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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/shared-music-listening-synchronizes-brain-activity/" 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;">Shared music listening synchronizes brain activity</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 29th 2026, 10:00</div>
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<p><p>While sharing a musical experience with a friend might not drastically alter your overall enjoyment of a song, it tends to synchronize your brain activity and emotional responses. A recent study published in the journal <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2026.02.012" target="_blank">Cortex</a> has found that listening to music with another person increases the moment-to-moment similarity of subjective pleasure and enhances neural alignment. These findings help explain how music acts as a powerful tool for social bonding and collective emotional experiences.</p>
<p>Human beings naturally use music as a social tool to connect with others. >From singing lullabies to infants to gathering at large stadium concerts, music helps regulate emotions and foster a sense of group cohesion. The ability of music to align emotions and physical responses among audiences fulfills a basic human need for social connection.</p>
<p>Scientists recognize that both music and social interactions activate the brain’s reward centers. This shared activation suggests that the social setting in which people listen to music might alter the fundamental way the brain processes musical pleasure. The mesolimbic reward circuitry, a network in the brain responsible for feelings of intense pleasure, plays a major role in these experiences.</p>
<p>“We were interested in better understanding how sharing music influences both our emotions and our brain activity,” said study author Federico Curzel, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pavia, working with the Laboratory of Psychology of Aging and <a href="https://www.musicognitionlab.com/" target="_blank">the MusiCognition lab</a>. “Music is a powerful social tool that can promote bonding and a sense of togetherness, yet the underlying neural mechanisms of these shared experiences are still not well understood,” he explained.</p>
<p>To investigate this, the researchers recruited 34 pairs of close friends, totaling 68 healthy participants. The sample consisted mostly of young adult women with an average age of 21 years. Participants filled out questionnaires to gauge their sensitivity to musical reward and their general empathy traits.</p>
<p>The scientists asked these pairs of friends to listen to brief music clips under two distinct social conditions. In the solo condition, participants sat alone in an isolated room, completely unaware of what their friend was doing. In the joint condition, the two friends sat face-to-face across a table in the same room.</p>
<p>The music selection included a total of 15 different songs, each trimmed to exactly 40 seconds. The playlist included five of the participant’s own favorite songs and five of their friend’s favorite songs. It also included five pop songs selected by the researchers to match the acoustic features of the other tracks.</p>
<p>While listening, participants used a digital slider to continuously rate their level of pleasure on a scale from zero to 100. This allowed the researchers to capture the exact highs and lows of enjoyment as the song progressed. After each song, participants also provided an overall rating of how much they liked the track.</p>
<p>To monitor brain activity, the researchers used a technique called functional near-infrared spectroscopy. This non-invasive method involves placing a specialized fabric cap on the head equipped with small sensors. These sensors emit harmless light through the skull to measure changes in blood flow and oxygen levels in the brain.</p>
<p>“Regarding the neuroimaging technique, fNIRS allowed us to maintain a more ecological setting, in which participants could move naturally, which is a key advantage for studying social interactions,” Curzel noted. Because the technique has lower spatial resolution than other imaging methods, the team developed a tool to estimate precise anatomical coordinates from a short video of the participant’s head. They hope to release an open-source version of this tool to help improve replicability in future studies.</p>
<p>By monitoring both friends at the exact same time, the researchers could measure interpersonal neural synchrony. This concept refers to the way two different brains align their activity patterns when experiencing the same event or environment. High synchrony indicates that the two brains are responding to the stimulus in a highly similar, connected manner.</p>
<p>Curzel pointed out that past research on shared music has yielded mixed results, making this face-to-face study particularly revealing. “We were surprised to find that shared listening increased pleasure specifically for the friend’s favorite songs, rather than in a general way,” he said. Merely having a friend present did not drastically increase overall pleasure ratings across all types of music.</p>
<p>More notably, the researchers found that sharing the listening experience increased what they called pleasure similarity within the pair. This means that as the song played, the two friends experienced rises and falls in their enjoyment at the exact same moments.</p>
<p>“Our findings suggest that when we share music with a friend, we don’t just listen together, we actually experience it more similarly,” Curzel explained. Even though the friends could not see each other’s rating sliders during the joint condition, “without talking or exchanging explicit feedbacks, their feelings of pleasure became aligned over time.”</p>
<p>Brain activity data revealed that listening to highly pleasurable music naturally boosted oxygen levels in the prefrontal cortex. An increase in oxygen indicates that a brain region is drawing more blood flow and working harder to process rewards.</p>
<p>This brain activation was specifically stronger when friends listened together rather than alone. The shared social setting appeared to amplify the brain’s biological response, making the physiological experience of musical pleasure more intense.</p>
