficult to detect slight changes in cardiovascular disease risk factors among a healthy population. The clinical trial also took place during the early stages of the global pandemic.</p>
<p>Another limitation of the clinical trial involved the lack of questionnaires regarding daily life stressors. The investigators did not ask the participants to track their daily mood swings or environmental pressures at home. Because of this missing context, it is hard to know if the reduction in hair cortisol perfectly mirrored a reduction in everyday psychological stress.</p>
<p>Pandemic-related disruptions led to a higher rate of participant dropout than the team originally anticipated. A smaller final group size can limit the mathematical ability to detect subtle biological shifts. It remains unclear whether differing amounts of physical activity could produce broader biological changes.</p>
<p>Future studies might involve larger groups of people, including those who already have existing health conditions like high blood pressure or metabolic disorders. Testing different intensities of workouts could reveal exactly how much exertion is needed to optimize stress biology. Exploring these variables will help scientists build a more detailed map of how physical fitness protects the brain and body.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jshs.2026.101135" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Effects of a year-long aerobic exercise intervention on neuroendocrine, autonomic, and neural correlates of stress, emotion, and cardiovascular disease risk in midlife adults</a>,” was authored by Peter J. Gianaros, Lu Wan, Mia K. DeCataldo, Cristina Molina Hidalgo, Mark R. Scudder, George Grove, Abigail Shell, Chae Ryon Kang, E. Lydia Wu-Chung, Anna L. Marsland, Thomas W. Kamarck, Javier Rasero, and Kirk I. Erickson.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/scientists-tested-the-creativity-of-ai-models-and-the-results-were-surprisingly-homogeneous/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Scientists tested the creativity of AI models, and the results were surprisingly homogeneous</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 18th 2026, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study published in <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgag042" target="_blank" rel="noopener">PNAS Nexus</a></em> suggests that while artificial intelligence chatbots can match or exceed human creativity on individual tasks, they produce highly similar responses when compared to one another. This provides evidence that widespread reliance on artificial intelligence for creative tasks could lead to a loss of unique ideas.</p>
<p>Scientists Emily Wenger and Yoed N. Kenett designed this study to understand how large language models affect the diversity of human thought. Large language models are the technology behind popular AI chatbots that predict and generate text based on user prompts.</p>
<p>Large language models are complex computer programs designed to process and produce human language. Developers build these systems by training them on billions of sentences from books, articles, and websites. By analyzing this vast amount of text, the models learn the mathematical patterns and relationships between words.</p>
<p>When a user gives a chatbot a prompt, the model works by calculating the most probable next word in a sequence. It builds responses one word at a time based on the rules and associations it learned during its training phase. Wenger suspected this shared training method across different systems might cause a broader issue.</p>
<p>“Most of today’s LLMs are trained on massive datasets of scraped internet data — which functionally means they’re all trained on roughly the same data,” said Wenger, Cue Family Assistant Professor at Duke University. Traditional machine learning research has shown that training models on the same dataset lead to models with similar properties. I was wondering if this phenomenon would occur in commercial LLMs and what the implications might be.”</p>
<p>To investigate this, the researchers recruited 102 human participants through Prolific, an online platform for survey research. They screened the human participants to remove computer bots and ensure everyone passed basic attention checks. They also selected 22 different language models from various companies, including well-known chatbots produced by Google, Meta, and OpenAI.</p>
<p>Both humans and language models completed three standard verbal creativity tasks. The first was the Alternative Uses Task, which asks participants to list as many creative uses as possible for everyday objects like a fork, a book, or a pair of pants. This assessment tests divergent thinking, which is the ability to generate multiple unique solutions to a single problem.</p>
<p>The second assessment was the Forward Flow task, which measures associative thinking. Participants receive a starting word, like “snow” or “candle,” and must provide a chain of up to 20 subsequent words that naturally follow in their minds. Associative thinking helps individuals search through their memories and combine different concepts into new ideas.</p>
<p>The final assessment was the Divergent Association Task. This exercise required participants to generate 10 nouns that are as unrelated to one another as possible. Generating unrelated words demonstrates a cognitive flexibility that is strongly linked to creative abilities in humans.</p>
<p>The scientists then used computational text-analysis tools to evaluate the responses. These tools embed words into a mathematical space to measure the semantic distance between them, which calculates how different words and concepts are from one another. The researchers measured both the individual originality of a single answer and the overall variability among all answers in a group.</p>
<p>The researchers found that individual language models performed at or slightly above the level of the average human on most of the tasks. When looking at a single response in isolation, the chatbots provided highly original answers. However, a pattern of similarity emerged when the scientists compared all the responses from the different models to one another.</p>
<p>Across all tasks, the models produced answers that were significantly more alike than the answers provided by humans. The chatbots frequently relied on the same overlapping vocabulary, causing their creative outputs to group together in a highly uniform way. This similarity was even more pronounced when the researchers compared models built by the same company.</p>
<p>“My hypothesis was that there would be some degree of homogeneity among LLM responses relative to humans, but I was surprised by the degree.”</p>
<p>Wenger and Kenett also tested whether they could force the models to be more diverse. They adjusted the “temperature” setting on the models, which is a mechanism that controls the level of randomness in the text generation process. Low temperatures produce highly predictable text, while high temperatures introduce more random word choices.</p>
<p>While increasing the randomness did make the responses more varied, it quickly caused the models to produce nonsensical gibberish. These random responses no longer fulfilled the basic requirements of the creative prompts. True creativity requires an idea to be both novel and appropriate for the situation, so generating gibberish does not count as a successful creative output.</p>
<p>The researchers also tried changing the initial instructions given to the models. They explicitly commanded the chatbots to act as creative assistants and provide bold, outside-the-box answers. This minorly improved individual originality but completely failed to fix the broader issue of uniformity, as the models still produced responses similar to one another.</p>
<p>These findings suggest that relying on generative AI for brainstorming or problem-solving could limit the scope of human creativity. If everyone uses these tools to help write drafts or generate ideas, society might see a massive narrowing of concepts.</p>
<p>“If you are using AI chatbots (which are built on LLMs) for creative tasks, know that the results you get from these models will likely look very similar to the results someone else would get from an AI chatbot, even if it’s different from the one you used. If you want your content to be truly unique, probably shy away from using an AI chatbot to generate it.”</p>
<p>The researchers note some potential misinterpretations and limitations of their work. The study only measured performance on specific verbal creativity tasks, which means the results might not apply to all forms of creative behavior. For example, language models might not show the same homogenization when asked to perform generic non-verbal tasks like drawing or composing music.</p>
<p>Additionally, the scientists only tested commercially available models that have been programmed to follow strict safety and conversational guidelines. This safety training is known to affect how models behave in experimental settings. It is possible that raw, unaligned models might display different creative properties, though most everyday users do not have access to these raw versions.</p>
<p>Future research will need to explore other dimensions of creativity, such as fluency and flexibility, rather than just originality. Fluency refers to the sheer number of ideas generated, while flexibility refers to the variety of categories those ideas cover. The scientists also hope to investigate the extent of this homogenization across other types of artificial intelligence and explore potential engineering solutions to mitigate the problem.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgag042" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Large language models are homogeneously creative</a>,” was authored by Emily Wenger and Yoed N. Kenett.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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