<p>The researchers also discovered that brain synchronization between the two friends was noticeably higher in the joint listening condition. This phenomenon occurs when two separate brains begin to display similar patterns of activity at the exact same time.</p>
<p>“The more closely their pleasure responses matched moment by moment, the more their brain activity synchronized, but only when they were physically together,” Curzel said. Because this heightened synchrony primarily occurred in the joint condition, it suggests that the shared social experience drives the alignment. “In other words, we scientifically proved that music can bring people ‘onto the same wavelength’, both emotionally and neurally.”</p>
<p>While these findings offer a detailed look at social music listening, individual differences play a large role. “It is important to remember that findings from scientific studies reflect overall effects observed at the group level,” Curzel advised. “In this study, not everyone experienced shared music in the same way: some participants felt more ‘in sync’ and also reported greater enjoyment, while others did not.”</p>
<p>These variations tend to depend on context, the relationship between the individuals, and specific personality traits. Another potential misinterpretation is assuming that the presence of any person will naturally enhance brain synchronization. Since this study specifically used pairs of close friends, the results might look very different if the experiment involved complete strangers.</p>
<p>The research team is currently analyzing movement synchrony during the shared listening sessions, as well as how well participants remembered the songs the following day. “In the longer term, I would like to extend this experimental approach to clinical and relational contexts, such as music therapy,” Curzel said. This could help provide objective markers of emotional attunement between a patient and therapist.</p>
<p>He also expressed interest in investigating how neurochemical processes, such as oxytocin and serotonin, relate to shared experiences and neural synchrony. This work was supported by a grant from the French National Research Agency awarded to Laura Ferreri, who co-directs the MusiCognition Laboratory at the University of Pavia with Carlotta Lega.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2026.02.012" target="_blank">Joint music listening enhances interpersonal affective and neural synchrony</a>,” was authored by Federico Curzel, Barbara Tillmann, Arnaud Fournel, Giacomo Novembre, and Laura Ferreri.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/trumps-2024-victory-flipped-the-psychological-differences-between-liberals-and-conservatives/" 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;">Trump’s 2024 victory flipped the psychological differences between liberals and conservatives</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 29th 2026, 08:00</div>
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<p><p>A 20-week longitudinal study of American voters showed that, after President Donald Trump was elected in 2024, Democratic supporters reported a decrease in well-being, optimism, personal control, and institutional trust, while also experiencing higher cynicism, disrespect, and a stronger conspiracy mentality. In contrast, Republican supporters experienced changes in the opposite direction. The paper was published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672251412506"><em>Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin</em></a>.</p>
<p>In recent years, the public in the U.S. has experienced growing political polarization. This political polarization has increasingly taken the form of affective polarization, meaning that many Democrats and Republicans not only disagree on issues but also hold strongly negative feelings toward the other political side. Many Americans also report a very pessimistic view of their political system, with institutions like the Pew Research Center finding deeply negative views of national politics and Gallup reporting record-high perceptions that the country is divided on important issues.</p>
<p>This polarization shows up in growing distrust of institutions, and that trust now depends heavily on which party controls government rather than on the institutions themselves. It also appears in everyday life through moralized political identities and a tendency to see supporters of the other party as not just mistaken but threatening and un-American. Another manifestation is policy divergence across states, as Republican-led and Democratic-led states increasingly pursue sharply different approaches on issues such as abortion, voting, immigration, and public health.</p>
<p>One major cause of these developments might be the long-term ideological sorting of the two parties, so that liberals are now much more concentrated in the Democratic Party and conservatives in the Republican Party than in earlier decades. Media fragmentation and online information environments have also intensified polarization by repeatedly exposing people to conflict-driven, partisan, and emotionally charged content. Political leaders and activists have contributed by using sharper rhetoric, framing opponents as existential threats, and rewarding confrontation more than compromise. There are other contributing factors as well.</p>
<p>Study author Olga Stavrova and her colleagues explored how psychological well-being and a broad set of other psychological outcomes changed from before to after the 2024 U.S. presidential election. They particularly wanted to explore what the trajectory of these changes looked like for individuals supporting different political candidates.</p>
<p>They conducted a 7-wave longitudinal survey of a politically balanced U.S. sample from 3 weeks before the election to 16 weeks after the election. Participants initially included 747 U.S. voters, but only 515 completed the final wave. The study’s authors collected enough data from 623 participants to be able to include them in their main analyses. Participants were politically balanced—50% were Democrats and 50% were Republicans. Their average age was 45 years, and 36% were men.</p>
<p>The data collection procedure included 7 measurement points. The first was 3 weeks before the election and the last was 1 month after the inauguration, amounting to roughly 20 weeks in total. The second data collection wave took place at the end of Election Day, and the third was launched on the day the results became known.</p>
<p>In each wave, participants completed assessments of psychological well-being (life satisfaction, search and presence of meaning in life, and positive and negative emotions), self-views (self-esteem, optimism, and personal control), and views and experiences of the world (cynicism, experiences of disrespect, conspiracy mentality, and institutional trust). Participants were divided into election “winners” and “losers” based on who they voted for (Trump, Harris, or a third-party candidate). Participants’ political ideology was also assessed by asking them, “How would you describe yourself politically? (1 = extremely liberal, 10 = extremely conservative)”.</p>
<p>Results showed that, as the election results came in showing that Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, Democratic supporters reported a decrease in well-being, optimism, and personal control, as well as lower institutional trust. At the same time, they started reporting higher cynicism, more experiences of disrespect, and a stronger conspiracy mentality. While some of these changes started reverting slightly soon after the election, the study authors report that most of them persisted up to 4 months later. Furthermore, the institutional trust of Democratic supporters kept declining throughout the entire study period.</p>
<p>In contrast, Republican supporters tended to experience changes in the opposite direction. This even led to an inversion of differences in institutional trust between the two groups. While at the start of the study Republican supporters tended to report lower institutional trust than Democrats, after the election, Republican supporters reported higher institutional trust than Democratic supporters, and the gap kept growing as the study progressed. </p>
<p>Similarly, the gap between the two groups in optimism increased, with Republican supporters becoming more optimistic and the peak difference occurring immediately after the election. Democratic supporters tended to report fewer positive emotions and more negative emotions than Republican supporters throughout the study period, with the difference being the highest immediately after the election.</p>
<p>“These results challenge the notion of inherent psychological differences between liberals and conservatives, highlighting how such differences can shift depending on which party holds power,” the study’s authors concluded.</p>
<p>The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the relationship between major political events and people’s psychological states. However, it should be noted that the study followed changes around a single presidential election. Changes in psychological views and states might be less pronounced or different around other types of political events or even other presidential elections.</p>
<p>The paper “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672251412506">Trajectories of Psychological Outcomes During the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election</a>” was authored by Olga Stavrova, Dongning Ren, Sangmin Kim, and Kathleen D. Vohs.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/tabletop-games-like-dd-act-as-drama-therapy-in-the-wild-to-boost-players-self-concepts/" 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;">Tabletop games like D&D act as “drama therapy in the wild” to boost players’ self-concepts</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 29th 2026, 06:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study published in the journal <em>Transcultural Psychiatry</em> provides evidence that the personal bonds people form with fictional characters in tabletop role-playing games can lead to noticeable improvements in their real-life sense of identity. The research suggests that using these games in clinical settings could be an effective way to help patients build self-esteem and process personal struggles. This psychological growth tends to happen most reliably when the gaming environment feels safe and socially supportive.</p>
<p>The project was guided by <a href="https://www.libarts.colostate.edu/people/jsnodgra/" target="_blank">Jeffrey G. Snodgrass</a>, a professor in the Department of Anthropology and Geography at Colorado State University. Snodgrass directs <a href="https://anthgr.colostate.edu/department-scholarship/labs-and-centers/ethnographic-research-and-teaching-laboratory/" target="_blank">the Ethnographic Research and Teaching Laboratory</a>, known as ERTL, and wrote the book <em><a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/books/the-avatar-faculty/paper" target="_blank">The Avatar Faculty: Ecstatic Transformations in Religion and Video Games</a></em>. “It was a collaborative study involving faculty and students and is part of my lab’s long-term aim to productively combine research and teaching,” Snodgrass told PsyPost.</p>
<p>Mental health professionals have started incorporating tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons into psychological treatments. To explain the motivation for the study, Snodgrass noted, “This work represents my lab’s latest exploration of relationships between gaming and well-being.” He added that games like Dungeons and Dragons are particularly interesting because players form intensive relationships both with their characters and with other players in their gaming groups. </p>
<p>Drawing on concepts from drama therapy, the scientists wanted to see if the informal character creation that happens in living rooms mimics clinical processes. “Players also are able to imaginatively explore alternative identities via their characters,” Snodgrass explained. “We anticipated that such processes might contribute to these games’ therapeutic dimensions, in the manner they could help players improve their sense of self.”</p>
<p>To explore these psychological dynamics, the researchers collected data from North American gamers using a mix of surveys and in-depth interviews. The survey included 149 participants with an average age of about thirty years old. The sample was mostly male, which reflects the historical demographics of many gaming communities.</p>
<p>Within this survey group, thirty-one percent primarily played tabletop role-playing games. Another twenty percent played digital role-playing video games. The remaining forty-nine percent played other types of video games like competitive multiplayer matches or first-person shooters.</p>
<p>The survey asked participants to describe their relationship with their primary gaming character. Players categorized their character as a mere object on a screen, a direct extension of themselves, a symbiote where the player and character share a blended identity, or a completely separate being. Participants also answered twenty-five questions designed to measure recent improvements in their overall self-concept. </p>
<p>These questions evaluated psychological needs like self-esteem, a sense of belonging, and the feeling that one’s life has meaning. The survey also tracked self-efficacy, which is the belief in a person’s own ability to achieve their goals. Additional survey questions measured how much social support players felt regarding their gaming hobby. </p>
<p>The researchers also measured absorptive capacity, which is a person’s natural tendency to become deeply immersed in imaginative experiences and lose track of time. Finally, the survey tracked how many hours each person played games during a typical week. Alongside the survey, the scientists conducted three rounds of interviews with a total of 54 role-playing game enthusiasts between late 2021 and early 2025. </p>
<p>The data revealed that the type of bond a player forms with their character is strongly linked to positive psychological benefits. Players who viewed their characters as symbiotes or as distinct other persons reported substantially greater improvements in their self-concept. This was compared to players who treated their characters as simple objects or tools to achieve a winning score.</p>
<p>Snodgrass summarized the core takeaway of these results. “Developing highly personalized bonds with imagined characters in tabletop roleplaying game settings can improve players’ actual-world sense of self,” he said. “Play such as this thus resembles clinical approaches such as drama therapy, where patients project themselves into imagined situations and stories with the aim of clarifying and potentially resolving emotional and other conflicts.”</p>
<p>Tabletop game players tend to experience more identity benefits than players of other game genres. The data suggests this advantage occurs because tabletop games naturally encourage players to build deeper emotional bonds with their characters. Digital games often limit how much a player can customize their digital avatar, which can restrict the emotional connection.</p>
<p>The interviews provided rich context to support these survey results, particularly for vulnerable individuals. “The therapeutic processes we examine seem particularly important for players experiencing identity threats,” Snodgrass noted. “This includes socially marginalized players such as queer gamers or others questioning or wishing to explore alternative gender identities.” </p>
<p>By acting out the lives of complex characters, players were able to experience what psychologists call bleed-out, where emotional lessons learned in the game transfer into real life. However, Snodgrass emphasized that the environment must be supportive. “Creating safe play spaces for such activities is critical to the achievement of the therapeutic gains described in our study,” he said.</p>
<p>Many participants noted that caring for their fictional characters and guiding them through challenges helped them feel more capable and compassionate in their own lives. Some players purposefully created characters who embodied traits they disliked about themselves. Role-playing as these flawed characters allowed the players to develop greater self-compassion.</p>
<p>Other interviewees explained how long-term gaming campaigns created a profound sense of social continuity. Groups that focused heavily on collaborative storytelling often stayed together for decades. These shared imaginative experiences helped players build lifelong friendships, share child care responsibilities, and cultivate a deep sense of belonging.</p>
<p>As with all research, there are a few limitations to keep in mind. The study relied on self-reported data, which means participants were estimating their own psychological growth. Regarding clinical applications, Snodgrass cautioned, “Using tabletop roleplaying games in therapeutic contexts would necessitate some degree of cultural familiarity with and acceptability of such forms of play as well as working with patients who themselves were open to such experiences.”</p>
<p>Moving forward, the scientists plan to look at other psychological benefits of gaming. “My collaborators and I are now aiming to understand how such forms of play might help train positive stress coping and emotion regulation, via the simulation of encountering and resolving stressors like threats of violence and social conflict,” Snodgrass said. “We also hope to further clarify the role played by cultural factors in these processes through a comparison of such play in various settings around the world.”</p>
<p>The study, “Tabletop Role-Playing Games as Drama Therapy in the Wild: Developing Personal Bonds with Characters Improves Players’ Self-Concepts,” was authored by Jeffrey G. Snodgrass, Seth I. Sagstetter, Choeeta Chakrabarti, Julia R. Branstrator, Katya Xinyi Zhao, Michael G. Lacy, H. J. François Dengah II, Aimee Wagner, Alessandro Giardina, and Joël Billieux.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/scientists-discover-how-local-brain-cells-hijack-serotonin-signaling/" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Scientists discover how local brain cells hijack serotonin signaling</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 28th 2026, 16:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in <em><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-70359-6" target="_blank">Nature Communications</a></em> reveals that a brain chemical called acetylcholine can directly trigger the release of serotonin. These results suggest that the brain uses a highly coordinated system to link different chemical messengers. The findings might help explain the biological roots of compulsive behaviors seen in psychiatric conditions like obsessive-compulsive disorder.</p>
<p>The brain relies on an array of chemical messengers to transmit signals across microscopic gaps between nerve cells. These chemicals allow the brain to coordinate everything from basic reflexes to abstract thoughts. The striatum is a deep brain structure that acts as a central hub for processing habits, movement, and goal-directed learning. </p>
<p>Within this region, a small population of cells known as cholinergic interneurons act like local conductors. Interneurons are specialized nerve cells that form connections between other neurons, helping to manage the flow of information within a specific local area. These particular interneurons release acetylcholine, a chemical messenger that helps the brain respond to important behavioral events. Acetylcholine works by binding to specific proteins on the surface of other cells, much like a key fitting into a lock. </p>
<p>Past research established that acetylcholine prompts the release of dopamine, which is the brain’s primary reward chemical. Because serotonin is another major chemical messenger heavily involved in mood and learning, researchers wanted to find out if acetylcholine could exert similar control over it. Serotonin imbalances are widely linked to psychiatric and addictive conditions. </p>
<p>Lior Matityahu, a researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, led the investigation alongside neurobiologists Joshua Goldberg from the same institution and Joshua Plotkin from Stony Brook University. They designed a series of experiments to observe exactly how these chemical systems interact in living brain tissue.</p>
<p>The research team started by introducing a genetic tool into the dorsal striatum of mice. The dorsal striatum is the upper section of the striatum, an area heavily involved in motor control and habit formation. The genetic tool was an engineered virus that caused the brain cells to produce a custom green fluorescent protein. This protein lights up only when it binds to serotonin, providing a visual cue for chemical activity.</p>
<p>By placing very thin slices of these brains under an advanced microscope, the team could watch serotonin fluctuations in real time. When the researchers delivered brief electrical pulses to the brain tissue, the green fluorescence spiked, indicating a robust release of serotonin. The glow then slowly faded over tens of seconds as the chemical naturally dissipated.</p>
<p>To verify that the glow was truly serotonin and not a related chemical like dopamine, the researchers bathed the tissue in dopamine. The fluorescence did not change, confirming the sensor’s accuracy. They also applied a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, a common type of antidepressant drug, which predictably altered the speed at which the fluorescent signal decayed.</p>
<p>Next, they applied a drug called mecamylamine to the tissue. Mecamylamine blocks nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, which are specialized docking stations on the surface of cells that respond to acetylcholine. With these receptors blocked, the amount of serotonin released dropped substantially. This drop indicated that acetylcholine was actively helping to drive the serotonin response.</p>
<p>The team also measured how far the serotonin traveled from the stimulation site. They measured the brightness of the fluorescence at microscopic increments moving away from the electrical source. </p>
<p>They found that the presence of active acetylcholine receptors allowed the serotonin signal to spread across a much wider area of the brain tissue. Blocking the receptors reduced this spatial footprint by nearly half. This means acetylcholine not only increases the volume of serotonin released but also dictates how far its message reaches.</p>
<p>The researchers repeated these steps in the lower part of the region, known as the ventral striatum. This area is known to have a much denser network of serotonin-producing fibers than the upper section. </p>
<p>To their surprise, the acetylcholine-blocking drug had no effect on serotonin levels in this lower region. This result revealed that the connection between acetylcholine and serotonin is highly localized to specific brain areas. The density of the serotonin fibers did not dictate the strength of the chemical interaction.</p>
<p>To prove that the cholinergic interneurons were the exact source of the acetylcholine driving this process, the team used optogenetics. Optogenetics is a technique that allows scientists to engineer specific brain cells so they can be activated by flashes of light. They genetically modified the cholinergic cells in mice so that a brief pulse of blue light would force them to fire.</p>
<p>When the researchers shined light on the tissue, the cholinergic cells fired simultaneously. Immediately, the green sensors lit up, showing a massive release of serotonin. To rule out other indirect causes, they added a mixture of drugs that block receptors for other common brain chemicals, such as glutamate. </p>
<p>The light-induced serotonin release remained entirely unchanged in the presence of these other blocking drugs. However, when they blocked the acetylcholine receptors again, the light-induced serotonin release vanished completely. This confirmed that the cholinergic interneurons alone were entirely responsible for triggering the local serotonin release.</p>
<p>To understand how this mechanism behaves in disease states, the team examined mice genetically engineered to lack a specific gene called Sapap3. Obsessive-compulsive disorder in humans is characterized by intrusive thoughts and repetitive actions that patients feel driven to perform. Mice missing the Sapap3 gene display similar behavioral loops, such as grooming themselves until they cause physical injury. </p>
<p>Previous studies had shown that the striatum in these mice contains too much acetylcholine. The researchers applied the same electrical stimulation to brain tissue from the genetically modified mice. They observed a massive surge in serotonin release compared to typical mice. </p>
<p>When they applied the drug that blocks acetylcholine receptors, the difference disappeared entirely. The underlying baseline serotonin system was normal, but the excessive acetylcholine was pushing the serotonin release into overdrive. </p>
<p>“Our findings show that the brain’s internal wiring allows one chemical system to take the wheel of another in a highly regional and specific way,” Goldberg and Plotkin explained in a press statement. They noted that this hijacked signaling system likely contributes to the repetitive actions seen in certain psychiatric conditions.</p>
<p>“In conditions like OCD, where cholinergic signaling may be dysfunctional, this normally helpful coordination may go into overdrive, which could help explain why certain behaviors become so difficult to stop,” they added.</p>
<p>While the study presents clear evidence of this chemical coordination in isolated brain slices, there are still open questions about how it operates in living, behaving animals. It is difficult to pinpoint the exact behavioral states that prompt cholinergic interneurons to fire synchronously in a natural environment. </p>
<p>The researchers suspect that stressful events or highly salient environmental cues might be required to trigger this linked chemical release outside the laboratory. For example, previous studies have shown that severe stress is required to prompt noticeable serotonin release when certain chemicals are introduced to the brain. Future research will need to establish the precise real-world conditions that cause acetylcholine to drive serotonin release. </p>
<p>Scientists will also need to determine if this hijacked chemical release happens in humans, or if it varies across different species. In addition, further studies might explore whether abnormal cholinergic activity contributes to the progression of Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson’s disease involves the loss of dopamine fibers in the striatum, which sometimes causes serotonin fibers to inappropriately adopt dopamine-related functions. </p>
<p>Understanding how different chemical systems regulate one another is a major step toward developing better treatments for psychiatric and neurological conditions. Current treatments for obsessive-compulsive disorder often rely on drugs that alter serotonin levels throughout the entire brain. Discovering how acetylcholine controls serotonin in a highly localized way might lead to more targeted therapies.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-70359-6" target="_blank">Synchronous activation of striatal cholinergic interneurons induces local serotonin release</a>,” was authored by Lior Matityahu, Zachary B. Hobel, Noa Berkowitz, Jeffrey M. Malgady, Naomi Gilin, Joshua L. Plotkin & Joshua A. Goldberg.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/narcissism-runs-in-the-family-but-not-because-of-parenting/" 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;">Narcissism runs in the family, but not because of parenting</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 28th 2026, 14:00</div>
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<p><p>A recent study mapping the personality traits of thousands of twins and their family members suggests that narcissistic behavioral patterns are passed down from parent to child entirely through genetic inheritance, rather than through child-rearing methods. The research, published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506261429556"><i>Social Psychological and Personality Science</i></a>, indicates that individual life experiences outside the childhood home shape the remaining variations in this trait. These results prompt a major shift in how psychologists think about the origins of narcissism.</p>
<p>Narcissism is a personality trait defined by a sense of grandiosity, feelings of entitlement, and a strong drive to acquire social status. People who exhibit high levels of narcissism often experience early success in dating and leadership roles, projecting an initial confidence that others find attractive. At the same time, this personality dimension regularly leads to interpersonal conflict, risky decision-making, and organizational disruption over the long term. Because narcissistic tendencies remain highly stable once formed in adolescence or early adulthood, psychologists are highly interested in understanding how these traits develop in the first place.</p>
<p>Historically, popular psychology and academic theories alike have pointed to the family environment as the primary culprit behind narcissistic development. Psychoanalytic models suggest that narcissistic behavior emerges as a defensive mask to compensate for cold, unloving parents. Learning theories propose that children adopt unrealistic self-views when their parents overvalue them or constantly place them on a pedestal. Both of these frameworks dominate the public discourse about narcissism. They rest on the largely untested assumption that a parent’s specific child-rearing style exerts a molding influence on their offspring’s personality.</p>
<p>Psychologist Mitja Back of the University of Münster in Germany and his colleagues wanted to test the validity of this developmental assumption. The research team noted that parents share both an environment and genetic material with their children, making it difficult to separate the effects of physical inheritance from upbringing. To disentangle these factors, the researchers turned to an extended twin family research design to analyze broad patterns of familial traits. Previous behavior genetic studies looked at narcissism, but they relied on small sample sizes and traditional twin models that could not account for complexities like parents selecting similar partners.</p>
<p>The study used data from the German TwinLife project, a large-scale assessment of twins and their families. The final sample included 6,715 people, consisting of identical and fraternal twins along with their non-twin siblings, mothers, fathers, and romantic partners. This specific family structure allows scientists to compare the personality similarities of relatives who share varying amounts of genetic material. Identical twins share almost all of their DNA, while fraternal twins and typical siblings share roughly half of their segregating genetic sequence.</p>
<p>Participants completed standardized psychological questionnaires designed to measure numerous narcissistic tendencies. Adolescents answered questions about their perceived leadership abilities, feelings of being special, and desire to control other people. Adults responded to items assessing their desire for admiration, attention, and social prestige. The researchers surveyed participants across three specific age cohorts, capturing data from people who were approximately 15, 21, and 27 years old.</p>
<p>By comparing the survey scores across the different types of family relationships, the team isolated the percentage of narcissism originating from different life sources. They calculated the influence of inherited DNA, which researchers formally refer to as genetic variance. They also measured the impact of the shared environment, referring to influences that siblings living in the same home experience jointly, such as family wealth or general parenting styles. Finally, the team evaluated the role of the nonshared environment, which encompasses individual-specific experiences like particular peer groups, unique romantic partnerships, or personal workplace dynamics.</p>
<p>The researchers found that genetic factors accounted for about 50 percent of the individual differences in narcissism. The other 50 percent originated entirely from nonshared environmental influences, meaning the shared family environment contributed almost nothing to the development of the trait. Factors siblings experience together, including the broad parenting strategies or warmth provided by their mother or father, did not make them any more similar in their levels of narcissism. Identical twins were much more similar to each other than fraternal twins, pointing heavily toward a biological foundation.</p>
<p>While parents and children did show similar levels of narcissism, the data revealed that this resemblance was driven entirely by shared biology. The researchers found no evidence that parents transmit narcissism to their children through their behavior or their direct child-rearing methods. The mathematical models actually suggested a tiny negative environmental effect, hinting that highly narcissistic parents might create an environment that slightly discourages the trait in their offspring. While the researchers note this finding requires cautious interpretation, it strongly contradicts the popular idea that narcissistic parents shape highly narcissistic children through their parenting choices.</p>
<p>The team observed another pattern contributing to familial similarity, a concept known as assortative mating. This refers to the tendency for people to select romantic partners who share characteristics similar to their own. In the study, parents exhibited similar levels of narcissism to one another. This pattern contradicts the cultural idea that highly narcissistic people purposely select submissive or opposing personalities as romantic partners, and it slightly increases the likelihood of their children inheriting those associated biological markers.</p>
<p>The relative influences of genetics and individual experiences remained consistent across the different age groups. The study authors originally suspected that genetic factors might play a larger role in the older cohorts as young adults gained more autonomy to seek out environments matching their inherited biological tendencies. The data showed no statistically significant differences across age cohorts. This indicates that the proportional contributions of biology and nonshared experiences remain quite steady from adolescence into adulthood.</p>
<p>The study relied on self-reported questionnaires, which can sometimes introduce bias if participants lack self-awareness or answer in ways they perceive as socially acceptable. Such biases can artificially reduce the mathematical estimates of actual family similarities. Still, the authors note that this data limitation does not alter the primary conclusion. Narcissism runs in families primarily through genetic inheritance, not through the shared environment of the childhood home.</p>
<p>Back and his colleagues suggest that future research should focus heavily on the individual experiences that make up the nonshared environment. Since parenting styles show little effect, psychologists need to investigate how peer networks, romantic relationships, and repeated status boosts in the workplace reinforce narcissistic tendencies. The researchers propose studying how people react to social rewards over long periods. These unique social interactions might interact with genetic predispositions to amplify a person’s behavior over time.</p>
<p>Scientists also need to identify the specific biological mechanisms that genetic inheritance actually influences. The study authors recommend exploring how specific gene sequences affect hormone levels, such as testosterone, or the neural systems that process rewards and threats. Understanding how a biological sensitivity to social status interacts with particular life events will fundamentally reshape how psychologists approach narcissistic individuals in therapy, the workplace, and everyday relationships.</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506261429556">Narcissism Runs in Families Due to Genetics: An Extended Twin Family Analysis</a>,” was authored by Mitja D. Back, Jana Instinske, Theresa Rohm, Marco Deppe, and Christian Kandler.</p></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.psypost.org/large-study-finds-no-meaningful-link-between-meat-consumption-and-depression/" 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;">Large study finds no meaningful link between meat consumption and depression</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Apr 28th 2026, 12:00</div>
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<p><p>A new study published in the journal <em><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976261426226" target="_blank">Psychological Science</a></em> suggests that the link between eating meat and experiencing depression is extremely weak and likely not causal. By analyzing data from tens of thousands of people over several years, scientists found that avoiding meat does not appear to be a meaningful risk factor for developing depression. This provides evidence that people choosing vegetarian or vegan diets do not need to worry about their dietary choices directly causing a decline in their mental health.</p>
<p>In recent years, public interest in the potential mental health impacts of plant-based diets has grown. “Some studies have suggested a link between avoiding animal products and depression, and some social media influencers have recommended eating meat to avoid depression,” said researcher Christopher Hopwood. “Previous studies have not been able to estimate a population-level effect or examine the preconditions of causality as we did in this study.”</p>
<p>Many earlier projects asked people to identify themselves as vegetarians, vegans, or omnivores. This categorizing approach can be flawed because a person’s chosen dietary label does not always match their actual eating behavior. To address this, the current study treated meat consumption as a continuous behavior, measuring exactly how often a person eats animal products.</p>
<p>Past projects also often relied on small, non-representative groups of people, making it difficult to apply the findings to the broader population. Scientists noticed that previous work frequently ignored other life factors that influence mental health, such as age, income, education, and gender. The researchers designed this project to see if the supposed link between meat consumption and depression was actually caused by these outside demographic variables.</p>
<p>To gain a more accurate understanding, the scientists analyzed existing data from three massive, ongoing national surveys. These included panels from the Netherlands, Germany, and Australia. In total, the study included a highly representative sample of 77,678 participants. </p>
<p>The participants regularly completed questionnaires detailing how often they ate meat, fish, and poultry. The frequency options ranged from never eating meat to consuming it daily or even multiple times a day. Participants also answered standardized questions about their mental well-being, specifically indicating how often they felt sad, hopeless, or lacking in energy over the previous four weeks. </p>
<p>By using these repeated measurements, the scientists could track changes in both diet and mood for each specific person over time. In their statistical analysis, the researchers controlled for age, gender, income, and educational background. This adjustment helps isolate the specific relationship between diet and mood by removing the influence of demographic factors that are known to affect both. </p>
<p>The scientists found a very weak negative correlation between meat consumption and depression. The statistical association was so small that it is unlikely to have any noticeable impact on a person’s everyday life. “The general pattern is that eating meat has basically no impact one way or the other on depression,” Hopwood said.</p>
<p>When looking at the longitudinal data, the researchers tested for what is known as a lagged effect. They wanted to see if a person eating less meat than their own personal average at one point in time predicted higher depression scores at the next survey assessment. They found no significant delayed effects, meaning a reduction in meat intake did not predict an increase in depressive symptoms in following years.</p>
<p>The researchers also checked if experiencing depression caused people to change their diets later on. They found no evidence for this reverse effect either. Additionally, they tested whether living in a rural versus an urban setting changed the relationship between meat consumption and depression, but they found no contextual differences.</p>
<p>The scientists also looked for non-linear patterns, checking if both extremes of meat-eating might be linked to poor mood. “There was a spike in depression at very high levels of meat consumption, suggesting that eating too much meat might be related to depression,” noted Hopwood. Even so, the data overall indicated that people who eat average amounts of meat report the lowest levels of depression.</p>
<p>While these findings are detailed, the study relied exclusively on self-reported data, which means participants had to accurately remember and report their own eating habits and feelings. “We could not test causality directly, but the results strongly suggest that a causal link is unlikely,” Hopwood said. “Also, we only tested people in three Western countries, and it is possible that results would differ in other cultures.”</p>
<p>Age and life circumstances might also play an unmeasured role in mental health and diet. “There are certain developmental or life stages when nutrition needs change (e.g., during pregnancy, following exposure to animal agriculture) and these results did not examine those issues closely,” Hopwood explained. Future research could benefit from using more frequent assessments to track rapid shifts in mood and eating behavior.</p>
<p>Moving forward, the researchers hope to examine how diet affects specific mental health conditions. “We think the findings from this study are definitive regarding meat consumption and depression in the general population, but there may be certain sub-groups for whom there is a link, such as people with eating disorder diagnoses or people with significant anxiety about the environment or animal rights,” Hopwood said. “We would be interested in studying those sub-groups.”</p>
<p>The researchers want to provide reliable information for public health and wellness. “We think it is important for people to make dietary decisions based on evidence and are concerned about people making decisions that could harm themselves, the environment, or animals based on uninformed opinions shared on social media,” Hopwood added. “We hope that these results offer such people evidence with which to make good dietary decisions.”</p>
<p>The study, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976261426226" target="_blank">Associations between meat consumption and depression are small and unlikely to be causal</a>,” was authored by Nicholas Poh-Jie Tan, Michael D. Krämer, Peter Haehner, Wiebke Bleidorn, and Christopher J. Hopwood.</p></p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
<p><strong>This information is taken from free public RSS feeds published by each organization for the purpose of public distribution. Readers are linked back to the article content on each organization's website. This email is an unaffiliated unofficial redistribution of this freely provided content from the publishers. </strong></p>
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